I feel like I am always apologizing about my inability to stick to my blog calendar. And I hate giving excuses (because let’s be honest, I am still keeping up on Twitter AND watching some quality TV), but things are just insane at the moment. I wanted to share a little life update just to let you all know why the blog hasn’t been what it used to be, and make a renewed promise to you (and myself!) to be better about it. But I think I also need to make a pact here to just stop apologizing, and instead, reset the expectations for the blog.
So first, why life has been insane. Well for starters I did what I always say I shouldn’t do: back to back to back weekends of weddings. With my day job, I’ve officially worked 20 of the last 23 days of this month. 3 days “off” to enjoy my family, catch up on some sleep, and catch up on some OTHER things happening in my life, well it’s just not enough! I am TIRED!
Second, you probably saw on social media, but if not, Andy & I are selling our rowhome! After a few weeks of cleaning, de-cluterring, and staging, we put our home on the market and were thankful to receive a handful of offers – one of which we accepted. We close in a few weeks – so we’ve been busy trying to de-clutter more, and start to PACK. We close in a few more weeks (just after celebrating the big 3-2 & memorial day) and then we enter a super fun time of living in the words tiniest 2-bedroom apartment. I’m not sure this has hit me yet – that we are officially leaving our first real home together and where we started our family.
On top of selling our house and moving into a temporary living situation – we are renovating the home in Brookland that we’ve been renting out for the past 3 years. This is exciting (and ok, somewhat fun – interior design! woo hoo!), but it’s also TIME CONSUMING! There are SO many decisions to make, that I didn’t realize we would have to make (picking the location of outlets, picking out cabinet pulls and towel racks, etc etc), but fortunately Andy has been owning most of this work, like a boss. I just try to keep us on our budget ;) We’ve been having fun on our Brookland Dream Home Pinterest board and are SUPER thankful to have Jenn Heller Design Co working with us on consulting. Lots of Instagram updates coming soon on that front!
On top of selling a home, moving into a rental, and starting a major home renovation – the wedding coordination business is BOOMING. We have a few remaining slots for 2017, but we’ve collectively booked 35 weddings this year – our best year yet). Lately we’ve been in process of getting Amanda (our newest coordinator!) on-boarded and I already feel behind on 2018, as those inquiries are just starting. 2018 pricing is on the website and I am trying to get our 2018 contracts in place – AND I am trying to get a new workflow & contracts management system setup for 2018 too – but man I am struggling to get that running. I am leaning towards 17hats if anyone has any input there. Their tagline is: chaos. simplified. That sounds exactly like what I need right now ;)
Along with prepping for 2018 wedding season, I have BIG PLANS underway for the blog & my brand in general. I am starting the early work of moving to a brand new wordpress template, with some updates to our logo. I have a goal for myself to finish this by the end of this year and I really hope I can stick to this. We’ve got Stacy Kleber Design on board starting our wireframes & site mock-ups and we’ve got BIG DREAMS about how this is all going to launch, including a new brand video to better outline the services CapRo LLC provides. More to come here too … it’s been over two years since the blog has gotten any love, and it’s way over-due for a site update and a look at how I can better align my brand across the multiple services we provide (blog. coordination. store).
Finally, I have a lot more plans for the end of this year and early next year to tackle with the ecommerce shop, email marketing, and monetizing other facets of the business. I hope the new site and streamlined branding will be the start, and I hope with having the renovation and moves behind me on the personal side, that it will set me up for an awesome 2018 … I guess we will just have to wait and see :) but for now, at least you have an update and a little more insight into why the blog has been riding the struggle bus lately. As always, I appreciate all of you that are still riding this journey with me!
