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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for Home Living Handbook, HGTV.com, and a handful of other websites. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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Lapse in Archive

May 28, 2019

I regret not keeping up on this “home journal” as thoroughly as I would have liked to the last few years. Our family doubled. Our yard work quadrupled. Work got crazy-fun. And then also, I watched this blogging “industry” change into a radically amplified version of its good ol’ self with multi-channel strategies, niche categories, an endless cycle of expected community promotion opportunities, an inundation of sponsorship requests that are off-topic, and obvs, the living rooms and bedrooms miraculously overhauled every season.

The environment became something I didn’t like, but I wish it hadn’t driven me away. My own blog took a backseat, and to some degree it was for good reason (sanity and bandwidth with a young family) but now, when I look back on the site, there’s lots of good stuff missing. So much of the neat work that I did for HGTV and DIY I’d still love to link to from here. I’ve done lots of mini home improvements that have changed our home in functional and notable ways, too. My old home and lifestyle was very well-documented, but I wish I had somehow found the time to share more details of my amended life along the way, too, just for myself.

Child marking "X" on flagstone tiles to prevent stepping on wet mortar.
The kids like to get involved with our projects. Here, 4-year-old Hattie helped mark flagstones that we had to avoid stepping on while mortar cured.

I’ve always been some kind of journalist. Not in the sense of published lit, but I’ve always collected and assembled visual journals in some form. Lots of photos. Captions and notations. It was during and after college I found it easy to write in a free-flowing manner, especially when stifled by core curriculum and working at a job where I wasn’t happy. Creative writing became an outlet that was great for a long time.

I still print and collect photos; they’re individually labeled and organized quite simply by season in basic photo boxes (I print about 1,000/year). I have photo albums from my middle- and high-school years that documented snapshots of every single day, chronologically, even when they were just minute details. It feels natural to get back towards some iteration of that with more frequent posts, loose project overviews, general notes that make it easier for us to recall what we were doing now, whether it’s next winter, or 5, 10, or 20 years from now.

Two years after making a mass amount of Strawberry freezer jam, we're due for another batch.
Two years after making an accidentally massive amount of strawberry freezer jam, we’re due for another batch next month.

Our kitchen is a huge overhaul that’s scheduled to begin in July, so that gives me a month to catch you up on it and fill in some gaps in the timeline to improve the overall journal. This is a cool little life we’ve carved out for our family, and I don’t want to let myself forget some of the small details anymore.

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See you again soon.

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Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast living a very merry, DIY-filled lifestyle. As a freelance writer, you can find my work on many popular home and garden sites, including HGTV.com, Home Living Handbook, a Pursuit Channel for Men's Journal, and other outlets. Follow me on social, or drop me a note.

2 Comments


Staci
May 28, 2019 at 9:29 pm
Reply

Happy to see a post from you pop up and looking forward to seeing how you redo your mid century kitchen!



    Emily
    May 29, 2019 at 8:17 am

    Hi Staci!!!

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    You can find me writing for Home Living Handbook, HGTV.com, and a handful of other websites.

    Thanks for visiting!

  • Instagram

    Merrypad // Emily Fazio

    merrypad

    I’ll always say yes to a maker space experience, I’ll always say yes to a maker space experience, and The Shed at @timberland’s HQ did not disappoint ✌️🥾 @homelivinghandbook 

Final footwear design not shown 🙂

PS tagging some cute shoes they gifted from the Fall 2024 collection!
    I made the call and snapped off the elephant garli I made the call and snapped off the elephant garlic scapes yesterday evening. Who’s going to help us harvest and eat the next 1,000? 🧄🧄🧄🧄
    Hi! Boy, do I have things to share. 🎉 🫶 Fr Hi! Boy, do I have things to share. 🎉 

🫶 Friendly reminder to focus on balance and wellness: Pete and I lived abroad with our family for the entire month of August 2023. If you ever have the opportunity to work remotely, I promise it to be a worthwhile adventure that’ll change your POV in so many ways. And, If you need an in with an incredible AirBnB in Denmark, DM me. From new playgrounds and museums to the culture and design, making this trip a reality continues to be something we celebrate every day, and I wish everyone can experience it on some level.

💻 Friendly reminder to say yes to new (overwhelming) opportunities: The professional celebration happened upon our return. Last fall, I was approached to launch @homelivinghandbook, a new Pursuit channel for @mensjournal that highlights home improvement and DIY! It has been really fun to see it come to light, and truly one of the most exciting partnerships I’ve ever had. Timing couldn’t have been better, and I’m really happy to see how it grows over time. Please follow along — the team published 150 articles in two months, covering all kinds topics for home enthusiasts! So much more to come. #linkinbio #homelivinghandbook

✌️ the end, many thanks for your support!
    How much garlic is too much garlic? Maybe we’ll How much garlic is too much garlic? Maybe we’ll find out in 2024. Finished planting 1,005 cloves (and 19 shallots) in three new beds at the farm, and crossed one huge chore off my list 📝 #gardennotes #garden2024
    Instagram post 18003690670970980 Instagram post 18003690670970980
    We grew these fools. We grew these fools.
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