The next step.

So hi. Can you believe it’s been almost six years in the A Life From Scratch world? I can always easily remember the age of the blog as it’s parallel to my little one, Beckett. For those of you who do not know, I first started this space when I was pregnant with him. I was still working in commercial real estate at the time and started messing around with the blogging world as a fun little hobby and a spot to share recipes with my family and friends.

Once Beckett was born I stayed home full time and was able to devote a little more time to this space. Well, as much time as a five year old and a newborn allows. It’s funny, if you go way back to the (OMG rough) beginning you can see how the blog grows more and more as my littles grow up. 

And here we are. Two independent grown boys in full day school. And mama is finally getting her groove back. What does that look like these days? Well, Orange Theory of course. Killing it. But really a whole lot of cooking, writing, organizing, and so on and so forth. Basically, ALFS all day every day. I love sharing the projects and recipes and fun stuff throughout Instagram and I really hope you are enjoying it as well.

The space has grown, for sure. And it’s true, the more you grow the more you grow. That’s just the nature of the social media beast. And yet, I’m going to be completely honestly here, I really don’t exactly know all that I am doing.

I mean, I get the basics.

And I’ve grown myself to over 3,400 Facebook followers and approaching 1,200 on Instagram. That isn’t too shabby. The most amazing part of these numbers is that they are organic true live real people that want to follow and interact. Blows my mind. Thank you, so much. 

And yet lately, I’ve felt ready. Ready for something more. Not necessarily a massive amount of followers or anything like that. (The thought of that sort of gives me hives). I want to grow simply because I love what I do and I love to share it. That’s it.

About a month back, Mike and I were chatting on the couch after the boys went to bed. To be fair, he’s great, but he doesn’t really pay all that much attention to what it is I do here, aside from eating all the food of course and enjoying the (generally) well run home. He doesn’t have any social media so it’s hard for him to really get that weird world. And yet every so once in awhile he surprises me with a comment (wait, you read my blog?!) or a thought ‘so, what would it take to get you to like, 10,000 followers? Can you do that?’

Well no. See, I personally can’t. It’s like any business. You have to invest in order to yield an outcome. You don’t just magically get big. Big blogs with perfect photographs and massive amounts of following and brand partnerships paid a lot of money to look and grow that way.

Mike is all ‘Huh. Ok then. Let’s invest.’

Excuse me? 

‘Find someone who can take you to the next level. Let me know what you need.’

Huh.

I think most normal people’s reactions at this point would be, well, excitement. Right? Maybe? And excitement was definitely there for me. Buried under the sheer panic.

What on earth makes me think I’m good enough to actually get nitty gritty serious about this and (gulp) be invested in. It just doesn’t add up in my head. I’m not doing anything cool. I’m doing laundry. And driving around kids. And making my family dinner. Just like millions of other moms out there.

But maybe that’s my jam. Maybe because I am….wait for it…..so well, normal (I use that in the most not normal sense of course) that is sort of my thing. 

Look, I don’t have a fancy photographer that I can afford. 99.9% of the photos on my Instagram feed and my blog are from my iphone and if there is a rare one of me it’s because I had to bribe my older son ten dollars to take one decent shot just so that occasionally my face is stuck with the brand so you all know wh0 is running the circus. 

I’m not posed in a crazy expensive outfit in front of some beautiful colored wall in the big city. I kind of really like Old Navy. In the suburbs. We all know how I feel about the city. 

My food is, I hope, relatable. Down to earth filled with recipes you can actually see yourself maybe attempting to make during a busy week night and your family maybe might actually enjoy eating. (Taco Tuesday pasta, anyone?) I so hope that is the case. I promise you that is my intent.

And yes while my home can seem, as one friend described, annoyingly ‘perfect’ I do hope I offer ideas and solutions to help with the day to day grind of keeping up with a home. I’ve also tried to be more focused on showing when my home isn’t perfect, which I promise you does happen. 

So I’ve got my thing, I suppose. I hope at the core of everything I put out on here and through all my social media outlets that you can, in some tiny way, find me relatable. I promise I’m trying to showcase things as real as it can be. Half the time I’m storying my recipes on Instagram I legit haven’t washed my face. Sometimes I totally show off my kids, other times I show how they fail. I love and highlight $150 face serums because OH MY GOSH IT’S MAGIC but I also legit spend little to nothing on make up so I figured it all balances out. I’m really good at rationalizing shopping just an FYI. That alone is enough for us to hang. Just saying.

Yet now I have to run all this – my brand – myself by a social media guru who may judge every photo every word every attempt at my growth? I die. Don’t look at me.

And yet he did. And he could not have made me feel more confident in the space I have built for myself. After weeks of prep work and chatting we are finally ready to dive into phase one of getting ALFS just a little bit freshened up and ready for the next step. To start, we hope to make the blog and all social media channels much more user friendly for you. I can’t wait to see how it turns out! From there the sky is the limit, right? For those of who you have been with me from the beginning (you know who you are) I can not thank you enough. And for those of you will be be new to this space welcome. I so hope we can make it worth your time to stick around.

C

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Courtney

Courtney is a wife to M and a mom of two boys, L (8) and B (3). Most of her blogging is done frantically during nap time in between laundry, cleaning, and the occasional housewives rerun. Or the brief hour or so that she can stay awake after the boys go down for the night. She loves her sleep. Read more...

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