Blog Crawl - My Life is an Open Book

Today I'm up to bat for the Hello Splendor Blog Crawl! I'm so grateful to Beth for organizing this fun digital party...it's designed to help readers find new blogs and allow fellow bloggers get to know each other better. Thanks for including me Beth! The topic is "My Life is an Open Book." The jet-setting heroine of Rambles with Reese is a tough act to follow, but here goes...

The Author:
Kyle (in my favorite city in the world, Paris)

The Setting: 
the Knight residence

The most lived-in rooms of the house...

The Characters:

Me, Clay (my husband), and...

Wendy

Miley

Jazzy

and, our sweet foster dog Lou Lou

The Plot: 

A little over a year ago, we all moved from our cute little first house to our current house (except for Lou Lou, she got here this summer). Over the past year, Clay and I have completed project after project in the quest to make the 1948 ranch house look and feel like it's ours. After MANY trips to Home Depot, we're getting close, but the reality of owning a house is that the to-do list never ends. Happily, the house is now more reflective of our style and it certainly feels like a home!

While Clay and I were being weekend warriors...Wendy, Miley, and Lou Lou were swimming

and Jazzy was hunting for lizards, sunbathing, and snacking.

After we bought the house, I immediately got to work on the task of furnishing the place and found my way to Blogland. There was so much inspiration and I tinkered with the idea of starting my own blog to document my impending nesting process for friends and family. I loved the visual organization aspect of it - especially the prospect of displaying my overflowing coffers of interior images as well as having the ability to list and link all of my potential decor purchases. So, Knight Moves was born!

Since then I've accumulated these things called "followers" and have learned about "comments" and all about traffic stats and analytics. Seriously, I was not blog savvy AT ALL and didn't know about followers and comments until embarrassingly late in the game! In any case, it's been such a fun project and quite an amazing community to become a part of. There are so many encouraging, supportive bloggers out there and I'm so thankful to all who have helped Knight Moves along the way :)

The Twist: 

Blogging has really helped me hone in on my passion for interior design and it has jump-started the process of making my passion into a profession. After being a citizen of the blogosphere for only a short time, I'm completely amazed at the fantastic opportunities that have come my way. I've been connected with really impressive people and have been invited to contribute to some super exciting projects. There are still a lot of moving parts, but a few are underway. One will be announced in October, so stay tuned!

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Melissa's Blog Crawl response on So About What I Said... Again, Kudos to Beth for orchestrating this! Happy blog crawling :)

Rewinding to a Few Missed Highlights

While I was off in Colorado avoiding my digital life, a few exciting things occurred that I wanted to circle back to and share. First, our study was featured on Apartment Therapy! Someone spotted the room on the house tour at La Dolce Vita and I saw two mentions - one here and the other here - both focusing on the magazine display.

The ironic thing is that I consider this to be one of the least finished rooms in the house. In fact, it's a little embarrassing to see pics of its current state on a site as huge as Apartment Therapy. The desk situation is temporary and I still haven't properly dressed the walls. I originally intended to hang another line of magazines above the row that's already up, and I think I still like the idea. I could go on and on about what I'd like to accomplish in there, but alas, I'm in the space ALL of the time, so I forget that it should be higher up on my to-do list. In any case, it was great to see it featured!

Secondly, I did a "10 Things I Can't Live Without" guest post over at LDV. I tried to keep it breezy and not get into the heavy, super meaningful stuff. It was a little hard to come up with list items at first, and then it quickly got out of control when I started rattling off mundane, stranded-on-a-desert-island types of items like toilet paper and all of my fav foods (SO pathetic, I know). Besides paraphrasing the fat girl rant, I narrowed down my exhaustive list by choosing things that photograph well, like these little goons :)

In other Knight Moves news, one of my blog crushes, Jen of Made by Girl, gave my turquoise HomeGoods lamps a shout-out. She had the same lamps (from TJ Maxx) and painted them black...they look amazing, go check them out!

Finally, I was invited to participate in Hello Splendor's first Blog Crawl! I'm pumped to be involved...my post is scheduled for 9/30, but be sure to check out everyone else's posts in the meantime too. It's a fantastic roster of bloggers and I'm honored to be included...thanks Beth :)