Well, I did it. It’s back! I’ve thought about and teased about bringing back The Rose Record (TRR for you long time fans ha) for a few months. I have wanted to give it ago again for quite some time, but I was worried a.) no one would care, b.) no one would show up, or c.) I would fail/humiliate myself. So just by you reading this you’re already solving one of my concerns; thank you! Can’t say I’ll be able to cover the other two, but hey, why not?

In all seriousness though, it feels good. At the beginning of this year, I shared on Instagram that my word for 2020 is CULTIVATE. I liked that word for its synonyms of “prepare”, “raise”, “tend”, “mature”, “work”, and “ripen”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been raising and tending to things for a while – those things being my marriage and my kids. But this year I was feeling the itch to expand the focus a bit and work on cultivating ME. (I still sort of shutter at the selfishness I feel just typing that, but I’m working on that.) This year I wanted to apply myself to “improving or developing”. I’ve definitely improved and developed some skills by re-launching TRR, and I feel more creative and energized than I have in a long time.

When I shared my word on Instagram, I still hadn’t really thought I’d start a website again. I thought more that it would explain to people why I’m telling them about what ornament storage box I use or the blow dry brush I love. I go down some serious rabbit holes during my free time- online shopping, product reviews, beauty demos, life-hacks, book recommendations, and more. It feels good to share these random finds from daily life, albeit that’s just what most of them are – random.

Something happened though when I put these intentions out into the world. By vocalizing and sharing what I had been thinking and feeling for awhile, I realized how badly I wanted (more like needed) to continue. So I thought, what the heck I’ll just re-launch The Rose Record and see where it takes me. But somewhere in the building of this new site, I realized this wasn’t just a spur of the moment endeavor that I would tire of in a few weeks. During every nap time, every evening, every tiny bit of free time I found myself hurrying through my to-do list so I could get on and work on the site. I stayed up late (a big deal because I’m usually snoozing by 9pm), woke up early, gave up exercise and errands because I just wanted to work at making this new space of mine on the internet. It’s not perfect and it’s not as pretty as a professional could make it, but YOU GUYS I MADE THIS FREAKING WEBSITE. I used my brain for something beyond nap schedules and making meals and cleaning up the meals and wondering how long laundry can sit in the dryer before you have to rewash it. Not that any of those things aren’t important. My number one priority is still tending to my people, but man it feels good to do something extra for myself.

The other funny part about all of this is that anytime over the past few years when I would briefly think about starting again, I would quickly tell myself that I had nothing to write about. But since tooling around on here and thinking I should take the leap and just TRY, I can’t stop coming up with content ideas. My mind races throughout the day with things I could share, parts of life I want to document, items for gift guides, or collages I should make. I feel inspired. I feel busy (in a good way). I feel motivated. I feel smart. So if taking this leap means I get to feel all of those things and only have five page views and zero clicks on my links so be it, (but also you should click the links and tell a friend ). This is going to be fun!

***I feel inspired.***
***I feel busy (in a good way). I feel motivated. I feel smart. So if taking this leap means I get to feel all of those things, then why not?!***

A few house keeping things to help you navigate the new site. The links across the top will take you to blog posts for those categories. Right now they’re empty since I decided to start from scratch on The Rose Record 2.0 rather than build on to my old site (new site is built on squarespace, old site is blogspot). But do not fear - the OG TRR is still around, you can find it here. I’m looking into getting all the old content transferred over, but it has to be done manually and there’s only one of me. I plan to rephotograph some of the old tried and true recipes and add them here, as well as merge the old gift guides over since so many of those still work as wonderful gift options. All in due time; baby steps. You can search and sign up for email updates from the side bar to the right. And make sure to check out how this all came to be on my About Me page.

And finally, a huge shout out to many of original TRR readers who encouraged me to start again. Your support and reinforcement made me believe I could do this in this day in age. And thanks to Al for cheering me on always. Take a look around! Let me know what you’d like to see. I’ll be back soon with some more content!

XO,

Katie

P.S. If you’re new here, I’m long winded. Sorry! I guess that’s the beauty of a website vs Instagram caption. I promise I won’t write a novel for every post.

Photos by my talented friend Caroline Guinn Photography