Jennifer Mead is a twenty-something mom living in Washington State with her husband and beautiful baby son. She’s also a Natural Nutrition & Green Living Educator and a non-profit founder. Her blog, Blissfully Ever After chronicles her personal life along with really useful DIY posts for anyone looking to spruce up their own home. She’s the newest member of Bob Vila Nation, so we’re excited to learn all about her passion for decorating on a budget!
After starting the blog in 2009 under a different name, Blissfully Ever After now gets between 40,000-50,000 pageviews a month! Jennifer’s been featured everywhere from Woman’s Day Magazine to Remodelaholic to Mom’s Magazine, and she even does all her blog’s design work on her own!
What first inspired you to create Blissfully Ever After?
I actually started blogging back in 2009 under a different blog name “Our Cottage in the Desert.” I worked full-time outside the home then and was going to school and so the blog kind of fell on the “back burner.” In 2011, we found out we were expecting our first baby and my husband and I made the decision that I would become a stay-at-home Mom {SAHM}. At that time, I knew I was passionate about blogging, home design, DIY projects, and sharing budget living ideas, so I decided to restart my blogging days but this time I wanted to use a different name. I thought about what the name for the blog would be for a few weeks and then one day I was daydreaming and thinking about the baby and how different and exciting life would be and how blessed I was to be able to be home with him/her and it dawned on me….the blog should be called Blissfully Ever After. Blissfully Ever After was developed in June 2011 and since then has grown in the industry and has just been such an amazing journey. My philosophy is that you can create a blissful and healthy life for your family living on less and I strive to show families how to do that with simple, yet effective home decorating, DIY projects, recipes, and crafting techniques.
Do you run the blog alone? Where do you find ideas for your posts?
I run the blog primarily by myself, even the design…which wasn’t easy at first but now I am getting the hang of it. I also do have two contributors who occasionally post about fitness and financial tips.
What do you hope your readers take away from your blog?
I really hope that my readers find a welcoming space where they can come to get inspired, learn about health and wellness, and share their comments and ideas as well. My husband and I both love to help people learn about finances, saving, and budget living and so I’ve taken that concept over to the blog and am sharing our journey of living a blissful and healthy life…living on less!
Tell us about your first design project.
I have always loved to decorate, clean, and organize since I was about 5 or 6 years old. Everyone tells me stories about me asking to help them clean and organize and I remember moving things around in my parents house growing up trying to achieve the “perfect look.” When I was in high school I painted my room by myself for the first time, picked out the décor, decorated and made it like my own little “apartment.” It was awesome! When my husband and I got married, we purchased our first house at 20 and did a total DIY overhaul on it in less than 2 years. We are DIYers for life!
How did you hear about Bob Vila Nation and what made you want to join?
I saw links on other bloggers sites and clicked on it and realized this was a great opportunity to share, learn, and grow. I love that bloggers and businesses are able to collaborate like this and I am honored to be here!
What’s your favorite room to decorate and why?
I loved decorating my son’s nursery. I am sure many of you could guess why, but in all honesty I loved decorating this space because it was for someone I love and was eager to create a welcoming environment for. I also really enjoyed our $100 Laundry Room makeover and our current Dining Room turned Home Office transformation that we’re working on.
Do you have any blog success stories?
I receive a lot of emails that are very inspiring and I am just blessed and truly honored to be sharing ideas that help people in many different areas of their lives. I know I get inspired by a lot of other bloggers and so to be able to offer this to my readers is just a phenomenal feeling. I think one of my most raved about posts was my DIY Photos on Canvas. It is a beautiful way to display photos without the hefty price tag and my readers really appreciated now only the idea but the full tutorial as well.
What’s your favorite book/magazine on design? What about your favorite design site?
I love browsing simple magazines like Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and Ballard Designs for inspiration and DIY knockoff ideas! Some of my favorite design sites to visit are Better Homes & Gardens, The Lettered Cottage, Design on 6th Street, The Handmade Home, The Shabby Nest, and Miss Mustard Seed Designs. I know there are a lot more, but for the sake of space I will keep it to these!
What inspires you?
I’d have to say that my husband and my son inspire me every day to be the best wife and mother. Honestly, I wouldn’t be blogging if it wasn’t for them. Also, there are a lot of bloggers who inspire me. I remember when I was 19 and a newlywed and in our first little house, we received the Pottery Barn magazine and I would scour through the pages thinking “how could we ever afford to have a house look like this?” After finding blogging in 2009, I feel like a changed woman!! I can now look through the magazine and say “Oh ya, I can do that….for A LOT LESS!” It is amazing what you can learn through blogging about relationships, parenting, cooking, decorating, health and fitness, and creative crafts. I absolutely love it!!!
My family. I try to create a home environment that is beautiful and well thought out, because this is where we cook, play and squabble, together, everyday.
I hope that they are inspired to make things from scratch, to do something creative with their kids, and to grow in their appreciation for design and designers.
This week’s roundup series is dedicated to all those writers out there looking for someone - anyone - to read what they’re writing. Thanks to the internet, anyone can write and publish online, but now these new social publishing sites are helping all those great stories and novels find the audiences they’re looking for.
“The world’s largest online library.”
Scribd lets anyone read, publish, and share their documents and written works. You can upload and have a place to keep and publish your work online, or you can sell your writing and keep 80% of the profits with no other fees. Your profile of work is built up in your Scribd profile - a new place to send prospective employers to show off how much work you’ve already done. You gather followers in the Scribd network, and you can keep track of your Scribd profile stats to see how many people like what you’re creating. And according to TechCrunch, they just got a brand new website, logo, and app.
Examples:
“Our mission is to promote literacy and share our author’s messages with the world.”
Foboko lets you upload and create your own eBooks in a simple three step process. You can also begin writing your book there, gathering feedback from the community of Foboko members along the way. There’s also a section of the site for readers looking for eBooks to read as well, and Foboko matches up the right readers with the right aspiring authors so that both can find what they’re looking for. They have really great graphics and the system itself seems pretty simple. Readers get 5 free eBook downloads a month and authors get a limited number of book uploads as well.
Examples:
“Content, community, commerce.”
Pipeno is a more professionalized publishing tool that was created to help journalists, writers, and bloggers create their own communities and make money at the same time. A Pipeno publisher creates a team of writers and they work together to build up an audience. Their goal is to provide writers in particular niches with a publishing platform that makes it easy to get their work out there and make money without all that reliance on ads. You can create a site for free, but for extra monetization power it’s $14.50 per month. They mostly look like plain ol’ blogs with a forum section added on.
Examples:
Canadian Rockies Tourism Guide
As the second post in our new Roundup series, today we’re taking it a step up, from just simple blogging to online community platforms including us, Tidal! Some serve as a collection of individual blogs and bloggers, some just aggregate people looking to talk, but either way people are gathering online around their interests!
“A social universe of communities united by people and their passions.”
Yuku lets anyone create a site for a community of their own - for free! Community members have their own profiles with social networking features that let you share blog posts and pictures. You can customize the HTML to make your site more beautiful, but the default settings look pretty plain.
The sites seem to function mainly as forums for people to get together and talk/comment on different topics, making the main pages all text and no pictures. You also can’t customize your community’s URL, it needs “.yuku.com” at the end, but after all it is free!
Examples:
O.A.R. Fans Official Fan Community
“Unlock the power of your community.”
Anyone with a desire for a community can create a Ning site on their own with a monthly plan. They have a site design platform that mimics Blogger, yet here you can aggregate the input and comments of others and build a fanbase. You can organize events and have forums, all with social integration. Ning exists between Yuku and Tidal, allowing any user to generate both content and communities in certain interests, or essentially a personalized social network.
The platform seems to work best for bands looking to connect with their fans. They’re able to properly promote themselves and keep people involved in upcoming tours and new album releases. Just this month Ning launched the ability for users to display ads on their sites, along with more customized content capabilities.
Examples:
Tidal (us!)
“Online influencers are the new media.”
At Tidal, we create social publishing sites for publishers and brands who want access to a community of bloggers with a common interest. The bloggers who were already writing about music or home improvement join our different communities and contribute their awesome posts to be seen by a larger, more interested audience.
Where Ning functions as a company site or blog with the social aspect of community comments, Tidal sites are 100% community, with all posts coming from contributors looking for people to read what they’re writing.
Examples:
This Monday we’re getting to know Kelly Thompson, whose blog Stylish Patina is one of the newest additions to the Bob Vila Nation community!
Kelly is a 39-year-old wife and mother to four dogs living in Falls Church, Virginia just outside of DC. After 15 years in corporate America she gave up her job as VP of Operations for Hooked on Phonics to start her own businesses: Stylish Patina and Jump-Start Consulting.
Stylish Patina is where Kelly shares her family adventures along with success stories of repurposing old furniture that eventually became a full-fledged business. Stylish Patina now has a dealer space in Falls Church, monthly sales at the Stylish Patina Barn in Frederick, Maryland, and an Etsy shop.
What do you love about repurposing vintage finds?
I love both the transformation as well as finding modern uses for vintage items. I love to mix vintage + modern together and create a personal yet functional space for clients. One of my favorite things is using vintage bottle crates and such for storage. You can even pop on a few casters and have amazing rolling storage with character or a lil’ patina as I would say:-)
What is it about a particular piece of furniture that most inspires you to recreate it into something new?
It’s all in the lines:-) They speak to me… If I can see the possibilities in a matter of seconds then I know it must be mine! I don’t choose one style of furniture or home decor element to look for either. I am really all over the place. I enjoy being open minded and not closing off possibilities.
How did you come up with the name “Stylish Patina”?
The name Stylish Patina was actually inspired by our 1976 Ford 150 that we named Ira after my husband’s grandfather. I used to always say that Ira has patina so when I was coming up with a name for the business, Stylish Patina seemed fitting since Ira did haul all the furniture! Plus I believe that repurposing and salvaging furniture and home decor elements is not just “green” but it can be stylish and beautiful as well.
What first inspired you to create Stylish Patina? Can you remember and tell us about the moment when you first thought, “I need to be sharing this stuff online”?
I think my “aha” moment was when I did a tag sale at my home with another friend and everything was all gussied up. Just seeing the response made it real. Plus my background is in marketing and business so I’m always looking for new business opportunities. At that time there was not as many people doing this type of thing in my area, but now with Chalk Paint™ decorative paint by Annie Sloan (which I sell online and in my shop) there is a new blogger and vintage dealer everyday.
What do you hope your readers will take away from your blog?
I want my readers to see how easy it is to refresh either furniture they have or inexpensive finds they acquire. I also want them to see that they can mix vintage + modern styles and have it look fabulous. Don’t be afraid to mix and match styles and textures in your home. This is what makes your home personal, please don’t just mimic Ballard Design, Wisteria, or West Elm. Make your home personal to you.
The concept of blogging was such a hit at its beginning that we’ve been trying to improve it ever since. After years of new programs and platforms, we’re able to pin, favorite, or thumbs-up whatever we like, creating little online compilations of our favorite things.
Welcome to the first of Tidal’s new Roundup series, where we survey a group of online platforms that are working to help bloggers and anyone with an Internet connection get their stuff out there.
Twitter slimmed it down to micro-blogging with a 140 character limit and Instagram only posts filtered photos, but the space between single pictures and sentences and full on blog posts is where a lot of new companies are trying to fill the void.
They’re going after a simplified blogging experience, where you can post whatever you want in the shortest, easiest, and most visually pleasing way possible.
“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything.”
It’s been a sensation since it was founded in February 2007, I’m even using it to publish this very post. Now at a total of 64.1 million blogs and 27.2 billion posts, Tumblr is definitely the reigning king of simplified blogging. There’s a different format for each kind of post you can create: text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, and video, making it as easy as possible to post what you want.
You can pick a theme and a background for your blog, with all Tumblrs aggregated in different categories found in the Dashboard’s “Explore” link. You can also explore by tag as an easy way of finding and getting found by fellow Tumblrs and non-Tumblrs alike. The themes keep every Tumblr clean and simple; it’s Blogger and Wordpress without all that hassle and HTML.
Examples:
“Between nothing and a blog.”
Intended to fill the gaps between the already existing social media platforms, CheckThis allows anyone to create a single, beautiful page where you can Tell, Sell, Ask, or Invite. It’s essentially a simplified blogging platform, but without the commitment, as it attempts to be the “instagram of social publishing.” Just create pages for events or topics to share whenever.
They also make it easier for the pages to seen by others, with a “shuffle pages” link in the navbar, plus an “Explore” button that brings you to an aggregation of inspiring pages, even if you don’t have an account. According to TechCrunch, each individual page has an average of 260 pageviews. Smaller companies have been using it to create event pages and small mini-stores similar to Etsy. People have been using it as one-time opinion pages and photo-sharing. A distilled Tumblr that doesn’t require you to keep track of another password.
Examples:
Welcome to Tidal’s very first post in our New Member Monday series where we interview one of our favorite new contributors!
Melina Divani’s blog Decoholic is one of the most recent additions to Bob Vila Nation, a collection of our favorite home bloggers and experts. Her collection of interior design posts gets 180,000 pageviews per month!
She’s 31, from Greece, and has a BA in Finance and Accounting but right now she’s a stay-at-home mom with two little boys.
What first inspired you to create Decoholic?
I created Decoholic because it was a good way to organize pictures and interior design ideas, it was a useful tool of mine (totally fixed to my needs). When I had started I never expected to have even one visitor. So you can imagine how much I was impressed by seeing thousands of people visiting daily my blog. It’s so wonderful sharing what you love!
How did you hear about Bob Vila Nation?
What’s your favorite room to decorate and why?
Last week’s Tidal team lunch! We need bigger and bigger table every time we go out because of all our fabulous new additions.
From the left: Lindsey, Matt, Sven, Lucia Mayas of chutney fame, Lucy, Keenan, Burak, and Chubi.
Those of you familiar with us here at Tidal know that our website doesn’t have the usual “.com” factor. Instead, we sent over a URL registration to Albania to snag our site, Tid.al. Sometimes this makes it difficult to explain our online location, but mostly we just like to think it makes us look more tech-savvy/awesome.
But we probably wouldn’t have bothered with Albania at all had our other possible URLs not already been taken by the other Tidal Labs out there:
We never had a real chance at owning tidallabs.com, because the Indian pharmaceutical company Tidal Laboratories was founded all the way back in 1995. Given that they actually deal in science and medicine, they probably deserve the “laboratories” part more than we do, but at least we’ll probably never get mistaken for one another.
A UK-based IT consulting firm snatched up tidal.com in 1992, so we had even less of a chance with this one.
This Tidal belongs solely to one Mr. William Shier who’s done work with London City Bank, Intel and IBM. Although this Tidal is closer to what we do than pharmaceuticals, the sites most recent update was in 2007 so we should be pretty easy to tell apart.
vs. Tidal Labs (us)
Next Wednesday at Culturefix, Tidal is presenting as part of Flavorpill’s monthly tech meet-up, Startupfix. We’ll be giving a sneak-peek of a couple of our new features, so stop by and check it out!
When: next Wednesday, June 20th from 7:30-9:30pm
Where: CULTUREfix, 9 Clinton St., NYC
It’s $10 for admission but that includes two drinks. You can see more details, plus an attendee list on Eventbrite. See you there!
