Holiday MashUp: where I lure you in with an abundance of sparkly Christmas stuff, but then discuss the prevalence of luxury-home blogs.

Hey there!  If you’re here for the sparkly stuff?  Welcome!
This blog is TOTALLY ALL ABOUT SPARKLY STUFF.

If you’re here for my mind-bogglingly amazing writing skills?  Also, welcome.
I don’t break them out as often as the disco balls, but when I do, it’s fantastic.

When we moved here, all of a sudden I was tasked with juggling the design of renovating an entire house.

Which, objectively?  Does not seem that hard…  It already had walls and floors and rooms.  So what is there to really design?

Obviously, this is stupid and speaks to my absolute dearth of knowledge about anything house-related.

After our move, and my self-appointment as captain of incessant decision-making… It didn’t take long for me to morph into someone who spent ALL their free time looking at house-stuff on the internet.  Which? In case you didn’t know?  There is a lot of it.

Somewhere in that immersion, I discovered blogs.

A good blog is like finding the exact friend you need right at that moment… Someone who WANTS to hear all about grout width.

If blogs provided free drinks, no one would ever leave.

And eventually, I had the same thought nine-million other people have had:

I should write a blog!

You have this realization in a gauzy, epiphany-like state.  Where you marvel at how OBVIOUS it is.  But fail to comprehend just how equally obvious it was to the other nine-million people who have already beaten you to the punch.

Despite the fact that my favorite blogs were like reading something that could have come out of my own head?  I immediately abandoned the idea of writing about anything real.

I wanted one of those luxe lifestyle blogs.

I wanted a header that depicted my lavishly-decorated Christmas mantel.

I wanted to showcase my nineteen live Christmas trees… strung with antique mercury glass ornaments… and talk about making bows from ribbon, woven from silk thread, dating from the Ming dynasty.

I wanted to bemoan the difficulty of choosing a Molteni range over a La Cornue.

Despite the fact that I do not think chevron is important, or believe that anything equestrian-related belongs in your home.

Despite the fact that I cannot imagine the posturing involved in reupholstering your sofa with antique linen recovered from the basement of an Irish convent.

Despite the fact that I do not wear Tory Burch, or kitten heels, or Capri pants, or wax my eyebrows, or drive a Mercedes, or vacation in Palm Beach?

Despite all of that…

That’s exactly what I planned for my blog—to join the ranks of the perfectly-coiffed.

Something about that lush, hyper-decorated corner of the internet sets off my competition-alarm like nothing else.

I will be Slim Paley meets Velvet and Linen.  I will do it all with ease and panache.  I do not need your hairstylist or your private plane or your English country house.

I can collect more inspiration pictures, feature more marble countertops, show you more overstuffed, overpriced, overdone interiors.  Show you more dried flowers, antique light fixtures, rustic carriage houses, reclaimed coffee tables …

I will do ALL of that.
TONIGHT.

I will take over the internet in no time at all.

I will be Diana Vreeland meets Architectural Digest meets Dorothy Parker.

I will stop dressing like a homeless person.  I will throw away my old sweatpants and ratty t-shirts and wear Kate Spade at all times, even at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.

Except—oh my God.  Do you have any idea how many other people have already thought of that?  Why are there SO MANY other blogs?  Don’t you people have anything better to do?

No matter.  Some perverse personality trait of mine is where I get an idea. And don’t bother to stop and think whether it’s good/reasonable/feasible.

I take to my projects with single-minded craziness.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  If you need something done with precision and perfection and tiny useless details.  And you don’t mind waiting twelve times longer than I said it would take me?  And maybe in the end I bail on you because it’s just too much for me?  I am your person.

For about three months, I toiled under the delusion that soon, everyone on the internet was going to find me.  Quickly.  And that I’d better be prepared for the incoming hordes.

Because that’s how it works—all you need is an idea, and a blog.  And then Home Depot comes to your house and gives you a giant banner advertisement and a crown… and boots Young House Love off their advertising pedestal and replaces them with you—an older, not-nearly-as-cute couple.  Who is way more irritable and on the verge of project-induced divorce.

This was pretty exciting to me…  I have been waiting to be famous since I was three.

I mean, I’ve totally neglected to learn to sing.  Or act.  Or build microchips.  Or marry the Prime Minister of France.  Or get giant breast implants.  Or write a book.  Or commit any nefarious crimes.  Or develop an Elvis-impersonation act.

Which has kind of worried me in the last few years…  Crossing the threshold to thirty, without having a hit single or sleeping with Channing Tatum was eye-opening.  How had I failed to do the really important things in life?

But I guess it wasn’t really THAT eye-opening since I made it another five years before realizing that I was officially no longer on the list where somehow you just randomly get famous.  I think the cutoff is thirty-two.

So I was incredibly relieved that FINALLY, the heavens had revealed my true destiny.  Because, you know, SO MANY bloggers have gained fame and accolade.  And Pulitzers and ticker-tape parades.  And gold bars and a knighthood.  And also a mansion where I do not have to vacuum my own rugs.

Thank you, God.  I hate vacuuming so much.

So I got busy.  Really busy.  With my blog…  my new project.  My new dedication.

I texted Slim Paley: you’d better just pack it in, lady… there’s a newer, slimmer, paler blogger in town.

I sat in front of my computer and rubbed my hands together and got started.

And?  It turns out that I can’t even muster the mental-energy to tell you where I got my bathroom sink faucets.  Let alone feature someone else’s vintage luggage collection.

Or care about a million-dollar kitchen that’s already been featured ten-thousand other places because the entire thing, including the trash can, is made out of pure marble.

However?  I could write you a ten-page essay on the ways that a house remodel becomes an extreme, marriage Petri dish.

I could also write you a ten-page essay on how much I love my cat… which you can look forward to, at some point in the future.

In fact, I could write endlessly about any of the following:

• The boy I almost married.

• The time my best friend and I had an eye-clawing fight over a man with a ponytail.

• How recently, I was scammed out of $200.
Not due to some sophisticated legerdemain, on the scammer’s part.  But due solely to my own eagerness to believe the unbelievable.  Plowing past red-flag after red-flag after red-flag.

And how, in my ongoing efforts to add idiocy on top of idiocy and never think anything through… I gave him extra, to reward the almost unbelievable turn of events.

But you know what?  I cannot tell you HOW MUCH EASIER it would be: to feature some dream kitchen/private stone quarry/parking-garage-for-appliances-that-cost-more-than-a-car.

And? You know what else?  That is what people are looking for: marble kitchens. Also marble bathrooms.  Probably also marble doghouses.

You know what people are not searching for?  Yes.  Correct.  This.  Right here.

The rough draft of this post is now clocking in at 9 pages.  Not double spaced.
Do you have any idea of the energy it takes to:

A-write 9 pages about a topic that is not even remotely search-engine friendly, so that maybe a few people will read it?
B- edit those pages down to no more than five, so that the few people who DO read it, do not abandon you halfway through?
C- apply some element of writing 101 where you have a plot, an arc, a beginning, a conclusion?

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I AM DOING HERE PEOPLE?

This is work.  And?  I hate it.  This is not why I started a blog.  AT ALL.
Where is my fame?  Where is my fortune?  Where are my 100,000 visitors per day?
WHERE ARE YOU???

I’ll tell you where you are—you’re out there googling Christmas craft projects.

see all my holiday decorations & Christmas house tour