THE CAVENDER DIARY

We read a lot of different blogs. Seriously, A LOT of BLOGS.

There isn’t enough time in the day to read every one daily (with work interfering with a good center portion of each day). So there are only a few that we visit with regular frequency.

Young House Love is one of them.

John and Sherry Petersick started blogging about the trials and tribulations of home ownership for family and friends to keep up with. Very similar to us actually. Their “No Fear” attitude to home renovating has inspired us on numerous occasions and their site has become a model for what we hope ours will become. A place not just to highlight our own accomplishments, but to inspire others to change their own homes as well. They had no idea that one day their readership would equal about 5 million, let me type that again 5 MILLION, site views a month. We contribute a handful of those.

Their blog has seriously turned into a full-time job for each of them. Really. They both left corporate jobs to devote every minute of every day to blogging about their decorating, and renovating, and home-related projects….

And then they got a book deal to share some of those experiences decorating, and renovating, and doing home-related projects…..

Talk about Branding your blog,

Last week in a Houston hotel room, I was cruising my usual blogroll…….and I saw that they were going to be in Dallas. My Dallas.

Normally, November is a pretty crappy month for personal agendas. I devote a good chunk of my month installing Holiday decor in my stores, and Jamie is rushing to install clients before the end of  the year. It’s a heavy travel month for us. It always will be and we just accept it.

But this year, by some twist of fate, we were both free Saturday November 17th….and available to stand in line to meet a couple of personal heroes.

They were signing at 11 am, I was thinking of arriving at 10, Jamie said 9, so we got there at 8:30…….(10th and 11th in line)

West Elm had racks of book for those, like ourselves, who didn’t bring their own books to be personalized.

There were even themed snacks…..

A house with a heart, get it?

Glad that we got there early, because the line was through the store, out the door, and wound around the parking lot….

“Sheesh”

When we finally did get our chance to meet them…..all I could think of was, “Don’t be creepy, Don’t be creepy, Don’t be creepy.”

I wanted to open the dialogue with how we had bonded with all the great people in line with us, but I think I muttered something about how we had to wait hours outside to see them.

Sherry wanted to get a photo of all of us with HER camera, “Just the boys” she said……..and I said something like, “OOH no, that’s OK, you don’t have to do that” Our picture on HER camera??? Did I really just turn that down?

One of the store employees took a quick pic with Jamie’s iPhone, and all I wanted to do was remove John’s water from the shot. Nothing creepier than some stranger manhandling your water bottle.

We walked away and left our signed book on the table.

Yepp, they had a good 45 seconds of “Kinda Creepy”. Not the “Full-on Creepy” that I’m truly capable of in these situations

Lucky, Lucky, luck, luck….

They are just the sweetest, nicest people. And I’m glad that we got to say “Howdy” while they were in Dallas…..and NOT creep them out by reciting details about their lives.

I wanted to ask them to write something like, “Keep on Rockin’ that Cavender Diary”. Dorky, yeah. But I was a little tongue-tied.

But instead, we got…..

We’ll settle for that…..

UPDATE:

Jessica, one of the great people we had the pleasure to wait in line with, sent us a handful of pictures she took that day. She’s the cute blond in the center of our odd-ball group of “early-arrivers”.

She has a blog about her life and home in McKinney Texas, The Carter’s cup-a-tea, that is as charming as she is. Check it out.

I think y’all will really like her yearly “park bench” anniversary photos…

We sure did,

Charming…just charming,