Hi all! Whether you know me personally, on social media, or not at all, it’s great to have you here!
I’m here to share some exciting news: my husband, Dustin, and I have decided to uproot our Minneapolis city life and move out to the country! Okay…technically we’re moving to the burbs, but…I’m a city girl (I’ve lived in Minneapolis for two years, and before that it was New York City for two years).
Plus, we’re moving to a farm house on an acre of land, which feels quite country even if I’m 7 minutes from the grocery store according to Google Maps.
Which leads me to this site, my new blog! When we renovated and decorated our city house, we did everything so quickly (and…stressfully) that I didn’t do much to document the process. I didn’t take before and after photos, I didn’t blog about it, I didn’t even really share our completed home on social media.
But the few times when I did share our home, or when people came over, they loved it! Now, my confidence has grown and now I’ve decided to share the process of renovating our country home with the world via this blog: The Cozy Clarks.
We’ve decided that the process of updating our new home will be slower and more intentional than our first house, which makes it the perfect candidate for sharing online.
Here, I hope to share all that we learn while redoing our new house, along with some of the lessons we learned from our city house, too. I hope that the process of renovating and decorating our home provides you with inspiration and encouragement.
Want to learn more about our move? I put together a few potential FAQs for you here:
Why are you moving?
We started talking about moving to the suburbs shortly after completing our city house. We absolutely love our city house, but it’s not in a great school district, so we knew it wasn’t a long-term home for us if we decided to have kiddos. We planned to move in the next 5 years, but we found this house driving by and fell in love! So, we decided to be unreasonable and move earlier than planned.
What will happen to your city house?
We are renting out the city house with plans to have it for 20+ years, but we will see how renting goes! We dream of having that place as a retirement home. It is my belief that renting will give us the best opportunity to build wealth over the long term, but only time will tell I guess.
What did you do to your city house?
We did lots of renovating and decorating when we moved into our city house two years ago. I plan to share lots about that house, both in contrast to the new country house, sharing what we learned from our first renovation, and more.
What about travel?
I’ve previously had a travel blog, so it makes sense that you’d wonder about traveling. Of course, we still plan to travel!
Our travels have always been such a source of creative inspiration for us, and we love to infuse our home with memories of our travels, as well. I realized last year that travel blogging isn’t for me, but I will still share our journeys on Instagram. Plus, I plan to share inspiration from our travels here and incorporate it into our home, as well.
What are your plans for the country house?
Great question! I will be sharing a full mood board for our new home tomorrow, but I love Scandinavian modern design, so I want to combine that aesthetic with nods to farmhouse style since our house was built in 1932.
We also want our house to have a sense of place and incorporate local MN sourced items and bring in some of the things we love about Minnesota. And, we aren’t afraid of color!
Does that help? No? Sorry, I’m new to this, bear with me! Check out our mood board tomorrow.
Why are you starting a blog this time around?
As I mentioned above, I always get great responses when I show people the design of our city house. When we started that project, I hired a designer, but I had such strong opinions that I realized that was a bit of a waste of money. I love to watch design shows and read design books in my downtime, and I notice good design and layouts whenever we travel.
Ultimately, I realized that aesthetics are important to me, and, being that I’m a writer, I’m always looking for a good writing outlet.
So, this blog is the culmination of all of those factors combined with the fact that we plan to renovate and redecorate this home more slowly than the last one, giving me the time and space to document everything.
We’re also hoping to do a lot of things ourselves this time around, so…we’ll see how that goes!
Do you have any more questions about our big move to the country? Please drop them on this Instagram post and I’ll be sure to answer them for you.
