Well, That Was a Long Break.

I stopped posting, but I never really stopped.

Life got busy. Really busy. Somewhere along the way, Simply Rural stopped being a priority. Not because I stopped thinking about it — I actually thought about it a lot — but finding the time to sit down, clear my head and actually write always seemed to be the part I couldn’t quite get to.

I’ve renovated. I’ve decorated. I’ve made things. I’ve put together gifts, tackled projects, changed my mind halfway through projects, and started new projects before the last ones were completely finished.

I still love creating. I still love a good before and after. I still love figuring out how to make an idea work — and I still get ridiculously excited when I find something good enough that I immediately want to tell someone else about it.

I feel more like myself than I have in a long time.

So, I think it’s time to start sharing again.

There won’t be a schedule here. Life is full between work, family, kids’ sports and everything else that fills our days, and I don’t want Simply Rural to become one more thing on the calendar. I’ll share when I have something worth sharing — just like I always intended.

Sometimes that will be a home project. Sometimes it’ll be something I’m reading, a creative gift idea, a great find, how I got the best deal on something, or the thing I decided was worth splurging on. And sometimes? Who knows. That’s kind of the point.

I want Simply Rural to be what it has always felt like to me: uncomplicated, approachable and useful. It’s small-town roots and creativity. It’s home and books. It’s making something yourself when you can, knowing when it’s worth spending the money, and sharing the things I’ve learned along the way.

I’m also going to expand Simply Rural over to Substack. Do I fully understand what Substack is or how I’m supposed to use it yet? Absolutely not. I’m an elder millennial — I just got comfortable with blogging and apparently the internet moved on without me. But I’m figuring it out. I see it being a home for some of the more casual things I want to say and share — and I have a feeling books are going to take up a fair bit of space over there.

The funny thing is, just sitting here writing this has reminded me how much I missed it.

I have years’ worth of projects and ideas to catch you up on, new ones already in the works, and absolutely no idea where all of this will go.

And I’m genuinely excited about that.

So, after one very long break, welcome back to Simply Rural.