2016 End of year post, round up, reflections and thank you.

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Image: Design Soda

It seems a modern blogging custom to write a post about this time of year that replaces the old fashioned round robin Christmas card with notes on how well Jane is doing at school and the name of the new dog etc. These posts tend to be a bit year in review and often have a bit of personal reflection. I’m not sure I’m going to do exactly that, especially through the haze of mince pie and alcohol consumption but as I write this just before Christmas, looking forwards to three days together as a family before my husband disappears back to work, I did just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s read the blog this year. It’s so nice to see a healthy upturn in readers each month and genuinely makes my task much more worthwhile. It’s been a pretty good year for the Design Soda house, I’ve pretty well loved 2016, horrible events and political chasms in the news aside, Ted, who just turned two, continues to be amazing in new and unexpected ways, and as a result of the blogs growth quite a few exciting opportunities have come my way (asides from the now endless phishing emails) it’s all been a joy, and a challenge to my natural shyness.

Image: Design Soda

I’m so in love with our new home, especially as it continues to evolve into a nearly finished space – are they ever actually finished?! Having moved last November, 2016 has been our first full year here and by April we had painted every room, we have by no means finished, paint makes the biggest cheap impact for change so that was the highest priority, 2017 should see some changes in flooring, wallpaper and looking into some chimney problems (the less fun part!). I’m still a little shocked that we actually own a home in London, I thought I would always be lucky to call myself a flat owner, the property market round here is pretty unrelentingly grim for the young so it feels a bit like we’ve cheated the system to have an actual front door and garden to boot. Gentrification has a lot to answer for so I am not at all smug about this, just grateful to have landed a house out of its flow.

Image: Design Soda

I eased myself back into blogging gently this year, building back up to my old output over 6 months. I’ve found that blogging has changed slightly, there are now more opportunities (and so many more bloggers). Its hard to narrow down to the years highlights, past the design shows (what it’s all about for me) events, previews, blogger mail and even the odd awards show, I’m tempted to say bumping into Liberty London Girl’s beautiful dog Lovely Lettice at a press show was pretty cool, especially since I have followed them both on Instagram for years. But the absolute blogger highlights for me this year have been the Colour Masterclass with Karen Haller & Ashlyn Gibson I blogged about in Spring, my visit to Dorset with Farrow & Ball in Autumn and interviewing lovely Rowenna Mason & Studio Tour in the summer.

Image: Design Soda

I’ve plugged away behind the scenes on SEO, social, picture editing skills and upping my content output for more hours than I thought possible but it’s really given me back a sense of identity. Sometimes I feel like I’m writing 3,000 posts in draft all at once but that means I’m inspired so no complaint here. When you’re in charge of a little one for most of the time, it’s really easy to find your sense of self getting lost, this little space online has solved this for me and kept me inspired for much of the year. Thank you for visiting it so that it’s not just my mum or friends reading.

On the blog front, the five most read articles this year have been:

The old favourites that made the biggest comeback this year were my d.i.y on Whitewashed Scandinavian floorboards and Modern Lighting Decisions.

Image: Design Soda

There is so much great content out there created by my fellow contemporaries so I would like to take a moment to thank those of you who continue to come back to my little corner of the Internet regularly, seeing a high proportion of return viewers on my google analytics gives me a big boost, so thank you for your support. Happy New Year everyone, 2017 may look different to how I’d envisaged in the post-Trump-post-Brexit aftermath but on a personal level there’s lots to be grateful for. So as you start to think about clearing away the Christmas decorations, I leave you with a shot (above) for next years post on Christmas in the home (yes, I really am that ahead for festivities!).