Category Archives: blogiversary week

blogiversary: we’re three!

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I can’t believe we’ve been writing this ol’ blog for three whole years! We honestly couldn’t do it without you guys reading it everyday. You’ve been with us through so much this past year! We got engaged, we planned a wedding, and we got married! (I promise pictures are coming soon! Don’t hurt me!) And as we announced yesterday we’re moving into a new place with lots of potential (potential = blog posts!) So we want this year to be the best yet, and we want to hear from YOU. We’ve compiled a little survey [just like last year] that we would LOVE for you to fill out [as much as you want, no pressure!]
We want to know what you guys really think, what you love, what you don’t love, what you want to see more of/less of, etc. This is your time to speak up! All questions in the survey are completely optional, but we’d really appreciate it if you were honest and thorough, so that we can improve and make next year even better for you guys! So just copy/paste the questions and answer everything in the comment section below. You can put your name, or leave it anonymous, it’s completely up to you!

So without further ado, please tell us..

Name:

Age:

Gender:

City, State:

What do you do for a living:

Do you have a blog? Share it with us:

How did you find us? [someone's blogroll, google, you know us, etc.]:

How long have you been reading the blog?

How do you get to our blog? [the website, twitter, facebook, RSS reader, bloglovin', etc.]:

What are your favorite posts to read? [DIY, reader questions, how to's, gift guides, wedding wednesday, what i wore, personal stuff about us, recipes, etc.]:

What are your least favorite posts to read?

Do you like giveaways?

How could we improve in the next year? [what do you want to see more of/less of]:

Is there anything else you want us to know? This is your chance to speak up!

Thanks for participating! And just remember that all of this is completely optional, so just cut/paste your answers into the comment form below. Or if you’re really shy you can also email your answers to us. Thanks!

we love.. to COUNT mwa ha ha

1 Comment

Because it’s our Blogiversary Week we wanted to take the time to share with you some of the silly ins and outs of our blog. So we’ve compiled a list of numbers and random factoids to share with our lovely readers, who pretty much generated said numbers.

472: the number of posts we’ve written to date

6,285: the number of comments we’ve received

1,530: the number of comments that weren’t spam

74: the number of comments from crystal-FRESH

7,380: the average number of visitors we have a month

20: the number of readers who still use dial-up internet.. [crazy right?]

61: the number of readers who reside in the UK

389: the number of readers with iPhones [das right]

70: the number of countries that are home to our readers

89: the number of facebook fans [it's still 287 with derek+catharine, c'mon people! LIKE your modern couple!]

3: the number of already written posts waiting in the hopper [just in case]

6: the most posts we’ve published in a week

4: the average number of hours we spend on each post

pizza or chips & salsa: our staple meal for blogging

storage wars: what’s usually on in the background while we blog [because Happy Endings requires our full attention]

“planting claymores”: constantly yelled as Derek plays Call of Duty while Catharine brainstorms and organizes blog topics

10:00pm: the usual time when we realized we don’t have any posts scheduled for the next day

2:00am: the usual time we finish writing said post on the fly.. see how much we love you?

342: the number of days until we’ll be married!

We also wanted to include some of the hilarious things people search, which lead them to our blog:

sugar smacks - I’m sure they were searching for the delicious cereal of our childhood but instead came across this amazing dessert.
anthropologie window displays - this is one of our most common searches, and why wouldn’t it be? They are pretty amazing.
naked neighbors – Someone better have been looking for this type of solution, otherwise they’re super creepy.
chevron fabric - of course this is a popular search term. ~~We’re~~ I’m obsessed!
sharpie pens - not really sure what they found when they searched this. Maybe this?
ceramic taxidermy - this sounds weird, but honestly it’s totally normal. If you you don’t have at least one ceramic animal head on your wall you’re missing out.
live colorfully - this was one of our favorite series this year. Thanks Kate Spade for teaching This isn’t that kind of blog, sir.
big bang theory hipsters - I have no idea what they could have possibly found on our blog, but hopefully they found this gem.
whim guy - this must have been a fellow Friends lover. And they probably found this post.

This numbers have drastically increase from last year’s number rundown, which just makes us all kinds of giddy inside. Oh! And if you haven’t already, please fill out this quick survey we’ve put together to find out what you guys want more of/less of and who you are!

we’re two!!

4 Comments

I can’t believe we’ve been writing this ol’ blog for two whole years! We honestly couldn’t do it without you guys reading it everyday, and with that being said we want to make it even better this next year! So we want to hear from YOU. We’ve compiled a little survey [just like last year] that we would LOVE for you to fill out [as much as you want, no pressure!]

We want to know what you guys really think, what you love, what you don’t love, what you want to see more of/less of, etc. This is your time to speak up! All questions in the survey are completely optional, but we’d really appreciate it if you were honest and thorough, so that we can improve and make next year even better for you guys! So just copy/paste the questions and answer everything in the comment section below. You can put your name, or leave it anonymous, it’s completely up to you!

So without further ado, please tell us..

Name:

Age:

Gender:

City, State:

What do you do for a living:

Do you have a blog? Share it with us:

How did you find us? [someone's blogroll, google, you know us, etc.]:

How long have you been reading the blog?

How do you get to our blog? [the website, twitter, facebook, RSS reader, bloglovin', etc.]:

What are your favorite posts to read? [DIY, friday finds, reader questions, how to's, playing tourist, wedding wednesday, what i wore/awkward & awesome, personal stuff about us, etc.]:

What are your least favorite posts to read?

Do you like giveaways?

How could we improve in the next year? [what do you want to see more of/less of]:

Is there a topic you want us to talk more about/less about?

Is there anything else you want us to know? This is your chance to speak up!

Thanks for participating! And just remember that all of this is completely optional, so just cut/paste your answers into the comment form below. Thanks!

we love numbers!

0 comments

Because it’s our Blogiversary Week [and Friday], we wanted to take the time to share with you some of the silly ins and outs of our blog. The derek+catharine: lowdown if you will :) So we’ve compiled a list of numbers and random factoids to share with our lovely readers, who pretty much generated said numbers.

224: the number of posts we’ve written to date

2,113: the number of comments we’ve received

474: the number of comments that weren’t spam

48: the number of comments from crystal-FRESH

2,298: the average number of visitors we have a month

20: the number of readers who still use dial-up internet.. [crazy right?]

24: the number of readers who speak Italian

207: the number of readers with iPhones

68: the number of countries that are home to our readers

273: the number of facebook fans

9: the number of already written posts waiting in the hopper [just in case]

6: the most posts we’ve published in a week

4: the average number of hours we spend on each post

mac & beer: our staple meal for blogging

myth busters: what’s usually on in the background while we blog [because Nate Berkus requires our full attention]

gunshots: constantly fired as Derek plays Metal Gear Solid while Catharine brainstorms and organizes blog topics

11:30pm: the usual time when we realized we don’t have any posts scheduled for the next day

3:00am: the usual time we finish writing said post on the fly

shift+L: the one letter Derek can’t type while blogging or Safari will crash.. we know, crazy!

$150: the value of our next giveaway prize

Topo Chico: our mineral water of choice

We also wanted to include some of the hilarious things people search, which lead them to our blog:

chihuahua cherubs [not sure what this person was after, but probably found this]
fabulous cookies [well these definitely were!]
lauren diliberto [who wouldn't google her?]
best bagels in dallas [this must be why Chris is our most popular 1o thing-ster]
doormats for hipsters [I hope these lived up to their standards]
I want to hang moss balls over my bed [no idea what they came across, probably these holiday wreaths]
jessica bristow architecture [that's not creepy at all! but she is worth googling]
kitchen rug milk [what is kitchen rug milk?]
plastic bags for granola [they most likely came across one of our most popular posts]
shara kenworthey, time of birth [sorry kids.. we don't know that one]
what did derek get me for xmas? [how would google know that??]

We’re hoping to keep these numbers going in year two of our blog, so if you haven’t already, please fill out this quick survey we’ve put together to find out what you guys want more of/less of and who you are!

Psst! Don’t forget to enter this week’s giveaway! It ends Sunday, January 9th at 8pm CST.

dc

a trip down memory lane

0 comments

We stumbled on some old “footage” of our blog of yesteryear and wanted to share with you this time capsule of when derek+catharine: blog started just a year ago..

For those of you who have been reading all along, you may remember our primitive iWeb layout. We don’t have screen shots of the full layout anymore [I mean, that baby is loooong gone] but maybe these ditties will jog your memory.

Our lovely splash page:

Our header:

Our totally awesome venn diagram:

Awe.. back when we were a year younger and lived in different cities, and still had the iPhone 3G [blasphemy!]

Here is our very first post. It’s nothing special, then again the first post is always a little weird. And here is our very first comment [yes it's from Catharine's mom, but it still counts!]

After about 20 or 30 posts we quickly realized that iWeb had a limit, and we’d always be fighting for more space. So rather than compressing all of our images a thousand times, we made the switch to WordPress.org and never looked back! Here was our first WordPress layout, much cleaner but still a few bugs to work out:

We loved having the sidebar, but it wouldn’t let us have a custom header, and the sidebar was kind of limiting so we switched to our lovely layout we have today:

Sidebars with tabs, drop down menus, a customizable header? We’re in heaven! We were really able to add a lot of features that our previous layouts couldn’t handle. There are still a few quirks we need to work out, but we love how clean everything looks. But don’t get too comfortable, in the next week we’re doing a complete overhaul so you can go back to waiting on the edge of your seat :)

Once we switched to WordPress and started writing every weekday, we really hit our stride. We even got our first comment from a stranger!

Then we started getting emails from readers [even one from Russia!] asking for design solutions, or where we found certain products, and even companies offering sponsership and giveaways! During the fall we started getting spammed like crazy [we're talking 200+ every couple of hours] so we had to take drastic measures and install some security measures. Although the spammers were annoying, we couldn’t help but laugh at some of their weird computer generated [yet all too realistic] comments.

The insightful quips:

The poorly translated English:

The random ramblings about strangers:

What a guy that Griff is.. Anyways, we’d like to think that we’ve come a long way since our iWeb days a year ago and it really truly is all thanks to you guys. We love you and we promise to continue to to mold our blog around what you guys want to read :) So if you haven’t already, please fill out this quick survey we’ve put together to find out what you guys want more of/less of and who you are!

Psst! Don’t forget to enter this week’s giveaway! It ends Sunday, January 9th at 8pm CST.