Young House Love in Charlotte

6:30:00 PM

Like I mentioned last week, I went to meet John and Sherry Petersik from Young House Love this past Tuesday. They were at UNC Charlotte on their book tour, which just so happens to be my alma mater.

Young House Love Signing

I had to work a full day that day, so I got to the university only 10 minutes before the signing. I stopped by the bookstore and was excited to see that they were right by their stack of books with almost no one around....I was then stopped by a University person, who told me that the book signing had moved upstairs...and I was intimidated and moved on. I should have known...I got up to the meeting room, and it was packed. I know for a fact that 200 people RSVP'd for this event, and I was probably three-quarters of the way back in the room.

Yup, this was my view...

Young House Love Speaking

And then when they started signing books, I could hardly see anything at all. Yup, that little speck is John's head.

Young House Love Far Away

The Charlotte book tour stop was an addition, so I was super excited when I found out they were coming here. And right this second, they are having their very last book tour stop in Atlanta. So if you couldn't make it to any of the stops, here is a recap from my notes:

In case you didn't know, writing a book is waaay different from writing a blog. There was a lot of brainstorming....and they couldn't do any of the projects because the photographer had to capture the before, first. So they wrote the tutorials before they actually did the projects...how crazy is that? Which made for a crazy 3 weeks of over 100 projects and even more styling!! They also couldn't go into as much detail as they do in the blog. I, of course, don't have a book deal (ha, ha!) but in case I ever get one, I'm going to keep all this in mind.

One thing that Sherry said really stood out. She told us how freeing it was to do projects and colors that wouldn't go in their house. If they thought something would be cool, they did it. Which led her to realize that she was really liking red!! Which makes sense as they are doing Clara's room in pink and red. This really encouraged me to try new colors and styles that I wouldn't necessarily think goes in our house! We may really love it...and I can always donate it...or gift it...or craigslist it.

Of course, the fact that Sherry's all about red made me really excited. I knew that Clara likes red so I made a little Fix-it Fox for her.

Fix-It Fox

I really hope that she likes it! Cute story...my oldest daughter, Lil Bit, asked who the fox was for so I showed her a picture of Clara on their blog. Lil Bit was very concerned about Clara. She asked me, "Is she hurting?" I just explained that I knew that Clara is a regular little girl that gets boo-boos so this little fox was to help her out when that happened.

Clara was actually in Charlotte, but was chilling in the hotel...probably a good move since their talk started at 6 and I got out of there at 9 and there were still quite a few people behind me. I have to say that I was very impressed by how gracious and genuinely excited John and Sherry seemed.

Young House Love and ME

They are at the end of a long book tour, and they had seen over a hundred people by the time I talked to them, and they had a lot more to go. I honestly don't know if I could have been as excited as they seemed to be to talk to another random person like myself. So if you have the chance to talk to them...do it!! They rock!

And one final funny story. During the Q and A portion of their talk, the best question was, "Have you ever had any weird fan interactions?" They had some great answers, but the best part of the question was that it was asked by a person facetiming into the talk on a friend's iPhone! How ironic is that question?

Anybody else get to meet up with John and Sherry on their book tour?



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2 comments

  1. That little fix-it fox is so darn cute. I keep seeing it on the link parties I'm hitting this week - I'm glad I clicked thru to see it! BTW, I worked as an architect until the big ol' crash of 2008 and am SO impressed that you can handle little kids, a big blog, and what I know is a very demanding career ANDDD you can actually make a home cooked meal. You go, girl, you're my hero.

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    1. I am so excited! You are the second blogger in 24 hours to comment that you are an architect by education! I am going to check out your blog! I know we'll be talking some more.

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