Once Upon A Time…. back in 2015, I started this little blog and Instagram account for our 100 year-old Atlanta farmhouse renovation (along with the rest of the world it seems), and figured if I shared enough I’d grow and eventually be able to secure so many dreams I’d always wanted… to be a location house for a major film production, to partner with designer brands to bring my wild (but expensive) visions to life, to start a boutique interior design firm focused on Anglophile design, to write and illustrate a children’s book about a Christmas Tree farm, and to make my own furniture line. 10 years later, I’ve shared a lot, but been very inconsistent about all of it, and I’ve sort of done a few of them, but otherwise fizzled and failed. My dad died 7 days after I gave birth to my second child, we moved to Philly, bought an old house with way more problems than we realised, COVID happened, I birthed a third child, and nothing quite went right in the years since. Even the #slowintentionaldesign hashtag I started a few years back, excited to carve out my space in the industry, has been commandeered by big accounts, used by major magazines with no attribution, and twisted into influencer rubbish. So, if you’re looking for a rags to riches success story, this isn’t it. (cue the Pirates of Carribean ghost scene where I replace ghost stories for nightmare…..“You’d best start believing in ghost stories… you’re in one”) What you’ll find here is a very real account of an undiagnosed ADHD madwoman thinking she can achieve everything while comparing to everyone and anyone else who isn’t anything like her. But this is the start of my new journey of trying to re-find myself as a designer and illustrator, and renovate our 1929 Tudor revival house, Genevieve, along the way… with a healthy dose of sarcasm and an unhealthy dose of reality (for anyone hoping for just the pretty after shots).

Let’s roll forward a bit to the present, the year 2025 has just ended (…she types on New Year’s Eve). Typically at the beginning of each year, I try to pick a word that I’ll cling to with false hope for precisely two months before abandoning with no reckoning as usual. But for 2025, I didn’t even do that much. No word was selected, and the year that followed has been nothing short of a disaster - personally, mentally, parent-wise, work-wise, house-wise. Not a single thing went to plan - and while that’s fairly typical for this madwoman - this year proved to be a special breed of shit-show unto its own and I have ended it in much the same way I started it - lost, confused and wondering who the hell I am in all senses. Perhaps I should at least pick a word this year eh?

I won’t go into a great amount of personal detail here, as I try to keep my stories and account across all platforms (if you’re new here) centered on our old home, my strong British personality that doesn’t always fit in the wild west of the USA (should that be wild east? we’re based outside Philly….), and the interior design and DIY that is inspired from both of those things. However, the last year saw us dealing with not one but two enormous sewage floods in our basement (#ick), a third rainwater flood that nearly decimated all of the kitchen cabinets that we were in the middle of custom building in our makeshift basement workshop, an expensive diagnostic process for our middle neuro-divergent child that required waiting extensive periods of time while enduring physical violence (him to me) and panic attacks (me), a marriage that is constantly trying to survive COVID and 3 young children plus all the financial stresses of the old house, and a never-ending rotation of bosses (4 in 14 months) at a corporate start-up job that I loved, but was very emotionally draining. I’m someone who pours their entire heart and soul into everything I do, but it seemed the more I poured this year, the more everything literally shat back on me. Oh yeah, and then there was the whole orange president inauguration, plus every asinine decision he’s made since, that the whole world has endured too… I’m sure that’s just filled everyone with comfort and security this year /s. (again for the newbies, I’m a raging liberal and while I don’t publicly rage much anymore, I’ll state my opinions when needed.)

Before I dive into my epiphanies and the plan for the year, let’s take a look at what we did accomplish, as it feels remiss to not at least acknowledge we got a few things done and there were still a handful of big highlights that I don’t want to not express gratitude for, or ignore… After all, as I have to remind myself constantly in checking my privilege - we GET to do this. We get to have children, we get to own a house, we get to have one another, and I need to appreciate that in the really hard moments where it all feels entirely overwhelming. While I may not have posted half of the below to the socials… it did in fact, get done.

JANUARY

Acquired our 2nd Jotul wood stove in nearly pristine new condition for $800 from Facebook Marketplace (they retail for $5k+ !!) and got it installed in our parlour (living room) after scrubbing the old brick clean for ages before installation - fire at last! Painted 3 more samples on our dining room wall trying to decide on a final colour, and landed on a lovely shade of jewel tone verdant green. Completely re-tiled the corner of the kitchen where we had a wall removed around the former laundry shoot cupboard. On a family front, we took our children skiing for the first time which was a BIG DEAL as it is my and Stu’s favourite hobby and successfully got 2 out of 3 children out on the slopes (our youngest was still a bit young at 3 years old).

FEBRUARY

Finally got a new fridge woo! - a Fischer & Paykal integrated panel-ready two door fridge which took us years to decide on… and we moved a lot of big tools into a makeshift woodshop in the basement to begin construction of our final kitchen cabinets that will fit around said fridge. We have about 7 to make. Revamped a corner of our parlour adding new large cabinets to hide children’s toys and games. It made a big difference! Moved our toddler into a big boy bed, breaking down his crib and installing a lovely trundle tufted navy velvet bed. We had to reconfigure the room, but he loves the new layout as now he can stare out the windows and the trundle has been so handy for nights he needs company.

MARCH

I turned the big 40. Rather than a big expensive trip or party, I opted to get some chairs recovered in a pricey fabric (later in the year), so we just did a mini stay-cation for the weekend in Philly and had a nice spa day at the Four Seasons. We also watched our youngest get really excited about planting seeds which was a successful endeavour this year (except for delphiniums which I have yet to figure out how to get to grow), and our middle child (6 at the time) built this awesome hat rack at his school woodworking shop that we’ve since painted and hung up. The apples don’t fall far from the tree! So proud of him.

APRIL

We added new little scalloped nightstands and a relaxing galaxy machine to the big kids room and purchased Hollyhocks wallpaper from House of Hackney as it was on a mega trade deal (we’ll be installing it later in 2026). Swapped out our vintage sink in the main bathroom for a larger vanity with a flat top and lots of storage (a controversial choice for the internet, but a sanity saver as its the only bathroom all 5 of us use right now). Outside, we bought 20 2-3’ Leyland Cypress trees and 30 1-gallon schip laurel plants to install around our property borders. We removed a lot of trees over the last few years, and now we’re adding back landscaping a little at a time. Also did a little frivolous flower arranging and purchased some new base wool rugs for living room which revolutionised how we used the space making it far more functional.

MAY

Instead of April showers, we had May showers… and a major leak in the wall of the kids’ playroom, prompting us to finally get on with organizing an exterior contractor for the siding, timber planking, and roof projects. This was deferred maintenance that was never touched by the prior owners, and we found out in September just how necessary it was to do. Picked up a lovely old oak desk from my friend Laura @_thewhalehouse (which is destined for our attic renovation) which meant a mutual stopping point in Connecticut, also seeing Britt @mustlovehistory and an impromptu tour of the Connecticut Junior League Design Show House.

JUNE

Landed another mega Facebook Marketplace find with our “new” dining room cabinets - complete with cremone bolts that tie in so well with the historic iron light features already in the room. Pulled off a coup by purchasing the cabinets, selling our old ones and getting the new ones installed in less than 24 hours! Randomly started our Harry Potter cupboard project, being fed up with the mess and tore out the 40 year old musty liner wallpaper. Drew some end of year teacher thank you cards - fun since I hadn’t drawn anything in a while. Our first major sewage flood happened in the basement (the day before vacation of course), and was followed by our annual extended family trip to the beach where we had some professional photos taken. The latter was a good prompt for me upon seeing a body I didn’t recognize and wasn’t happy with to get back into a fitness journey I had abandoned earlier in the year. Meanwhile, our daughter was crushing her running races and Stu (@brooksandstove) did a lot of summer grilling.

JULY

Painted + installed a cheap wall bookcase in our youngest’s room which had been sitting in the garage for a year. In the Harry Potter cleaning cupboard, I stripped and managed to get a cast iron window functioning (the first of the old cast iron windows that I’ve attempted) and got all the plastering / skim coating done so that we could put the cupboard back together. We had our second major flood in the basement (rainwater this time) and just as we finished dealing with that… our washing machine & dryer went caput too. So we had to buy new ones of those. Started really planning our attic renovation more intensely and got an initial SketchUp model done with options for the main bedroom and bathroom up there (still yet to share this).

AUGUST

We took a big break from DIY this month as we went on our first major family vacation ever (without other family) … a last minute 10-Day, 3-Location trip to Costa Rica (extensive post still to come as we visited La Fortuna, Monteverde and Playa Grande). In the week we had left before school started, I picked up another Facebook Marketplace find in two very rare and heavy marble lamps for only $75! and finally got the Harry Potter cupboard painted.

SEPTEMBER

Our major exterior projects finally began after a nearly 3-month wait. The crew started with the wood timbering (removing all the old oak and replacing for cedar which broke my heart), but upon discovering all of the damage and lack of any remaining structure behind the old material, it renewed my faith we had made the right choice. The crew also installed our new ridge vent along the top of the roof and under eaves vents which was the first steps we had to complete on the road to our attic renovation. I finally ordered and received my pricey fabric (17 yards!!) for my 40th birthday chairs.

OCTOBER

Stu got back into running and ran the first inaugural Delco 10 miler. We cleared out the playroom due to all of the damage from the exterior work and started prepping plans for how we’ll redo that room. My chairs were sent off the upholsterer. A new chair arrived directly from Scot Meacham Wood (another Facebook Marketplace find)… which is destined for our guest room. We shifted living room layout around, moving our TV to the other end of the room on top of the new cabinets we purchased earlier in the year - another game changer in how we used the space. The outdoor witches went up as always, with a new fix for their heads to prevent them falling off, as I installed new post-globe mounts. Then I joined a thousand other mums around the world in learning how to braid an insane amount of fake purple hair to create the infamous Rumi hairdo for Halloween. #neveragain

NOVEMBER

The exterior work continued and siding was completed. All former cedar siding was replaced with premium Cedar-look Hardi-plank siding to prevent further infestation of birds, woodpecker holes and swallow mites - again I’ll do another full post about this later. The final part of the exterior work was also “completed” which was replacing attic windows to match all of our other Andersen windows… when we discovered after they were installed that they were ALL WRONG. More on that later, but we’re in the process of getting new windows ordered. My final Facebook Marketplace score of the year arrived in some gorgeous Christopher Farr Cloth Carnival fabric destined for a headboard in the attic. I dismantled most of our old piano and got the rest professionally removed. My newly upholstered chairs came back and they are amazing!!

DECEMBER

Removed the rest of the chair rail in dining room. Painted all the dining room walls in Little Green Jewel Beetle. Bought our real Christmas tree and set up the activity advent calendar just after Christmas. Had our epic first snowfall which totally made the front of the house feel like Narnia… this is the earliest and biggest snowfall we’ve ever had in Philly! Hosted Christmas in our newly painted dining room (although I still need to paint the ceiling). Since we had so much snow and cold weather, we took the kids skiing impromptu between Christmas and New Years which was a great way to round out the year.

And that wraps up 2025… so what are my thoughts?

I spent a lot of the year trying to fix so many things that just released more problems and every time I went to start making content again, which used to bring me joy and fun, it all just felt like one more chore and I fell deeper into the joy-thief comparison to people that I couldn’t relate to. I realised I was trying to keep up with every Jones across the internet (the irony that that used to be my surname), whether they had kids or not, an old house or not, expensive taste or not, a village of help or not, good quality content or not, and so on. Upon much soul-searching, it finally dawned on me that it wasn’t possible and I needed to find a better way forward that felt manageable. I started to separate accounts that were inspirational versus aspirational, and tried to minimize my engagement with the latter as it was a breeding ground for resentment and jealousy. Following accounts with 250K+ audiences that were being thrown huge partnerships or could post one link and pay their mortgage, weren’t having to worry about the cost of hemming curtains for a single room, and were not people I found relatable anymore. The more I thought and engaged with smaller accounts, the more I realised most of us with the non-influencer / content-creator lives were struggling to balance it all. People had either become link-shilling brands who didn’t interact deeply anymore with those who helped build them, or the good ones had disappeared from social completely - something I had been tempted by / somewhat attempted on a few occasions. On a bit of sad note, I was mentally-honest with myself though, that I need my social internet community. Working from home, without parents to ever talk to, or much of a village to rely on as I don’t have close friends in Philadelphia, I’m far too lonely without this social community. So you, my internet pals, are stuck with me. For those of you that have been here and supported every moment, I cannot thank you enough. Your support truly is impactful to my mental well-being.

After a bit more soul-searching, I also realised that the house had almost become a core part of my personality, and it was suffocating me. Not a good look, or feeling to be honest. (Before I freak out our loyal followers, no we are not moving or selling the house, despite all my somewhat sarcastic threats to move back to the UK - that is another intensely personal post for another day.)

4 years ago, I had fun, innovative great ideas that I was confident about and couldn’t wait to execute (albeit even when I got the 80% done part when project fatigue set in…), and yet now even woodworking or designing feel like a chore too. I have to find myself again, and detach from the house, I have to PLAY again. Creativity and play have a bit of a PR problem at the moment around the world, but we need to figure out how to regain that sense of imaginative fun and not let social media dictate our lives and more importantly, drastically taint our unique thoughts and ideas. I realised I had been flooded with everyone else’s projects and forgot where my own North Star was.

In order to find the space and time for play, I had to make one other major change. I quit my corporate job in October 2025. After the 4th boss in 14 months was hired with no notice and not even an interview meeting before they started, I took a step to walk away from a stable job and huge number of work projects that I was so excited about. I had successfully produced multiple video series, was deep in leading a full website redesign, had established a new brand direction and great relationships with my colleagues, all sorts of things that I really truly cared about - but enough was enough, and I had to prioritize my mental health, our family and give my brain space to breathe. It was a sudden decision and very much not something I was comfortable with, and despite the financial stress it applies to our life, it now forces me to focus that stress on creating and making this blog / these platforms into something consistent and worthwhile… that ultimately I can monetize sustainably and with my morals intact. Link shilling is not the name of the game here, but being an old house & design resource that you can rely on and a friend that you want to talk to and talk about (in a good way), is.

So let’s explore what that looks like and how you can be a part of it. In 2026, I will not attempt to take on too many things (she repeats x100 on a chalkboard….). I’m not stretching myself between illustrating homes or designs for other people, running a fledgling design firm, building custom websites AND doing all of our own DIY projects while trying to document it… I’m focusing purely on the latter and capturing it how I always wanted to from the beginning. I truly enjoy writing, drawing, designing slowly with purpose (and helping people understand the why) and creating long form video. Those of you here when Instagram did IGTV for a short blip know that I had fun with our weekly vlog series as we progressed through our kitchen renovation. So I’m going back to those basics…these are my goals which I hope you can all hold me accountable to throughout the year:

Writing as much as possible - at minimum weekly blog posts / Substacks. I’m launching a Substack to help gain more exposure to my writing (this is the first post for that space), but will mirror posts across the Substack and the blog here until I get more established. Later in the year, I hope to create a subscription model based around my #slowintentionaldesign concept with design process tips and tricks. In the meantime, I have a backlog of approximately 80 posts to write from the last 4 years of old house content creation — I wish I was joking! Everything from our HVAC installation, adding tiny spotlights in key spaces, the basement issues, appliance reviews to house filming, kitchen renovation, design plans, illustrations, etc. My goal for blog posts is always to deliver a truly thought-out and useful slog of information that I can’t find elsewhere on the internets - never, EVER written by AI, but painstakingly agonized over by me for hours and days at a time.
Creating quality long-form video - launching our YouTube channel (@brooksandstone) in the next week, attempting to deliver a monthly YouTube video recap of our DIY projects throughout the year (big and small) and a monthly design project guide (i.e. talking you through floorplans, space planning decisions and options, design choices and the steps we take to get there). I absolutely LOVE making long-form video… I’m long-winded, explain things like a teacher in a way people apparently like learning from and according to you lot, have a nice voice to listen to, especially when I stay true to myself delivering my voiceovers in my droll sarcastic way. When I think back, I even won competitions for long form video back in high school when it was hardly an amateur process…so why have I spent the last 4 years trying to mold myself into short-form video that I absolutely detest?! Who knows, but we reset now!
Drawing/illustrating more often, whether by hand or SketchUp - at minimum a weekly sketch, floorplan, drawing or SketchUp that I can publish. This is likely to coincide with the YouTube videos and will form a part of the design project guides as I walk through my design concepts for the projects we plan to tackle.
Booking at least 4 film shoots (goal to land 1x major one!) - I’ve never really pushed myself or the house this front as half of our house was not in a state to be filmed and I felt like a fraud for the rooms I did promote (cue the dining room paint samples appearing on an Amazon Prime documentary….) But I know it’s something we can achieve once we finish our kitchen and the kid’s bedroom… plus it’s a key area where people are interested in the content behind the scenes, how we do it, and I can monetize the marketing efforts required for it. So stay tuned for progress here as I’ll be launching a “How to Turn Your House into Film Location” kit complete with website template, postcard designs for scouts, and more.
Free Time to Play - whether this is playing literally with my children in their spare time, or “playing” by having quiet time to reading design magazines, visiting design centers, house tours, going for browses around vintage shops, or whatever else takes my fancy - I need to take that time to detox from the internet and be present and inspired by the very real and wonderful life around me. This one is absolutely essential, and will also be the hardest to accomplish in this busy life of ours - but I must.

Will I still post on Instagram? Yes, because it’s become a habit now and most of my lovely little community resides there at present. But I want to shift away from it generally as it is not a platform that really serves me well in terms of posting content that is meaningful or true to me (unless by some freak of nature I were to suddenly grow into a sizeable account that is allowed to post 10 minute videos…. but I see that as unlikely). So you’ll find me a bit more often playing there, but seriously posting the good stuff here, on Substack and on YouTube.

Right, with that, I think I’ve hit just the length of post to truly bore even the most avid of our audience. So please do join me on this finding myself journey with the house and these platforms, as I try to claw my way back to my creative, confident self and all the trials and tribulations that will bring. It will be entertaining at the least (I hope) and educational / meaningful at best if anything goes to plan this year (..she says with cautious optimism). Come back next week for the first installment of our YouTube videos with an introduction, and a overview of our annual house projects (the list is long and wildly intimidating). 2026 is going to be an exciting year, whether it likes it or not.

Onwards and Upwards, Love & Cuddles, All That Jazz

Lex x

Finding Genevieve… and me.

Activity-Based Christmas Advent Calendar (2025)