This was part of (well, most of) my exciting plans for the weekend… MEETING JOHN AND SHERRY PETERSIK!!!!

While I haven’t been following Young House Love since Day 1, or even Day 880, I have been so inspired by them. Not just their incredible design style and home transformations, but their down-to-earth personalities, unique voices, and their profuse amount of tips on blogging itself. From creating professional-looking photos, to how they decide on post topics, to how they’ve turned blogging into a business, they played a huge role in inspiring me to start this blog, and making me believe that someone out there, besides my mom, might actually want to read it. (I think it’s high time I give a shout-out to my readers and followers! THANK YOU!!! You guys rock my socks!!!)

Sorry for the tangent. Back to the post topic: MEETING JOHN AND SHERRY PETERSIK!!!!

John & Sherry were part of a local book festival called Books by the Banks, that featured lots of books for sale (obviously), authors and panel discussions. John & Sherry were signing/chatting with fans, and also giving a talk (9 things they learned during the process of writing their book).

If you’re curious, that’s Robert & Cortney Novogratz in the foreground, signing their book, Home by Novogratz.

There they are! When we arrived, there were about 60-70 people in line in front of us.

Not going to lie, I felt like I was waiting for the Beatles to de-board the plane for their first North American tour. Ok, maybe I wasn’t crying for joy and screaming at the top of my lungs. But I was as giddy as a schoolboy.

My “giddy schoolboy” face; holding my advance copy, made available by awesome local bookstore Joseph Beth Booksellers.

I really wanted to bring along a ceramic animal for Sherry to sign (DORK! I know…), but we were running late on Saturday morning and I couldn’t make up my mind what to grab.

I’ll spare you a minute-by-minute recap of the butterfly-stomach-fluttering and heart-palpitation-ensuing drama that occurred. Suffice it to say that I nearly didn’t make the signing cutoff before John and Sherry were whisked away to give their talk, which could have resulted in a lost spot in line, and would have set Tom and me waaaayyyy back for our plans to meet friends and drive alllll the way north to Toledo to watch the UC Bearcats football team vs. Toledo that night. Well, sorry, that does kind of tell you the whole story. Anywho, I made it up to their table in time.

Their talk was really good. They started with a little bio of them (Sherry was a copywriter, too! Heck yea copywriters!) and then went through 9 things they learned while working on their home/the book. There were a lot of really good reminders, i.e. don’t feel like you have to do everything perfectly and all at once. This is an especially good reminder for me, because I always feel pressure to have our house more decorated than it is at this point (we haven’t been here a year yet). And it was very reassuring to hear these reminders from people I revere as “experts” and whose advice I would readily take to heart.

Really cool idea to steal in the future (if I ever publish a book, that is,): they asked fans to sign their copy of the book! How fun is that! Now they’ll have a memento from all of their book signings! John asked me to draw a picture of something, but I blanked and just wrote my name.

I’m so excited that I got the opportunity to meet them. I’ve been leafing through their book (I’m not an overnight reader; I prefer to savor each page), and I already have tons of new ideas. Maybe I’ll start a little mini-series of posts of YHL-inspired projects!

And, I cannot finish this post without giving HUGE thanks to my husband Tom, without whom none of this would have gone down as smoothly as it did. He allowed me to drag him to a book festival, act like a giddy schoolboy, and was even willing to hold our spot in line so I could sit in on their talk. Oh, and he let me stop at Starbucks before we left! Thanks Tom! You’re the best!