Hey, I’m Catherine.

And welcome to my personal website, Cath Creative. Here you’ll find my personal portfolio, blog posts (that range from DIY projects, a link to my brick and mortar and whatever else is filling my brain space at a time. If you know me you’re probably wondering, but what about your old blog? Well, here’s the short story. At the beginning of 2020 my blog Design + Curiosity was up for renewal on a blog hosting platform. It would be almost $400 to renew it. I hadn’t written a blog post in well over a year at that point. And every so often I would get a sinking guilty feeling that my blog was existing out there without any love and attention, gathering dust and costing me money. It was a lot of pressure (self-inflicted) to keep it going and  I would feel the guilt about not posting enough or promoting or what have you. It got to be too much. So, in January I pulled the plug, so to speak. And without thinking too much about any future plans or goals I let my both of my domains designandcuriosity[dot]com and designandcuriositystudio[dot]com (where I sold my earrings) expire. While I try and live my life with no regrets, I actually regret this. Because I guess we live in a world where people buy your expired domains only to try and back to you for an exorbitant price. So right now it’s a scammy site (DON’T VISIT IT OR CLICK ON ANYTHING) and all traces of an era of my life, before the neglect, are gone. And the really sad thing is that it was an amazing, creative, blossoming chapter in my life and I lost all evidence of it. Are there wayyyy worse happening in the world right now than me losing my domains and blog?? Totally. But sometimes this silly little thing bums me out for a minute.

When I began my initial blog in 2014 I was obsessed with it, it didn’t look very good and the posts were menial and silly but also so truly authentic and genuine to the girl I was then. I was an intern at HGTV, headquartered in Knoxville TN, and I was young and energetic and soaking up all of this amazing talent and inspiration that I hadn’t even known existed! I’d kill to open that time capsule again. At this time Instagram was on the newer side, there were no influencers really or not like we think of them today. It was a lot of heavily filtered photos and people trying to ‘style’ things but the camera quality was always so low that it really didn’t translate. An average post got 2 likes because at that time we didn’t know we needed validation through liking and sharing posts. I didn’t care about Instagram back then, and it showed. Blogs, though, that was where it was at! I discovered a lot of my favorite bloggers that I still follow to this day; A Beautiful Mess, House that Lars Built, Studio DIY, Design*Sponge, Style by Emily Henderson to merely scratch the surface. I’ve loved watching their content mature and adapt as the years go by and they move, have families, etc. I think what I loved most of all, though, is the sense of community there is. I mean here are people supporting and uplifting each other as they shared creative projects that made your world more colorful and just plain FUN. How could you not be obsessed with that?!

I found out my precious first Wordpress blog still exists! This is the last post I wrote before switching over to the blogging platform, anything after this is lost to the ages.

So then jump to about late 2017, I was almost graduated from college and my blog started to get more and more neglected. I was putting all of this pressure on myself. I was comparing myself to the blogs that I loved so much and that constantly provided me inspiration and was wondering how can I be exactly that; making money from it, putting out content that people cared about, etc. I upgraded everything I could to have all the bells and whistles, from my platform, my logo, my equipment thinking I could get halfway there through that. Where I thought I was going I don’t really know. While I appreciate the fact that I was honing my photography and styling skills it was more and more starting to feel like a chore and less of a way to creatively express myself. So then I would go longer and longer without posting. And it would start weighing on me. If it sounds unhealthy, it was. And pretty sad too. So there we were at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020 when I finally decided that I couldn’t take it anymore.

So why start up a blog again after only 9 months of shutting it down?? Because I don’t care if anyone reads it. I’m not trying to make money. Because I miss the creative outlet it gave me to document fun projects I was doing. Because I miss how I feel when I write and share things. Because I miss that bright eyed girl who was so curious about the world and blogged about silly things. Because I am finally starting to feel inspired again. I’m recommitting, but with more kindness and patience for myself. My blogging platform is much more affordable and without all the crazy bells and whistles. I’ll blog when I feel like it, share my interior design work if people want to work with me and just have a place on the internet that can exist just for me.

So thank you if you read this far, and thank you if you decide to come again. I am truly happy to be here again.