Ho ho ho happy holidays everyone!!! I hope your Christmas was wonderful if you celebrate and now I hope your New Years plans are all set!! Your favorite social media girlie pop is back to talk through the fun reels we pulled together this year that HIT HARD. Like really hard. Spoiler alert our top reel of the year got 8.5 million views!! But you’ll have to wait until the end to see what it is ? Alright, enough dilly-dallying. Let’s get to it.
10. Drawers In My Kitchen That Just Make Sense
Coming in hot with number 10 and there’s no surprise why this one did well: Y’ALL LOVE EM’S KITCHEN AND ALSO LOVE SEEING WHAT’S INSIDE THESE PRETTY CABINETS. It’s a theme that will come up again in a bit (sorry for so many spoilers in the first 10 sentences lol). But this reel was a REEL fun one to put together (HA PUN INTENDED). The “things in my house that just make sense” trend has been going around for a while but I really wanted to apply it to inside Em’s strategically planned kitchen cabinet drawers. AND IT WORKED. Happy to see this one on the list. Hope y’all loved it.
9. Soake Pool Going In
Yo. The Soake pool installation was such a crazy time and I’m SO glad that we got such amazing content out of it. It was only a crazy time because a. it was heavily raining in Portland and b. the Soake pool was incredibly heavy (like not as intense as a normal pool installation, but not NOT intense). There was a crane involved and I’m just glad we were able to timelapse it (thank you Emily M!) and post it for all of you to see. It was an amazing sight that’s for sure!!
8. Secret Medicine Cabinet
The secret medicine cabinet was something I had wanted to post about since the day it was designed in Chief Architect (and yes, I was there that day!) This moment was a fun one. I knew that all the troubleshooting and everything they had to go through to retrofit that medicine cabinet wasn’t for nothing. It was for an Instagram reel, blog post, and an amazing real life that the Hendersons are living so that they could fully enjoy this little spa retreat escape of a bathroom that meant and still means so much to them.
7. Mountain House Before And After
Aaaah the mountain house never disappoints. These before and afters are just too satisfying and clearly, we all can’t get enough. It’s just the prettiest house and who wouldn’t want to stay here?? It’s avail on Airbnb for anyone who wanted to know…
6. The Farmhouse Living Room Layout
This reel did incredibly well view-wise but more importantly it had over 4k comments!?! So fricken amazing, so happy to have you guys giving input –– it really is appreciated!!! I swear you guys have solved so many design dilemmas it’s amazing and I’m just happy that we get you all as a loving community. YOU’RE ALL THE BEST!!! Because of you, Em ended up with the best layout possible. XOXO!!
5. We Bought Our Dream Home
This reel really takes you on the journey. We created it because we wanted to tease the “front of the house” reveal and BOY did it do just that. The adventure of getting this home from point A to point B was a long one, so we’ve always struggled with how to bring everyone along when there was a big reveal that MEANT something. This one meant something big time and we were just happy to get you all along on the ride. We hope you loved it!!
4. Mudroom Ladder And Cabinets
This is where that spoiler alert from earlier comes in!! We always knew the inside of cabinetry was a big deal for you guys –– but when I told Em to get on this ladder and expose the contents of her top hidden cabinets, the natural answer was, “Huh that’s random but okay I guess?” Then when the reel came through (thank you Kaitlin and Gretchen!) I immediately knew it was perfect and would place in the top 5!!!
3. Kitchen Dimensions
Em had this idea to lay out all of the dimensions of her kitchen so if someone technically wanted to recreate it they could. OR if someone was renovating a kitchen from scratch they could get an idea of how high a shelf should be or the clearance between the stove and the island for example. Well, we originally thought this would be very niche for the real design nerds out there and either a. there are a TON of design nerds (same) or b. this content really was for EVERYONE.
2. Soake Pool Cover
Soake Pool strikes again on this list!! In case you don’t know the Soake Pool is a small plunge pool but can also heat up to be a jacuzzi! We had the chance to swim in it this summer and BOY was it a blast. It takes up much less space (which was ideal since it’s mainly used for the summers in Portland and the rest of the time it chills with this cover on it) and it also is more cost-efficient since it’s a small ready-made pool rather than a huge custom one. The cover sliding on and off is definitely oddly satisfying so it makes sense why this reel performed so well. I watched it like 3 times just while writing this ?
now for the grand finale…
1. Dishwasher To Dish Drawer Layout – 8.5 MILLION VIEWS!
The big kahuna!!! This reel absolutely crushed harder than we ever could have anticipated!! Like I said earlier, you guys love kitchens and seeing what’s inside these pretty drawers and this dishwasher-to-dish drawer design is absolutely genius. Em did something similar in the mountain house so the kids could easily grab plates and bowls (and also put away their plates and bowls) and the peg system inside these drawers works wonders. Clearly, you guys thought it was smart and fun and cool too!! 8.5 mil AH!!! Thank you all for supporting and for being here!
So that’s all we have for the reels folks!! Hope you all have the loveliest day and rest of your holiday season!! Here’s to an incredible 2024!!!