Well, here we are – the end of 2019. Every year, I try to write a recap here and reflect on the year and prepare for the year ahead. Here’s last year’s recap of 2018 if you’re interested. Not only do I reflect on the year but I like to take a look at what readers responded to here on EDF. It’s always eye-opening to me to see the posts that end up being popular. I hope it’s just as interesting to you.
Anyway, I haven’t been writing as I’d like to here not because I don’t want to but simply because life has gotten the best of me. I have plenty of content to share and about a million ideas in my arsenal but sometimes, you just can’t do it all. This has been the year I’ve learned that. Granted, I didn’t learn that until closer to the end of the year but I learned it nonetheless.
Anyway, enough of me babbling, let’s recap the year. Shall we?
2019: Year in review
First things first: we’re having a baby. This isn’t news to most of my friends but this is definitely the first time I’ve shared it on the blog or on the internet for that matter. We’ve had some time to get used to the news (baby is coming May 2nd) but it’s still pretty shocking that John and I will be parents in 2020. Exciting but shocking.
I plan on sharing things related to pregnancy and parenthood (look for a post about my first trimester soon) but the overall goal is to keep EDF pretty much with the same mission: to share ways to eat, drink and frolic. OK – are we done here? I’m done. Let’s move on.
Brand collabs. I didn’t really pursue lots of collaborations this year (maybe that will change next year?) but I did get to work with a couple of brands that were pretty fun: Food City and Adexe Watches.
Work life. This year was pretty big professionally. Jennifer and I spoke at a pretty large conference in Charlottesville, we raised nearly $32,000 (in 4 weeks), finally started paying ourselves appropriately AND moved into a new space. Whew. 2020 is going to be even wilder (in a good way) – I can feel it.
Travel. While we didn’t take any large trips this year, we did take some pretty fun trips. John and I went back to New Orleans (duh), visited Birmingham (again), spent some time in Nashville and hung out in Louisville. With baby coming in 2020, I’m not sure what trips we’ll be able to take but a vacay to Mexico is happening in January (and a revisit to Savannah).
Life. I think finding out we were going to be parents pretty much trumps anything else life-related that happened before, right?
Ready for 2020
2020 is going to be full of surprises and hopefully lots of fun. Obviously, John and I are embarking on our biggest adventure yet and I’m sure that will result in some fun stories. Anyway, here’s my favorite part of end-of-year reflections: finding out which posts of 2019 were the most popular here. The most popular post overall (not just posts written in 2019) was John Legend’s chili which I find very interesting. He finally beat out the balsamic glazed Brussels sprouts that beats everything each year.
POPULAR POSTS: Charcuterie with Food City, Bourbon sweet potato pie, Hungry for More: sandwiches, Downtown Chattanooga Instagram guide, Grownup hamburger helper, the time I got ghosted by a local brand, soy braised short ribs, birthday cake bread.
