Woah.

Phew. You guys! It’s been a wild few days over here.

By now, I’m sure you know the blog was down for a few days. The powers that be say that there were some server issues that caused quite a few blogs to be down and it was a big ol’ mess. You can imagine how frustrating it’s been. I’m not completely sure things are back to normal but I’m crossing my fingers! Although, it’s been so crazy over here that I have just have to laugh or else I might go nuts.

We’ve been plotting a reorganization of the master closet for a few weeks now and we finally set our sights on a system from IKEA. We don’t have one locally so we took a trip down to Orlando (about a two hour drive for us) to pick up everything we need. For the record, I wanted to see the system in person. Also, knowing all the pieces it required I was sure if I ordered it online I’d miss something PLUS shipping was crazy expensive.

You guys know how IKEA is, we needed about a 60 pieces for this closet system. Matt was in his zone getting all of the parts we needed and then he came to the item on his list that was basically the backbone of the closet system and lo and behold, it was out of stock. Reading those words instantly deflated us. Of course they were out of stock. WHY (why why whyyyyy) didn’t we check to make sure everything was in stock before we drove 120 miles down here! grrrrr… I talked to the peeps at IKEA and they told me they were getting more of that piece in the next day (Sunday) so we figured we go ahead and get everything else for the system, we had already pulled it all anyway and then we’d either come back the next day or just order that specific piece if it wasn’t too pricey. As frustrated as I was, I still considered the trip a win because I got some food storage items for my pantry, plus cinnamon rolls.

Sunday came and I WAS SICK AS HECK. You guys it was miserable. I just remember being SO grateful it was a Sunday and not a weekday because having help with the two kiddo was everything. This detail is the reasoning we didn’t make it back to IKEA, and the reason I had no idea my site was down for a whole day and I surely didn’t realize then how big of a situation it was going to end up being.

CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE THE READER SURVEY

Since the site was down for three days and my reader survey wasn’t accessible, I’m extending the opportunity to win the $50 gift card (Amazon or Target – winner’s choice) for completing the survey until Friday. I’m loving all of the feedback already! Some of you have mentioned having a slow load time on my site. I know, it’s been bugging me too. I began working on a quicker load time last week and I plan to continue making changes so we can get the load speed much faster. There were also comments on annoying ads especially on mobile. Trust me, your reader experience is really important to me, I’m going to work with my ad network to remove those annoying ads that pop up over the entire screen (I hate those too!).

Going forward… I was surprised at how many of you want to hear more about our life and my kids. I guess when I started this blog I expected that I would share some glimpses of our “military life” because it’s very much a part of everyday for us but then I got so drilled down into DIY and home decor projects that stories and “real life” kind of got left behind. I know my favorite blogs are ones where you get a chance to see the real person behind the blog so I intend on sharing more of that here. Sometimes as a blogger I get really caught up in every photo having to be perfect and “pinterest worthy” and think if it’s not then you guys won’t be interested in it. After reading the surveys and having discussions with other bloggers, I’m learning that’s not the case – you guys like seeing real people too.

You’ll also continue to see  many updates and projects here at the Florida house. I’ve had a few people ask me if I was still going to share rental friendly tips and tricks on the blog now that we’ve purchased a home. The answer is YES, absolutely. While we aren’t currently renting, we don’t plan on staying in this house forever. We’re supposed to be here in Florida for three years so this is our home for right now. All the updates we are making are with the mindset that one day someone else will live here. After the major projects are complete, it will be all temporary projects from there on out.

If you have any questions or ideas for what you would like to see on the blog, leave them in the comments or email me makinghomebase (at) gmail.com

I’ll be back tomorrow with some home decor ideas. xo