Happy Blogiversary to US! Domestic Bliss Squared is a year old, and we're sharing our top 10 posts of all time!

It is crazy to us that its already been a year since we started Domestic Bliss Squared.  We were both in a difficult place in October 2012, Hilary had just been laid off and Jessica was dealing with a possible move.  The bright spots in our lives at that point were our families, our friendship and creativity.  We had just gotten hooked on crochet (hehe, bad pun!), were both experimenting with gluten-free cooking and had already started sharing recipes and patterns with our friends.  We decided to harness that creativity and start a blog so we could share our fun projects with everyone!

We wrestled with the name of the blog, what we wanted to share, and finally drafted our first post on October 12th:

Welcome to Domestic Bliss - a blog focused on crafting, crocheting, cooking, canning, baking, eating, Pinterest-ing (is that a verb?) and diy-ing. 

We are Hilary and Jessica.  We live in two different states (410 miles apart, but who's counting?) and we're sisters-in-law.  We met ten years ago when we started dating two brothers.  For years, we weren't close and only saw each other at the occasional family function.  It wasn't until five years ago, when we were both in grad school for similar fields (counseling and social work), that we struck up a casual friendship.  We started chatting more and more frequently until bam!  We both had our first children 9 weeks apart.  Suddenly, we were both trapped at home with screaming kids.  We were both overwhelmed and wrestling with the whole stay-at-home-mom thing.  We starting talking every day to stay sane and learned we had a ton of things in common ("You love Little House on the Prairie too???"  "You are obsessed with Vanilla Nut Creamer, just like me???").

We now have four-year-old daughters that are 9 weeks apart and infant sons that are 2 1/2 weeks apart.  We still talk every day and view our friendship as one of the most important things in our lives!

Over the last five years later, we have learned a ton of crafts together (Jessica got Hilary hooked on Pinterest, Hilary started the crochet craze, Jessica started the homemade cleaners obsession, Hilary shared tons of cooking recipes with Jessica).  Everyday we share recipes, cooking techniques, patterns, everything with each other.  So now we want to share it with you!

Welcome!  We hope you love our blog and can use our ideas to create your own domestic bliss!

Happy crafting!  ~ Hilary and Jessica

Reading that introduction and remembering how we hoped someone would read our blog occasionally, we are completely shocked/stunned/excited about how far the blog has come!  We've had a couple of hiccups and errors and we sometimes cringe over some of our earlier posts (we've both come a long way in photographing food), but we are super proud of our not-so-little blog!

For those of you who just discovered us, we figured we'd share the 10 most popular posts over the past year!

1. How to fix scratches in wood furniture (most popular by a long shot!):

2. The Lacey circle scarf free crochet pattern:

3. Basic boot cuffs free crochet pattern:

4. Lacy scalloped boot cuffs free crochet pattern:

5. How to make old towels soft again:

 6. Make your own extender slip sewing tutorial:

7. Free head wrap crochet pattern (along with the loopy flower crochet pattern):

8. DIY hair detangler/leave in conditioner (only 2 ingredients!):

9. Basic tank top sewing tutorial:

10. Powdered laundry detergent at home...six months of laundry detergent for only $17 ($0.03 a load)!

 In addition to our top 10, we also wanted to share our personal favorites.

Hilary: My favorite was the very personal 5 Tips for New Moms, in which we talk about our own experiences with becoming moms:

Jessica: I love fashion and style posts! Even though none of them made the top 10, my favorite post by far was my most recent post where I took my five favorite summer outfits and restyled them for fall:

It is so fun for us to share our lives with you guys and we are grateful for your support!  Thank you everyone who's followed us on social media, used our tutorials, chowed down on one of our recipes or given us great blogging/photography/marketing tips.  We've learned so much and "met" so many amazing people through our blogging adventures.  We can't wait to see what the next year brings!

~Hilary and Jessica