If you\u00a0hadn’t\u00a0asked for feedback, I would not be commenting. I used to read faithfully, but then less and less with each house.\u00a0Why? Because all three houses LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. Pale walls, cheap furniture, spray painted stuff. It\u2019s totally fine in your first house, but it\u2019s so very tired now. I was excited to start reading again with the house 3 purchase, because you promised more grown-up, expensive furnishings, etc. So far all I see is Ikea-Target-HomeGoods. Anything more expensive, you either scored it from the showhouse or got it at an outlet. I love a good bargain too, but am also willing to splurge on key pieces. I like the DIY big projects, but the decor stuff needs seriously rethought if you want to keep readers engaged. One last thing, you should absolutely not be using 2 small kids as your excuse for lack of blog posts, or projects, or anything. You make big bucks from this blog (I have no problem at all with that), and IT\u2019S YOUR JOB. Most of us have kids, work, and do stuff around the house. You have encouraged honest feedback here.<\/em><\/p>\n That of course led to supporters responding back in defense of the YHL couple and others agreeing with Margaret.<\/p>\n Following a few posters who admonished Margaret for her “mean-spirited” comments were posters \u00a0like Meg who supported Margaret and took the YHL bloggers down a few pegs\u00a0herself<\/p>\n But CE they ASKED for feedback. They ASKED for readers opinions.<\/em><\/p>\n And honestly, 5 posts a week isn\u2019t that much for readers to expect when they are two fully functioning adults who are supposedly working on this 80 hours a week. They get paid to decorate their house and fix it up (which almost every other couple in America does on the evenings or weekends) so expecting quality content isn\u2019t too much. If it\u2019s \u201ctoo much of a load from them to bear\u201d well I hope they polish up their resumes and start looking elsewhere for income. They chose this career path and business.<\/em><\/p>\n After several more posts in support of YHL or with posters like Margaret and Meg, there was Paula who wrote this:<\/p>\n I find it amazing that John and Sherry asked for feedback and then when people give their honest opinion they are attacked by the \u201cJohn and Sherry\u201d lovers. This is a decorating blog people. The Petersiks aren\u2019t your best friends. You probably don\u2019t even know them. I come here to get ideas for my own house. I don\u2019t believe for one minute they do all of this by themselves or with a little bit of money like most of us do. There is no way they can do over an entire room in a couple of days, have two kids and a dog, and run this huge blog. It\u2019s just lost it\u2019s initial realism to me. But I will continue to drop in and see what they are up to. But, please, allow everyone to have an opinion. It was asked for!!!<\/em><\/p>\n This continued on for say some 1000 plus comments and led Sherry to \u00a0post that the couple would be taking a break. The last two paragraphs of her 3000 word post from September 9th are:<\/p>\n So in an attempt to stop stumbling around and feeling like we just can\u2019t get it back, we\u2019re taking a break. We don\u2019t know exactly how long we\u2019ll be stepping away, but our guess would be at least a month. We will certainly be exploring other options for supporting our family (something we mentioned we were considering back in April). We had that fiery blog-spark back when we had day jobs and did this as a hobby, so we think it could be a good change. We\u2019ll also be taking a break on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but the blog will stay public so you guys can access the archives whenever you\u2019d like.<\/em><\/p>\n Our internal struggle and the state of this blog is entirely of our making, and we completely own that. Please don\u2019t get mad at anyone for being honest with their feedback last week or accuse them of sending us packing. We have been struggling with that \u201csomething is off\u201d feeling for a while now, and after way too much denial and \u201cwe\u2019ll turn it around\u201d pep talks, we finally asked for your feedback because we truly wanted to hear what you were thinking. It was cathartic and helpful for us. It has allowed us to very clearly see that if we have any respect for this blog and our love of it, and for you guys and what you\u2019d like to see, we need to take break if we ever want any hope of getting back to that fun\/real\/spontaneous place it used to be when this was something we did for the love instead of the high stakes game of supporting a family.<\/em><\/p>\n In summary: we love you, we thank you, and we hope you understand.<\/em><\/p>\n Do you know what? \u00a0That post has over 4500 comments! \u00a0 There is no way I would even attempt to read them, nor do I want to read them. \u00a0Why do I say that? \u00a0Well, I don’t follow them, I don’t know much about them and I really don’t care to learn. \u00a0Way too much of my own stuff to focus on but found it amusing that this DIY blog would be this controversial. \u00a0After all TV series get cancelled, reality shows get cancelled, shows that run for many seasons end and life goes on. \u00a0In the blogging \u00a0world we have to understand that things change, people get burnt out, go on to other opportunities, have life issues or just stop blogging. \u00a0There is nothing anyone can do or say to make them keep blogging if they don’t but the reality is that there are thousands and thousands of other blogs covering the same type of topics and life goes on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/carly67.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/blogsig1.jpg?w=500&h=138\")
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