Merry (day after tomorrow) Christmas!! These days between Christmas and New Years are some of the days I look forward to all year – celebrating with family fills my heart so much (the Christmas Eve talent show went crazy); I’m meeting up with longtime friends who are home for the holidays and also have enough time this weekend to go on a short two-day vacation trip with my boyfriend. There have been many years when the holidays haven’t seemed as bright and happy as we all know that unexpected life events pop up on their own time, so I’m so grateful to be here celebrating with my loved ones and all of you!! OK that’s enough – we’re here to chat Instagram today!! It’s so fun to write through it every year and look back at everything we’ve posted. I know some of you are probably on Instagram and have seen some of these (thanks for the likes and comments – they mean a lot!), and for those of you who aren’t on Instagram, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some of what we’ve shared over the past year!
At the beginning of the year, we brought on Marley, who has raised our social game tremendously. It’s so wonderful that someone in Portland with his brilliant mind has captured all this content – he really was the missing piece of our EHD puzzle, and I’m personally very grateful to him! So some of these Instagram posts were created by our wonderful Mar, and others were created by me (Mal), which is definitely not confusing at all. So here we go: Mar and Mal Social Girls present to you…
Soke Pool was founded in 2022, but even after 3 years, we still get asked a lot of questions about it. We posted a few different backyard update videos on our Instagram this year, so naturally, it made sense we had one comment after another wanting to know more. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a small pool that can be a regular pool during the day and then heat up at night to become a hot tub. It also has an automatic cover for the winter and is generally less difficult to install than building a normal pool, as soak pools come ready-made. It’s a perfect fit for Henderson Farms, and the kids absolutely love it (and the Internet loves it too!).
Speaking of sharing backyard updates, this was one of them! The farm’s backyard landscaping, outdoor kitchen, and pickleball court were all finished this year, so we wanted to show off more of the layout (and give the pigs and alpacas some much-deserved screen time). This reel unfolded, and I was not surprised! That backyard is very strange and wonderful.
Marley made this reel during a Portland fashion shoot, and it turned out beautiful. Em’s style is so fun, and I love the angle Marlee came up with for it! Plus, this reel convinced me that long shorts + tall boots is a very cute look I would get into. 3k comments also shows that you guys also liked these outfits a lot 🙂
This was another super clever move from Marley! Just before M changed his sofa Alice From our Room Service collection (which has a removable pillow if you don’t want your dogs to sit on it, ha!) I love the text on this – so simple and so fun. Great job, March!
It went off, and we were shocked. I realized that we’ve never actually posted a complete “from start to finish” art barn on the grid – and it’s always so easy to forget where a project started! I found a very old photo of the art barn shed before it was upgraded, and then did some handwritten text on it (which was our first time doing this…and we were surprised at how well it turned out!) I think the story is a lot of fun, so I’m glad this post got so much love. What a cool project that was (I need an adult craft barn now, hahaha).
Marlee pulled together this amazing carousel, and I thought it was genius. I remember we were going back over what the cover picture should be – it was originally a picture of the finished kitchen, and then we decided we wanted to tell you a little more of the story. Then we got the first progress photo that our amazing photographer, Caitlin Green, took and we were like, yes, this is the one. I love the way it takes you through the design process and takes you on a journey. That kitchen turned out so beautiful, and with that amazing green stone, it’s definitely not boring at all!
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from social media this year, it’s that people love it when you say “they said not to do that…” “so I did it anyway” about literally anything. There’s something about that “rule breaking” mentality and then seeing it’s incredible at the end “proving people wrong” and it’s a lot of fun to watch. It’s similar to a classic “before and after” we all love to see, but with a little edge. Marlee killed it with this editing and cinematography!!
Speaking of people in love before and after, it really came across! Marley came up with this because we wanted to post some more fun organic content (and the farmhouse before and after is so amazing, so we’re always coming up with new ways to showcase it). These reels are really fun to create because they reach a lot of people who don’t follow us – so it’s helpful to show what they can expect to see in these parts 🙂
This outdoor kitchen is gorgeous, so I’m not surprised to see it so high on this list!! I know people love to see the functionality of kitchens, mudrooms and really any other utility space because those rooms work hard, that’s why I edited this reel together! And if you’re someone who has outdoor space and does a lot of hosting, having an outdoor kitchen is a fun thing to think about – so I hope this reel will be a fun watch for the guys! And for number one…
Big statement here, but this might be one of my favorite reels of all time – so I’m really happy to see it as number one!! We had a lot of amazing farm content that we’ve captured over the years, so I wanted to create something that captured the most visually impressive footage and shared the best features of M’s amazing home. The engagement was also tremendous – with 149k likes, it’s our most liked post ever!
If you’ve made it this far – Thank youI hope you all have a happy 2025, and I really wish you all the best for 2026. Almost Happy New Year, friends, xoxo
