Behind the Book (Part 3)

If you had walked into my house in June of 2025, you probably would’ve thought I’d completely lost it.

My house had turned into book headquarters. There were bins of tools, racks of clothes, stacks of props, and copies of the nerdiest spreadsheet I’ve ever created scattered about.

Some mornings I’d be writing a chapter about January. That afternoon I’d be outside wearing a puffer coat while it was 90 degrees. The next day we’d be photographing summer projects. Then fall. Then back to winter.

It was complete chaos.

It was also one of the happiest summers of my life.

The moment the book deal became real, there was one person I had to call.

If you read Part One, you know Bridget and I dreamed about writing a book together more than ten years ago. Back then, we were two twenty-something bloggers with a big idea and absolutely no clue what we were doing.

That book never happened. Life had other plans.

Bridget became a professional photographer. I kept building The DIY Playbook.

But the second this book became official, I never considered another photographer. Actually...I called her before the contract was even signed.

During the contract negotiations, I wanted to make sure she was available, talk through her rates, and figure out whether we could actually make this work. I knew if everything came together, we’d only have one chance to photograph the entire book.

Thankfully, she was in. And looking back now, I can’t imagine it any other way.

Not just because she’s an incredible photographer (she is), but because she already understood exactly what I wanted this book to feel like.

Yes, I wanted people to learn how to maintain their homes. But I also wanted them to want to pick the book up. Beautiful photography. Calm colors. A book you’d leave on your coffee table instead of hiding on a bookshelf.

I never had to explain that to Bridget. She already knew.

Here’s what made everything a little crazy...

Bridget is a teacher, so we only had June and July before she went back to school. Which meant we were going to photograph the entire book...while I was still writing it.

So May 2025 became planning month.

I mapped out every chapter, decided which projects belonged in each month, and then built the mother of all spreadsheets.

Finn helped me make it functional, but I populated the whole thing with every single detail. (Shocking absolutely no one.)

Every photo in the book lived there. The room. The project. The date. The supplies. The outfit. The location. Whether it was inside or outside. Nothing was left to chance.

Every morning I’d print that day’s shot list for the group. We’d each walk around with our own copy and a highlighter, crossing things off as we went.

Once June arrived, we hit the ground running. One day I’d be wearing a chunky sweater pretending it was January. The next I’d be barefoot photographing a summer project.

Then we’d jump to October. Then back to March.

I even hired a stylist because I suddenly needed enough outfits to represent an entire year...all within about eight weeks. You can read more about hiring a stylist in this post.

We also hired a college student, Maddie, to intern with us for the summer. Bridget and I spent the next two months trying to convince her that our generation was actually pretty cool.

We’d tell her stories about life before Instagram. Before smartphones. Before everyone documented every second of their lives.

Maddie mostly humored us...while making it very clear she thought we were old ladies.

In return, she’d teach us whatever word Gen Z was saying that week so we could pretend to stay relevant. I’m still not convinced it worked.

One day we rented a photography studio to knock out headshots, tool photos, and all those little detail images.

Other days we’d spend an embarrassing amount of time debating whether one tiny object belonged in a shot. We’d fluff a towel. We’d debate whether a screwdriver looked better angled left or right.

Case in point: the infamous red shovel.

We had everything set up, and one of us finally looked at the photo and said, “The red doesn’t work.” So the shovel got cut.

Will a single reader ever notice? Absolutely not.

But that’s kind of the point. Nobody notices one tiny decision.

They notice how the whole book feels. And those tiny decisions are what created that feeling.

People ask me all the time how I found time to write a book.

I wrote on the days we weren’t photographing. Those became my quieter days.

I’d spend the mornings writing one or two chapters, working my way through the calendar month by month.

Then I’d spend the afternoons steaming clothes, buying supplies, packing bins, running to Home Depot, and getting everything ready for the next shoot.

By the time my head hit the pillow every night, I’d already be mentally walking through tomorrow’s shot list.

Photo day. Writing day. Photo day. Writing day.

Repeat.

Before our very first shoot, Bridget and I made a promise. We knew this summer was going to be exhausting.

We also knew we’d probably never get another summer quite like it.

So no matter how stressful things got, we were going to have fun. And we did.

Every morning started with Kelly Clarkson, Nelly Furtado, Natasha Bedingfield...basically the soundtrack of our high school and college years. (Someone had to educate Maddie.)

By 11:30 am, we would all be saying, “What are we ordering for lunch?”

We had this tiny window every day to wrap up before I had to race and pick Rory and Ellis up from camp. Somehow we’d go from complete chaos to looking like a relatively normal house in record time.

Finn mostly stayed in the basement, wisely keeping his distance from whatever production we had taken over upstairs. But right around lunchtime, he’d wander up the stairs, look around at the ladders, tools, camera gear, and outfit racks that had completely consumed our house, quietly submit his lunch order...and disappear back downstairs. It became part of the routine.

One morning Maddie and I were driving to my brother’s house in the suburbs for a shoot. I was borrowing my mom’s car while she was in Greece, and out of nowhere it completely died.

On the highway. We sat there for three hours waiting for a tow truck. I had to pee on the side of the road.

We were both convinced we were going to get hit by a semi.

Meanwhile, Bridget was sitting at my brother’s house with an entire day’s shoot planned. Somehow we still got everything photographed. I honestly have no idea how.

Looking back, I don’t remember how many chapters I wrote that week. I remember laughing until we cried.

Not the stress. Not the deadlines. Just the fun.

Every once in a while I’d stop in the middle of a shoot and look around.

Bridget behind the camera. Maddie checking the shot list. Tools scattered across the floor.

And I’d think...I can’t believe this is my job.

We weren’t just making a book. We were building something we’d talked about for more than a decade.

Together.

Looking back now, I realize that was the dream all along.

Somehow, without really noticing, the dream Bridget and I had talked about more than a decade earlier had quietly become real. Just not in the way we originally imagined.

Back then, we thought we’d write a book together.

Instead, she told the story through her camera while I told it through the pages.

I think this was always the story we were supposed to tell.

A few weeks later, I turned in the manuscript. I hit “send,” closed my laptop, and remember thinking...The hard part is finally over.

Spoiler alert. It wasn’t even close.

I thought turning in my manuscript meant I was done.

Instead, it kicked off months of edits, revisions, design decisions, and more “final” versions than I can count.

I’ll take you behind the scenes of what really happens after you finish writing a book.