Back To Our Roots! Introducing Our New Series Sleepy Creek

 

We started this website in 2011 as a way to document our first home renovation in St. John’s, Newfoundland, so we consider DIY build projects our OG content. Over time, our interests shifted towards filmmaking as we moved into a Vancouver rental and away from the ability to make permanent changes to the place we were living. During our one year in BC, we had been going through the process of looking for a piece of crown land to purchase in Newfoundland for our next project: a cabin build. A ton of life changes happened (more on that here), and our dream cabin project got put on hold while we immigrated to the US. Finally, almost 10 years later, we’re stoked to reveal our land project with you and our new vlog series, Sleepy Creek!

 
 
 

Truth be told, we purchased our WNY property three years ago after an extensive year-long search. We had been overthinking our cabin build and decided last summer to get to know the land by camping! We had to let go of our expectations of acquiring waterfront property as we had planned in Newfoundland. The landscape in New York State is DRAMATICALLY different than on the island of Newfoundland, where there are so many little ponds and tons of crown land. In contrast, in NY, we have a lot less water, and every square inch of land is privately owned.

So we decided to start looking for properties with creeks, streams, and large swaths of land where, if we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we could potentially build our own pond (fell down that rabbit hole over the pandemic, shout out to Atlantis Water Gardens). You can see the entire land hunt process in episode one.

 
 

So, What’s the plan?

We’ll we don’t have much of one because we are posting this one in real time VS finishing a full project and editing what had happened.

If you follow our content, you might be familiar with The Home Reno Series which we posted part one of two years ago. The concept for this series was to develop a polished home renovation show for our YouTube channel, combining every project for one room into an entertaining 20 - 30 minute episode. While it’s been a fun challenge to make, it’s not the most sustainable since it takes us SO LONG to finish a room (not much has changed since our first reno LOL). I should note that we’re not done with The Home Reno Series, we’re just taking our sweet ass time on our primary bedroom. We hope to launch part 2 early 2025 (but don’t hold me to it). So for Sleepy Creek, we decided to make it a vlog series!

What does that mean? Well, it means more chill episodes, vlog style, where we document one project or part of a project in one episode instead of saving it all for one big video. Each episode will be between 12-15 minutes and reminiscent of the videos we were making in our early YouTube days.

Some feedback we got on the Home Reno Series was that you, the audience were hoping for more tutorial-style videos instead of entertainment. We took that feedback and applied it to Sleepy Creek. Our videos won’t be step-by-step tutorials for you to follow, but more so how WE are building a project and why, and the tools we’re using to get the job done. And because it’s a vlog series, we’re going to be sharing some camping and outdoor cooking content in the mix as well since we’ll be sleeping in trucks and tents while we work.

We don’t have a big plan for the series; we’re just going with the flow and documenting what we’re up to on our property. We won’t be posting every week as we do with our other series but rather sharing them as they are done, every couple of weeks, on Sundays at 10am on our YouTube channel.

 
 
 
DIY, Home RenovationBecki and Chris