To The Next Step

Today is a big day for in a nutshell. A bittersweet one, but a big one.

We started this blog on May 15, 2011. We were five best friends who came together in university and had big dreams for ourselves as new graduates.

Gen Y babies—young adults that were keeping in time with the blogging boom. With none of our feet firmly planted in our careers, we thought we’d unite our love of writing and our varied interests and create a space on the Internet to call our own. A portfolio piece, a way to show future employers we were self-starters, and—most importantly—a reason to collaborate and keep in contact on a daily basis.

“In a nutshell” —one of our better post-wine consumption ideas—took a few months to plan, a few dollars (domain name, business cards, matching t-shirts, obvs), and a bit of bravery.

With five naively written posts and no real idea what we were getting ourselves into, we launched (on a Sunday of all days? #bloggingfail) and were astounded with the response.

Our stats for day one flew off the charts.

Because of the unexpected support coming from all over, almost as soon as it began it morphed into something bigger than we had imagined.

Over the years, this blog has seen constant evolution. Our posts, now written with more expertise, went from touting the best route for a pub crawl to the most effective way to buy a home. We saw a complete re-design, introduced guest bloggers, secured a monthly spot on CTV and more opportunities presented themselves. Moves, career changes, new loves, our first in a nutshell engagement—we’ve been happy to share a little piece of our lives with you and honoured that you’ve been along for the ride.

Quite simply, we’ve grown up on this blog.

And with growing up comes change.

A few weeks ago, the five of us had a conversation and decided it’s time for the blog to go in another new direction.

Despite having faithful readers in many cities, we’ve been very lucky to firmly cement ourselves in the Ottawa community.

As priorities have begun to shift, the Ottawa writers (myself, Meghan and Kate) are taking on a bigger role and we are sadly saying goodbye to Kaylee and Jess’s in a nutshell contributions.

Of course, there are no hard feelings and four years strong is something pretty remarkable. We’re thankful for the memories and experiences we’ve had as a group of five and are excited for this new chapter.

As hard as change is, we’ve all come to know that it is often good, too. Sometimes, a little wind in your sails and a change of direction can lead to great things.

So, we are by no means saying goodbye to this blog we’ve come to love. Just a bittersweet farewell to two of those who have truly made it what it is today and a promise that you can still count on great content in the future.

And, with a new nutshell comes new photos. We were SO lucky to have the extraordinarily talented Laura Kelly Photography help us out with some new shots. You can feel the love:

As always, thanks for reading.

The (slightly revised) nuts, xo