Six years is a ridiculous amount of time to leave a blog unattended.
In my defense, I had children to raise, food to cook, rabbit holes to fall into, things to question, physical media to collect, plants to unsuccessfully keep alive, and apparently an entire digital estate to inherit.
So... here we are.
If you were around during the NeoshaLoves days, first of all - hey, friend. It’s been a minute.
A very long minute.
I started blogging back in 2010. What began as me sharing whatever I happened to love eventually became this wonderfully random little corner of the internet filled with recipes, motherhood, beauty, reviews, discoveries, opinions, and whatever else had my attention that week.
And then, in 2020, I stopped posting.
Not intentionally.
There wasn't a dramatic farewell post. I didn't ceremoniously close the laptop and announce that I was retiring from the internet.
Life just got busier. Since my hiatus, I managed to survive the COVID apocalypse of 2020 long enough to see AI become both a genuinely useful resource and a creepy sequel to The Giver.
What a time to be alive. Literally.
And somewhere along the way, this blog became a time capsule.
Every once in a while, I'd stumble across an old post - usually because Google or Pinterest was apparently still sending somebody to something I wrote a decade ago -- and I'd end up reading my own words like I had discovered somebody else's diary.
Some things made me laugh.
Some made me cringe.
Some had me thinking, Girl... what were you even TALKING about?
And some? I still stand ten toes down on. 😂
I thought about starting over.
New name. New website. Clean slate.
Very respectable. Very grown woman of me. Demure.
But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted one.
Because I did write those posts.
I took those pictures.
I made those recipes.
I had those opinions.
That younger version of me built something before I fully understood what she was building.
Deleting her because I've changed would defeat the entire point of growing.
So, I'm keeping the archives. All of them.
The good. The questionable. The very 2014 photography. LOL
And when something deserves another look, I'll pull it from the archives and give it a Devereaux Remaster -- revisiting the original through the eyes, experience, kitchen, motherhood, knowledge, or sheer audacity I have now.
The original stays exactly where it is.
We don't rewrite history around here.
So, what exactly is House of Devereaux?
Technically? It's this blog. Spiritually?
I may have gotten carried away with the metaphor.
Because somewhere between deciding to revive NeoshaLoves and actually doing it, I stopped thinking of this place as a blog and started thinking of it as a house.
And suddenly everything had a room.
Recipes belong in The Kitchen.
My growing physical media collection and nostalgia obsession wandered into The Library.
Research, law, consumer education, and the rabbit holes I probably should have gone to sleep instead of investigating belong in The Study.
Motherhood, homeschool, and the general chaos of raising humans took over The Great Room.
Wellness, natural living, growing food, and my ongoing determination to eventually have some land belong in The Garden.
Beauty and style have The Vanity.
And all the miscellaneous things I inevitably drag home?
They're Around the House.
Naturally.
And then there's Lucinda.
I'm Neo.
But in this multiverse, you can call me Lucinda Devereaux.
I simply decided that if I was going to inherit a digital estate from another timeline, I deserved an appropriately dramatic name.
And apparently, an appropriately dramatic property to go with it.
Somewhere in the multiverse sits a Tuscan-inspired estate where I serve as steward, fresh ingredients are always finding their way into the kitchen, the sounds of nature drift through open windows, and everyday life provides most of the stories worth telling.
The Haus is real. Just not tangible outside of the computer screen in this timeline.
And frankly, the property taxes are much more reasonable this way.
I don't make the rules.
But actually... I suppose I do now. I have the keys.
Things are different here.
I'm different.
I'm a mother of three now.
I've lived more life. I've learned more things. I've questioned even more things.
My interests have expanded in approximately 4700 directions, which means this site probably will too.
I'm not interested in squeezing myself into a niche.
I did that whole internet thing where we're apparently supposed to package every part of ourselves into something easily marketable.
I'm good. I want to write. I want to document things.
I want to share things worth sharing.
I want to preserve pieces of the internet that feel increasingly disposable.
I want to make food and tell you whether it was actually good.
I want to talk about old, nostalgic movies.
I want to research something entirely too deeply because somebody made one suspicious statement and now, I need answers.
I want to document motherhood while my children are still running through the house.
I want somewhere to put the things I learn while I'm building whatever comes next.
And sometimes I just want to say something because it was on my mind.
Basically...
NeoshaLoves grew up. She didn't disappear.
Her fingerprints are all over this place.
So, after six years...
I'm blogging again.
No grand content strategy.
No promise that every post will fit neatly into a box.
No pretending I'm starting from scratch.
There's more than a decade of history sitting behind these walls, and I'm bringing some of it with me.
The foundation was already here.
I just needed to come home to it.
We keep our archives.
We honor our growth.
And we feed people well.
The House is open.
Come on in.
- Lucinda
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