Hooray! It's Curbly's Fourth Birthday! To Celebrate, We Wanna Give YOU Free Stuff!

Hello, hello, everyone in Curblyland! We’re pretty excited to share that this, the second week of November, marks the fourth birthday of Curbly.com. We’ve gone from a few folks in the Twin Cities area to a full-fledged writing team across the U.S., including our first intern!

To celebrate, we’ll be posting some of our favorite and most surprising posts from the past four years, and learning a little bit more about the Curbly team. AND! We wanna give you some free stuff, to say thanks for being here.

We hope you’ll join us. Check out the details:

To hear the story of how Curbly began, head to our one year anniversary celebration.
To get to know the folks who serve up this fresh DIY design content, check out our bio pages.
For kicks, wish us a happy birthday in the comments below, between now and Sunday 11.14. We’ll select five winners at random, and they’ll win a free copies of all of our Make It! how-to publications!
And, most importantly – Curbly’s first and longest standing Featured Writer, DIYMaven, answers a few questions about herself, her work, and the last four years with Curbly.com.

Please tell us the story of how you became the first Curbly Featured Writer. I answered an ad on Craigslist under ‘Writing Gig’ and arranged to meet [Curbly publisher] Bruno at a local coffee shop. Much to [my husband] MWT’s dismay, I might add, as, in his words, ‘You don’t even know this guy!’ He insisted upon going with me to the meeting and sipped a latte in a back corner of the coffee shop to keep an eye on me…or, rather, Bruno!

Before Curbly, how did you interact with the online interior design, décor, craft, and how-to community? Did you read other websites on our topics? I didn’t! Honestly, I only had a vague idea of what a blog was before I started writing for Curbly. I was, however, a serious This Old House and Changing Rooms fan, not to mention an HGTV junkie.

Before writing for Curbly, you were obviously very creative and always making things, but did you have any experience with creating instructional or how-to content? What did you have to learn? Well, in the graduate program in which I participated, we students were expected to conduct lessons now and again, adopting the role of ‘instructor’. I also taught continuing ed. classes in mosaic at local community centers for several years, which I loved. Not so much the subject itself (too messy!) but the teaching aspect of it.

What are your all-time favorite Curbly projects you’ve created? The ones you were most proud of, and still use and love today? My absolute favorites are the jewelry peg board and the literary ladder (which is featured in Make It! Hardware Store Decor). When people see them, they ALWAYS compliment them.

What has creating Curbly posts taught you? Where have you seen yourself grow having written thousands of posts? I think Curbly has helped me develop my ‘voice’. (Students and teachers of writing might be the only ones that get that.)

In what ways have you seen Curbly grow in the last four years? What do you miss about the way the site worked and looked in 2006-2007? The increased membership. I think when I joined up there were about 10 members! I honestly can’t even remember what Curbly used to look like when it was first born. (They grow up so quickly, you know.)

Besides Curbly, tell us how else you spend your time. When I’m not reading fiction, I’m writing fiction. I’m also hopelessly in love with photography.

One of our favorite Maven posts, the To-go Coffee Cup Tissue Pop-up!

What craft or medium do you think is your best? What skill would you like to work on developing in the next year? That’s a tough one. My family might say paper, as I’ve been making greeting cards for about 10 years now. (Note to self: buy red card stock for Christmas cards.) My photography instructor might say I have an ‘eye’ for photography (Note to self: sign up for winter 1 class). I used to be an excellent crocheter but had to give that up last year due to a ‘knuckle’ problem and have now become a born-again knitter. As far as skill-development goes, photography first, knitting second. So medium-wise, I guess that would be camera and yarn.

Desert island scenario: You have to spend the rest of your life on a magical island where there are endless raw materials, but no electricity. You have appropriate cookware, a knife, a tent and sleeping materials, and there’s plenty of food. What five tools/gadgets/supplies do you bring with you to pass the time? A solar panel so I could charge batteries for my Nikon, MacBook and iPod. And a Kindle…fully loaded. Yarn–the good stuff–and knitting needles of every material, length, etc. Oh…and a guitar and a really, really big telescope.

Here’s a list of DIYMaven’s most popular posts EVER! You don’t want to miss a single one.

Hooray! It’s Curbly’s Fourth Birthday! To Celebrate, We Wanna Give YOU Free Stuff!

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