Four years ago I started this blog on a whim. I had no idea what I was doing. And I did pretty much everything wrong from the get-go. I never set out to have a successful blog–I just wanted a place to talk about the houses that interested me. I didn’t know the “rules” about blogging. Heck, I had never even read a “house blog” before, let alone written one!

But sometimes ignorance is bliss. Because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I dove right in and never looked back.

For the first year or so I had a pitiful-looking blog header because I couldn’t figure out how to create a better one. I didn’t know to label photos for search engines, resize them, or lighten dark screencaps from movies. I didn’t grab my domain name early on and someone else snatched it out from under me (otherwise you’d be reading this at hookedonhouses.com).

I didn’t have a blog button for the first two years, something readers were always asking for but I didn’t know how to make (and my early attempts were pretty amateurish). After switching to a self-hosted version of WordPress, I went for six months with a basic black and white template until I finally hired a designer.

Boy, did I have a lot to learn. To say I was clueless in the beginning would be an understatement. Problogger could have used me as an example of how not to do things. But I kept going. And I’m still here, against the odds.

In blogging, 4 years feels like a lifetime. I’ve seen so many things change. So many other blogs come and go.To put things in perspective, when I started out, linky parties were a new concept. Giveaways on blogs were rare and exciting things. None of the blogs I read had ads on them, and no one talked about “monetizing” (now that’s the number-one question I get from new bloggers).

Twitter may have been around, but no one I knew was on it yet. And people were always passing out “blog awards” (Does anyone still do that? Maybe I just don’t get them any more!).

Early on, when I was excited just to get 100 visitors a day, I visited a blog that had been around for 5 years. Her stats counter showed 1 million, and I was in awe. I set a goal for myself to reach a million with my blog someday, too.

I never would have guessed that by my 3rd year, I’d be getting more hits than that every month. As of today, it’s gotten over 27 million of them since I started in 2008. Wow.

So take it from me–you don’t have to do everything perfectly. Just do your best. Learn as you go. Accept that you’ll probably make some stupid mistakes along the way. The important thing is to take steps in the direction of your dream anyway. Start working on it even when you don’t have all the answers.

I get lots of emails from new and would-be bloggers asking me to tell them my secret for making money at this. I was never strategic about any of it. I just started writing and got very lucky that people showed up to read my posts. After the first year, I put some ads in the sidebar to pay for what had become a full-time blogging habit. Thanks to them, I was able to quit my day job in 2010.

Best. Job. Ever. Big thanks to all of my readers for making it possible, and for sticking with me as I fumble along, trying to figure this all out. I still have so much to learn. One thing I know for sure–without you, I wouldn’t still be here 4 years and 2,000 posts later! -Julia

P.S. To read more of my blogging story: “How House Lust Got Me Here.”

Gotta say I was kind of disappointed to see the new house Jennifer Aniston just bought in Bel Air, California. It’s a little “chilly” for me, and if I had $21 million to spend, this is probably not what I’d spend it on.

However, if you like contemporary design as much as she apparently does, you might love this 8,500 square-foot house, which was designed in 1965 by A. Quincy Jones. Take a look!

The house originally went on the market for $29 million in 2008.

There are lots of great floor-to-ceiling windows:

A long covered balcony off the second floor:

According to Yahoo! Real Estate, the house comes with “more than three acres of land, views of the city and ocean, a pool, a guesthouse, a wine cellar, and—last but certainly not least—a vineyard. Let’s not forget to look inside: those distinctly midcentury-feeling interiors boasts gleaming wood floors, full-wall expanses of glass, and some pretty stunning fireplace detail.”

Jen seems to love real estate. Last May it was reported that she bought 2 apartments in NYC.

TMZ has all the photos if you want to see more. A gossip blog suggested that Jennifer bought this house so she and her boyfriend Justin Theroux could start a family here. It doesn’t really scream “family home” to me, though.

I preferred the more modest house she was renting in the Hollywood Hills:

It looked so much cozier to me. (You can see the rest of that house here.) But maybe she has plans to revamp this new place the way she did her former Beverly Hills home known as Ohana:

Here’s hoping she lets a magazine like Architectural Digest show us around after she gets settled in. I’d love to see what she does with the place, wouldn’t you? (Thanks to Kim for help with this one!)

Click here to see the Top 10 Celebrity Houses on my blog right now!

Ever dreamed of living in a castle? Well, here’s your chance! Dromborg Castle is only a few years old but looks like it’s been around much longer. The listing boasts that “it was built to reign 10,000 years.”

It sits on 100 acres overlooking the Ozark Mountains in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and it’s on the market for $14.3 million. Take a look!

“Magnificent iron gates open through beautifully crafted stone walls to the private driveway which gracefully winds up the mountain to the estate,” per the listing.

The dining room has seating for 14.

The details they put into this house are pretty incredible. The agent says, “Each room is detailed to perfection including exquisite hand-carved and hand-rubbed moldings, deeply fluted columns, coffered ceilings, antique lighting, and high ceilings.”

The house also comes with a Chapel, Men’s Lounge, Map Room, Wine Cellar, 4th floor Observation Deck, and a 6-car heated garage.

Oh, and there’s a 3,800 square-foot guest house, too. Lucky guests!

Want it? For more photos and information about Dromborg Castle, check the listing by Kristen Boozman of Portfolio Luxury Real Estate. (Thanks to Kim for telling me about it!)

Hooked on Castles?

• Downton Abbey’s Highclere Castle
• Gertrude Zachary’s Castle on Skid Row
• Phil Spector’s Creepy Castle

Several of you wrote to tell me I should check out the sets on the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars. When I heard that some of it is filmed on the same backlot used for Stars Hollow on Gilmore Girls (one of my favorite shows ever), I immediately got the first season on DVD and started watching.

The show is about four high school girls–Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and Emily–who are dealing with the mysterious disappearance of their friend Alison. They live in the posh town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, in four beautiful houses–let’s take a look!

Aria’s House:

Aria’s family lives in a beautiful old Craftsman-style home in Rosewood.

Holly Marie Combs plays Aria’s mother Ella. The photo above and below were taken from the pilot when the Montgomery family was moving into the house. Check out that old stove behind her:

The police show up at the girls’ houses a lot on this show–the minute they get out of one scrape, they get into another!

Chad Lowe plays Aria’s dad Byron, whose affair with a fellow teacher has put his marriage in jeopardy.

Aria’s brother Mike’s bedroom:

Aria’s bedroom:

Aria is played by Lucy Hale. How I Met Your Mother fans (love that show!) may recognize her as Robin’s little sister.

Spencer, Hanna, and Emily gather in Aria’s bedroom to discuss the latest mystery in their search for Alison’s killer:

The show is based on a popular book series by Sara Shepard.

A close-up of Aria’s desk:

Hanna’s House:

Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson) lives in a traditional two-story with a white-picket fence. Since her dad left them, she and her mom Ashley (played by Laura Leighton) are having to work hard to keep up appearances.

Most of the scenes in Hanna’s house play out in her white kitchen:

Hanna was supposedly “the fat one” who went to great lengths to lose the weight and reinvent herself after Alison disappeared. In flashbacks they make her wear baggy sweats to try to convince us she was chubby.

We finally got a look at Hanna’s bedroom recently, in Season 2.

Her yellow lamp looks like the ones Rachel Zoe has in her dining room, doesn’t it?

Emily’s House:

Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) and her mother Pam (Nia Peeples) in the kitchen:

Living Room:

The house is painted in shades of soft green and tan.

It almost feels like pages out of a furniture catalog to me.

Dining Room:

Emily’s Bedroom:

Norman Buckley, who has directed episodes of the show, wrote about creating the look for it:

The town of Rosewood doesn’t feel so much like a real town as a state of mind.  Since PRETTY LITTLE LIARS is shot almost completely on the Warner Brothers lot, there is a dream-like quality to some of the compositions that feels melancholy and mysterious, very Hopper-esque.

It’s a really interesting discussion about how Edward Hopper’s paintings have influenced the show. You can read the rest on Buckley’s blog.

I would’ve killed for a big windowseat like this in my bedroom growing up!

Spencer’s House:

Spencer’s family is the wealthiest of them all. They always seem to come and go through this back door to the kitchen, so I haven’t been able to snap a pic of the front of the house yet.

At the beginning of the series, the kitchen looked like this:

Then at some point during Season 1 it got a makeover.

Rich-girl Spencer Hastings is played by Troian Bellisario.

Spencer’s bedroom:

You can see what an overachiever Spencer is just by looking at all the ribbons on her wall above her desk:

Alison’s House:

In the pilot, we see new owners moving Alison’s former home, and there are boxes of her things left out on the sidewalk to be thrown away.

I had a hard time believing her family wouldn’t taken their daughter’s belongings with them when they moved–or that her friends wouldn’t go through them to see what should be saved.

Is anyone else watching Pretty Little Liars? Ever recognize anything from Stars Hollow? Interestingly, the production designer is Rachel Kamerman, who also worked on Gilmore Girls. A lot of the town scenes look familiar, when they’re walking past the shops or they pan past this white church:

Gotta admit I initially tuned in to the show to see the sets, but the mystery sucked me in! You can read more about it and catch up on episodes you missed on the official ABC Family website. Which house is your favorite?

More TV Houses to Gawk at:

• Gossip Girl
• Brothers & Sisters
• Gilmore Girls
• See ‘em all!

Here are 5 of my readers’ houses on the market right now. Check ‘em out!

#1. A Lovely “Young Colonial” in Massachusetts.

#2. A New House Built to Blend Into an Historic Neighborhood in St. Louis.

#3. A Beautifully Decorated Home in the Georgia Mountains.

#4. 5,000 Square Feet with Stunning Views in Southern Utah.

#5. Move-In Ready in a Pennsylvania Pool Community.

Thanks to all the readers who submitted their listings on my Facebook page. I will be posting more of them next week. If you’d like yours to be considered, send me the link. Best of luck to all of you–hope they sell soon! -Julia

A reader named Meredith told me about this Mid-Century modern house that her real-estate investment group Heaton Dainard flipped in Seattle, Washington. She says, “We went for a contemporary look, which is popular in this area.”

Here’s how the exterior looked before it got a makeover:

The interiors were pretty dated–doesn’t look like anyone had redecorated anything in the house in decades:

Whoever lived here before certainly loved color!

But what stopped me in my tracks was the kitchen:

I swear we had those same orange flowers on the walls of our kitchen when I was growing up (at least until my mom got around to redecorating it!). The wallpaper covered the entire room. We didn’t have orange and yellow cabinets to match, though.

Here’s how this Mid-Century looks now, after a head-to-toe remodel:

The house was meticulously staged to sell, and their efforts paid off. Meredith says the house sold before it was listed, and above the list price.

Have you gotten into the gray trend? I’m starting to think I’m the only one who doesn’t have a gray room in her house.

Hard to believe it’s the same house. The kitchen makeover is especially dramatic.

It’s always nice to see an older home brought back to life for a new generation of owners.

You can see all of the before and afters on Active Rain. Thanks to Meredith and Heaton Dainard, a real estate investment firm founded by James Dainard and Will Heaton, for sharing it with us!

Click Here to See More Before & Afters!

One of the great things about Pinterest is that I keep coming across beautiful houses I’ve seen in magazines over the years but had kind of forgotten about. Today’s rediscovery was this 1840s schoolhouse in the Catskills that I fell in love with when Country Living featured it.

It belongs to Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke, a magazine editor and a decorator, who bought the neglected Federal-style schoolhouse for only $30,000.

At that time it was a rental, and it was a big ol’ mess. They spent a year transforming the 900 square-foot schoolhouse into a colorful little weekend retreat they dubbed Monkey Cottage.

The stairs and railings are painted a playful spring green:

When I saw this former schoolhouse again today, I knew it needed to be added to my page of favorite cottages.

The house has no closets, but at least there are some wonderful built-in cubbies like these:

It does my heart good to see an old building like this restored and given a fresh start. (And it looks really fresh with all the yellows and greens!)

Homeowners Jason and John under the “Monkey Cottage” sign at the side door:

I would love to have a cheerful little cottage like this to retreat to on weekends, wouldn’t you? For more photos and information about the former schoolhouse, check out the article at Country Living (photos by Lucas Allen; story by Sara Bliss).

Hooked on Cottages? Click here to see more of my favorites!

Alot of people have been repinning this photo of Christina Aguilera in her mega-pink closet on Pinterest lately, which got me wondering whether her Beverly Hills house is still for sale. Turns out it is, and there are more photos of her closet–which comes with its own beauty salon–in the listing.

The whole house has some pretty “Whoa!” decor, which we saw in InStyle magazine a couple years ago. Now divorced from Jordan Bratman and moving on, she’s selling it for $13.5 million.

She bought this house from Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne in 2007, who made it famous on their reality show. Before moving in, she had it completely redecorated.

The game room–complete with a pink pool table:

The kitchen, which I always wanted to see more of on The Osbournes, looks barely recognizable as the same room now:

Here’s how the kitchen looked in InStyle when the mag featured it:

What we couldn’t see in that photo was the “Apopcalypse” sign above the stove:

It’s not every day you see a carousel horse in a dining room, is it? There is just a whole lot going on in here. Wow.

The upstairs landing, with what looks like a Chihuly chandelier:

Christina’s son Max is 4 now.

When he was a baby, a (scary) Man in the Moon watched over the crib (via People):

The Master Bedroom has a kind of black canopy bed on a platform:

There are 6 bedrooms and 9 baths in the house, which is 10,000 square feet.

The Master Bath:

She told InStyle that she had not one but two closets. That red chandelier in this one is, as Rachel Zoe would say, major. (Hey, doesn’t it look like a smaller version of the one in the entry?)

The closet has “a beauty salon” inside.

And don’t forget the wrapping station:

What do you think? Love it or hate it, it’s anything but boring! For more photos and information, check the listing on Zillow by Brooke Kaufman of Hilton & Hyland.

Check out this post to see pics of the house featured in InStyle magazine. Did you watch the Osbournes? Here’s how it looked when they called this home.

Click Here to see the Top 10 Celebrity Houses of the Month!

Nate Berkus and the staff of his Oprah-owned talk show got some bad news right before the the new year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it will finish out its second season but won’t be returning for a third.

The Nate Berkus Show has struggled from the beginning, when it premiered in September of 2010 with a 1.1 rating, and it’s now the lowest-rated among established talk shows.

Photo via In My Style, who was in the audience.

In the fall of 2010 they invited bloggers to be in the audience for a taping of the show. But then, after we all tuned in to see them–Nate never mentioned on air that they were there. Oops. Not a great way to impress the bloggers or their readers right out of the gate.

(As you may remember, the online fury continued for days. Lesson here: Never tick off a bunch of bloggers–or their loyal readers!)

However. After that misstep, Nate more than redeemed himself by showcasing many amazing bloggers on his show. I usually fast-forward through the fashion and food segments, checking to see if there are any bloggers I know on the show each day. It’s been fun seeing so many of my favorites on TV.

I was really rooting for him and wish he could’ve made it work. I can’t say I was surprised when I heard it wasn’t coming back in the fall, though. Unlike Oprah’s other talk-show children Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, and Dr. Oz, it just never really took off.

Lots of new talk shows are being developed with hosts like Jeff Probst, Katie Couric and Ricki Lake, all waiting to snag his spot, so we’ll see if any of them can do better.

Are you a fan of his show? Will you be sorry to see Nate go? Or did you already stop watching a long time ago?

P.S. I was never on The Nate Show, but they used some of my photos once. That’s my only claim to Nate Show fame. Ha.

You can see photos of Nate’s Gold Coast condo, which he sold when he moved to NYC for his talk show, here.

Talk about a Power Couple! Alison Pincus is one of the founders of the popular One Kings Lane website, and her husband Mark Pincus started the gaming company Zynga, which we all have to blame thank for FarmVille. They’re selling their house in San Francisco’s posh Presidio Heights for $8.9 million. Take a look!

I’m loving the yellow tile in the kitchen.

Would love to get a better look at the view from that roof terrace:

The back of the house:

According to Zillow, an alleged stalker may be the reason they’re leaving the area. Scary stuff. The couple also had a smaller home in Cole Valley that they recently sold–photos of it here.

Here’s a video that gives you the full tour, including aerial views of the house and neighborhood, and explains features like the magnetic wall near the kitchen:

Want it? For more photos and information, visit the listing at Teed Haze Real Estate.

On Sundays I feature interesting properties for sale:

• Cute Dog Working to Sell Hamptons House
• Charming Country Cape for Sale in Connecticut
• Novelist Emily Giffin’s Traditional Southern Home in Atlanta