This is a Bramble Jam podcast.

Welcome to Girls Gone Homewark, a Homewark review podcast.

I'm Megan and I'm a longtime Hallmark fan.

I'm Wendy.

I'm a former Homemark hater.

In Today's episode is a little bit different.

Today is a reintroduction episode.

We recently received an email from listener Heather who said, Hi, I've been a listener for some time and I was trying to find the very first episode of the show to listen to introductions.

However, I can't find it on Spotify or Apple podcast.

Could you redo an introduction of yourselves?

Please?

Well, hold on a second.

Our very first episode is somewhere out there, right, sure.

Our very first episode is jingle Bell Bride.

That is its far back.

That's when we started.

That was the first Countdown to Christmas movie of twenty twenty that we did.

And I believe that was the first weekend of Countdown to Christmas.

Oh really, yes, And I'm not sure I think it's a good point.

I'm not sure there would be an introductory episode.

You're right, because it was.

It was a bonus episode on our other podcast that we did.

So let's start from the beginning.

Because Heather has a list of questions including how did you become friends?

All right, do you want to tell that story?

We've told this story, we have, but we're going to pin this as the trailer of the podcast.

If you ever want to come back to it hear the origin story.

We've definitely told it here before.

But if you're new or you just want to rehear the Megan and Wendy origin story, here it is.

We did meet on Twitter in twenty eleven, back when Twitter was not the place that it is today.

That's pool that exists on the internet now.

And we were mommy bloggers at the time, both of us, and we we're in the Orange County blogging space.

That was a thing in the mommy blogging space.

Yeah, and still so.

A million years ago.

There was a group of Orange County bloggers and there were Orange County blogging events, and we actually met in person at the blog Her conference in San Diego that same year in twenty eleven, yep, and then kind of ran in the same blogging circles for a few years.

I'm just trying to think, like, I don't know what the progression look like for us.

I honestly don't remember.

I don't remember either, except in twenty fourteen we started a YouTube channel that was twenty fourteen, yes, because that would be it might have been twenty thirteen.

Your daughter was in preschool, yeah, time, and she would have gone to preschool in twenty thirteen.

I could dig back into the YouTube arcaves.

I'm not going to.

But we started a YouTube channel that was honestly largely driven by me.

Megan, Oh yeah, I didn't want to do any of that.

I talked you into it.

Now.

At the time, we had fully separate online presences.

We both had our own separate mommy blogs, and we said, let's start this YouTube channel.

We said, I said let's start this YouTube channel, and dragged Monday along with me, and we did that for six years, a long freaking time.

There are hundreds of YouTube videos.

They still are out there.

The channel has been rebranded as Girls con Hamewark because our podcast episodes are over there.

But all of our old episodes were there, and that was called Long Story Shore and those were taste tests.

Which we fell into accidentally.

Beauty halls, tag videos, there's some vlogs up there.

There are hundreds and hundreds of videos on that channel.

Yeah, if you want to see like what we look like, I think that's like the best place.

Sure, tis like, but again a million years ago, million years ago, I look at it, like, my house doesn't look like that anymore.

Same house, same house, color has changed.

Yeah, very different time.

And then the joke, if you've ever heard, is that you know, in January kind of have a State of the Union meeting every year, and Wendy would show up every for a couple of years and be like, I'm ready to quit.

I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm burned out.

Especially it was tough during the YouTube days because creating YouTube content it was very time consuming.

Yes, and you know it was.

This was also pre TikTok, pre reels.

It was influencer video was just like on the cusp of like you.

Short form video didn't even exist exactly.

So here we are making these YouTube videos every week like for years and years and years, trying to like monetize it, trying to like make a name for ourselves, and it just was like not happening.

And in that window of time, we created a combined internet space, like the YouTube channel grew into a website.

Yeah, this is all under the Long Story Short with Meg and Wendy branding, and then and Wendy would have these epiphanies every January like this is hard, I don't want to do it.

And then when I say that, I feel like I dragged her kicking and screaming.

But I also feel like the conversations were like, well, let's just see, let's just see.

And at the beginning of twenty twenty was when we had both hit a wall and just decided that creating video.

Was no longer working for us.

Yeah, we took a break.

It wasn't fun anymore.

We took a break.

And I guess that timing was good because then the world would shut down, and so we kind of put a pause on content creation.

It didn't we weren't really in a creative space.

It felt a little weird to be creating content while we were locked down at home.

And cut to September of that year, we started to feel like maybe we could start creating again.

We're like, we missed this.

We just needed a break.

We needed a break, and then we also at that point needed we needed to be doing something.

We'd been home for long enough, our kids were still home, we were in a groove and we did something for ourselves, and so we launched our very first podcast, the first four podcasts we have launched since then, and that was Long Story Short with Me and Wendy, which was women's lifestyle content, and it was it's about as vague as you can get.

It is super vague, but the podcast itself encompassed so many things.

It's kind of what our patreon is now, right.

But we would have an up top segment where we would connect chat about recent and then every episode had to focus everything from why I hate Mother's Day to meals my family is eating to pop Culture Club started over there, yep.

And very early on.

Within the first month or so, Wendy had an idea.

This freaking hater was like, Hey, I have an idea about Hallmark movies and that story I've told it last year when we had Danny Pellegrino on the podcast.

I am a big fan of Danny Pellegreno's podcast.

He talks about housewives and stuff like that.

And one night I'm laying in bed and he's talking about Hallmark movies and I was like, that's funny.

I've never watched a Hallmark movie.

And I knew that Megan and her husband had seen a bunch of them, and I was like, wouldn't that be funny if we reviewed Hallmark movies from the perspective Wendy who's never seen one, and quite frankly like, that's not my jam like a romance the way I saw them at the time, where like, oh, these are just like romantic happily ever after happily ever after stories, And I'm like, come on, like, I have lived a life like and life does not look like that.

I just was not into it.

Also, I think compounding that is you're a little bit of a former Christmas hater too.

Yeah, so in addition to not fully being into and not fully necessarily getting the vibe of these movies, you didn't necessarily want to.

Sit in the Christmas season for all these movies.

Correct.

But we decided to do it.

We said, let's do one movie a week, Like I can commit to the bit even though I don't love bits.

If you listen to any of our podcasts.

I thought it would be funny.

I thought I could come at it as like, oh, real hater, I could come at it with just like a negative point of view.

I thought that would be funny, but then learned real quickly that it's not very cool to do that.

Yeah, well, I think once we very quickly.

The initial vibe was Yes, I had watched homework movies for a long time, but prior to making a podcast out of them, I was a very casual watcher.

I didn't know who any of these people were.

I they were like a comfort food at the end of the night.

We could turn one on and fall asleep.

But I knew the vibe.

I didn't know any of the details.

I was not that kind of watcher at that point.

We started making these podcasts, and we had committed to let's do Countden to Christmas, Let's do one movie a week for this countdown a Christmas season, And it was a bonus episode on that long story short podcast.

And I think what we learned was, Oh, these are real people making these movies.

It's not necessarily all that fun to show up and shot all over someone's job all day long.

Right, Although the different points of view can be funny, and I think we often do have a different point of view, our attitude now is not let this be a takedown.

Correct we try and approach it objectively.

There's a lot of things we like, but when something doesn't land, we talk about that too, rather than being a personal attack.

And so for two years, you know.

At the end of that season, people were like, hey, keep going, So we kept going.

There was this audience of people who wanted these Homewark reviews, and for two years it existed as a bonus episode on that podcast.

I to this day, I don't know why we did that.

I don't know why we did that.

In twenty twenty two, I said, hey, this should be its own pot.

We were sitting here one day, this should be its own podcast.

That It blows my mind that we didn't get their stay.

No, I don't know why.

So we made it its own podcast, and we didn't even give it its own website until two years after that.

It's just it's wild to me because Girls con Hamewark is the most successful thing we've ever done.

It's the most engaged project we've ever created in twelve years of working together, and it just like so long to get to that place of.

Oh, make it its own thing.

Yeah, so just you just can't see it.

No.

Yeah, So that's the Girl's Cone Hallmark origin story.

Our overall business is Megan and Wendy Media.

We have Midlife Besties, which is a website under that umbrella as well, and our Patreon also exists under that umbrella, which, if you're not a listener an you like this style episode that you're getting right now, you might really like Patreon.

Patreon dot com, slash Megan and Wendy.

It's a lot looser over there, very loose.

The Heather asks, what is your favorite Hallmark movie?

Oh, hands down, my favorite Hallmark movie all time is a Bill Moore Christmas.

It is the epitome it is.

It really is the best of the best.

Not just because I love Chris Palaja.

I'm like, guys, former Hallmark hater here, like I didn't know anybody's name, I didn't know anything, and now I'm telling you my favorite Hallmark movie is a Christmas movie, a time travel movie.

I don't like sci fi, Like, I know it's not sci fi, but time travel for me falls under that.

Anyway, this is the best movie ever made that I've ever seen from Hallmark.

And I've seen a what did you say, we had like five hundred episodes?

Maybe do so.

Yeah, we've seen a few few movies.

Yeah, I think that's a I think that would be my favorite Christmas movie too.

I love the Science Healed Delivered series.

Oh my god, it's so good.

It's really worth your time.

We did not want to watch that, guys.

No, and when we announced it, several people came into our dms like, WHOA pump the brakes that you're gonna regret this.

I do not regret it.

No, no, no.

That's really worth your time.

I loved the Mystery one O one series.

We just did a rewatch this past summer.

The Way Home is one of my favorite television shows, not just Hallmark shows.

I think it's the kind of thing that I think non Hallmark watchers could get into.

Yeah, Finding Mister Christmas is right up.

There with reality shows.

I love.

Yes agree, So.

Yeah, longtime Homemark fans.

We had talked off Mike mag I was like, what are your favorite like Hallmark movies?

And I'm like, you know, I have a whole bunch of favorites outside of Christmas.

If I may, can I just please through them?

The Magic of Limon Drops.

Loved Love Love just because it was so different.

Love that movie Savoring Paris.

I'm telling you.

Summer twenty twenty four delivered Savoring Paris.

Bethany joy Lynds was so good.

In fact, if you're looking for a Hallmark, watch a Bethany joy Lynn's movie, right She's real good.

She's fantastic and I really enjoy her movies.

In fact, I just watched one that I had never seen before as a Valentine movie.

I can't remember the name of it right now.

A loved Me Christmas Waltz with Lacy Shabert and Will Kemp love that give me a dancing segment, loved it.

I'm a big fan of Wowie Ssowie Webster.

Summer Villa is a great movie.

That's a good movie.

I have a bunch.

So I think that's where the former hallmarketer comes from.

Is like, oh yeah, I don't even recognize myself anymore, Like when I want to throw on show, like I will turn on Hallmark Plus now just to have something running, because like you said, comfort food, it does something to my brain, like it just feels good, like I see it.

I get it now, I get it.

That doesn't mean I still can be like critical, you know.

I think the Hallmark hater came from not understanding or appreciating Hallmark as its own genre.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that's really important if you're a Hallmark watcher to acknowledge that Hallmark movies.

And I feel like Hallmark movie is is a brand name like Kleenex.

Like you would refer to a lot of made for TV movies as Hallmark movies, not just those that air on the Hallmark way.

But a Hallmark movie is a very specific thing, produced in a very specific way, on a very specific budget, with a very specific format.

And I think you have to evaluate it differently than you would a theatrical release, right than you would a Netflix movie.

They're different entities to me.

Yeah, So I think once you have that understanding, watching it with those eyes makes it a very different experience.

You're not trying to make this the next Avengers movie.

You're not trying to make it the next Jennifer Anderson romcom Right.

So those are my thoughts.

If you have other questions, email them to us Girls Gone Hamemark at gmail dot com.

We will include them in an upcoming Listener mail bag episode.

We hope you.

Enjoyed this episode of Girls Gone Hallmark.

We'll be back next time with more Hallmark reviews.

Goodbye, bye.

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