Welcome to the blog. Here you’ll find daily dispatches and all the musings of our family’s adventures in our small town as we raise our kids, fix up our farm, and renovate houses, all through the lens of Keep & Delete, where we share the best (Keep) and worst (Delete) part of every day. Thanks for stopping by! We’re so glad you’re here.
We're PJ (blue shirt) & Thomas (plaid shirt) and we're a southern couple living in our hometown in Tennessee. We have a passion for interior design and restoring old houses, and we even filmed a TV show about it for HGTV called Down to the Studs.
We were both born and raised in a small town in south east Tennessee, in a city of about 40,000 people where everyone knows everyone and you can't go to the grocery store without running into your mother's hairdresser's nephew. It's small, but we wouldn't have it any other way.
We started our Instagram account @PJandThomas (formerly @ThePropertyLovers) back in 2015 to document our journey of fixing up our 1950's house and decided to start this blog as an extension of that channel. We discuss daily life from Thomas’ point of view as we renovate houses, raise our 3 children, start a farm, and navigate everyday family life.
We love anything to do with old houses, pizza and movie nights, coffee, pups, Saturday mornings, traveling, wine, and demo-days, but most of all, our family. Thanks for stopping by, and if you’d like, you can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter!
We first met at a mutual friend's get together back in 2009, though Thomas had pretty much been in love with PJ since 2007 when he saw his picture on MySpace. At the time, PJ was in a relationship and Thomas wasn't out yet, so we didn't think much of it.
About 8 months later PJ's relationship ended and he sent Thomas a friend request on Facebook. We started messaging the whole day, and then texting all day the next. On day three, Thomas came over to PJ's house and we stayed up all night talking about our pasts, our futures, and everything in between (you can read the full account of that first night here). Thomas slept in the guest bedroom that night and in the morning PJ rushed off to work before Thomas was awake, but left a scribbled note on a torn envelope saying "I had fun last night, we should do it again some time. P.S.- you made it into my dream last night, pretty scary huh?" Thomas still has the envelope.
2010
From there, we enjoyed spending every day together, though Thomas still wasn't out yet. About a month and a half into dating, Thomas came out to his family and friends and so nothing was holding us back anymore and we became official that fall. Thomas proposed to PJ on Christmas Day in 2014, and PJ returned the favor on Thomas' birthday the following March. We were married in October of 2015, another reason we love fall more than any other season!
In the summer of 2019, we became foster parents to a sibling group of three who completely changed our life in every way possible. We have become a family and can’t imagine our life without them (what did we do before kids?!). After fostering for two years, we finally adopted Allan, Riah, and Anna in August of 2021 and officially became a family of five. We now raise our children in the same house Thomas grew up in while fixing up our farm and taking care of (what feels like) a million animals.
You can read all about our foster care journey here.
Over the course of 14 years, we've been through 13 cars, 13 houses, 9 dogs, 1 cat, 2 different marriage proposals, 1 TV show, and endless amounts of laughter, tears, and joy.
