And here we are, at the midst of a new beginning and reflecting back on the last 12 months. Honestly, it’s all starting to hit me at once. We accomplished a lot prior to 2015, but frankly, no other year became as critical as the work we produced in 2015. We went from a “blog” to a publication. We grew up!

We are still a very young company ran by a young and tight-knit team of creatives. Though we are only now starting to scratch the surface of forming our own path, 2015 really set the tone of what is possible by simply executing creative ideas.

So, below is a quick and dirty recap of what execution looked like for us in 2015:

We launched a printed magazine — the biggest, most ambitious project we have ever embarked on. And not only did we launch one issue that was well-crafted, beautifully designed and more akin to a coffee table book, we published four of them, just this year. That is over four hundred 7.5×9.5 inch pages of stories spanning across the world. I must also confess something: I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, I’m still learning and continue to iron out the kinks as we go on. But you know what? That’s okay because we’re evolving, refining, building, and getting better. That process is what makes this whole journey an exciting adventure.

We released five original short films — while we now publish a fancy new magazine, cinema will always play a large role here at Life & Thyme. This year, we released Pasta Fatta a Mano (reaching over 100k views on Youtube), Prelude (in collab with Verve Coffee), Alimento, Otium: Chapter One, and our latest, a Holiday Chef Potluck (a spin-off to a story in Issue Four). Each one being unique to their own while elevating cinematic storytelling into food.

We published over 133 original stories online — That is 133 original, mainly longform stories documenting the world of food.

Our Instagram account reached over 65,000 followers — our main channel to connect with our community.

Speaking of Instagram, our #lifeandthyme community hashtag clocked in over 120,000 photos — this here is definitely one of the most meaningful numbers to me. People from all over the world, contributing photos of what excites them about food, on Instagram.

We launched Journal — what you’re reading now, a place to organize our own internal thoughts and a peek into the behind the scenes of Life & Thyme.

So we have been busy, but we’re only getting started. We have big ideas to execute in 2016 and we can’t wait to share them with you. See you in the New Year.

—AD