Owego Native D-I-Y Superstar

2/17/2013 (Updated 11:17:21 PM)

Meet Abbey Hendrickson, mother, author, and avid do it yourself-er. 

"I think it started with my parents. My parents were always renovating houses or building houses so it started then," said Hendrickson.

When Abbey and her husband decided to pursue their masters degrees in visual arts-- the Southern Tier native started a blog to share her life with her family back home. 

"When it first started it was like this happened at work today, this happened to my baby today, it was really boring," said Hendrickson.

While moving from Massachusetts  to Buffalo to settling back home in Owego--Hendrickson turned to the "blogosphere" as a way to connect with other like-minded people.

"When we moved back here, I was a stay at home mom, I had two tiny kids and everyone I knew around here worked. So finding a community was really important to me, and I just so happened to find it online," says Hendrickson.

And her blog posts became anything but boring.  Before she knew it, thousands of people were reading about the joys and challenges of renovating this Owego farm house, raising her two children and her favorite crafts. 

The blog soon turned Abbey into a D-I-Y superstar, grabbing the attention of 17,000 followers and helping her publish her second book.

Hendrickson says connecting online helped her "do it herself."

"It's immeasurable, I don't think that I would be where I was now without that online community and that support from other bloggers, and from other crafts people reaching out, getting random supportive emails" said Hendrickson.