Welcome to Coffee & Tacos, a fresh new space where I plan to record my musings about connecting with others through some of my very favorite things – food, travel, faith, and community. Surely lots of other topics will crop up here and there, but for now, that’s the gist. If you’ve followed me over here from Through Painted Deserts, a thousand thanks. I promise to leave my old site up forever and ever (probably more for my benefit than yours – it’s like an online scrapbook that I cherish so very much) so you can always refer back to it. But I’m entering a new season in my life and after giving the idea some serious thought, I decided to enter into a new blog domain, too.

I chose to switch to Coffee & Tacos, this new blog home, when I began preparing for my name change a few weeks ago. My husband, James, and I got married on April 13th (more on that perfect day soon!) and I started thinking about changing my website to reflect my new name (Rachel Brown). That thought process launched me into a rabbit hole of dreaming new dreams about writing and creating and growing and stretching, and I really began considering what it might look like to give myself a more grown-up platform, a more solid place from which to write. Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely loved using Tumblr for my blog (I did so for four years, after all!). And I don’t plan to monetize this space, to become a professional blogger, to quit my day job in pursuit of this creative outlet – those are all great things, but they are not for me. Simply put, blogging has just become such a beautiful way for me to record my thoughts, prayers, hopes, dreams, memories, travels, trials, and victories, and I felt that if I wanted my space to be able to continue to grow and change and progress with me into this new season of adulthood and love and life, it deserved a new place to do so. I wanted it to have a proverbial facelift, as it were.

So why the name Coffee & Tacos, then? Very arbitrarily, for literally no reason that I can recall other than the fact that I absolutely love few things more than a fantastic cup of coffee and a supremely delicious taco (even better when they’re paired together), I named the desktop folder in which I organize my writing projects “Coffee & Tacos.” Seriously, I don’t know why. I don’t even remember doing it, honestly. I guess I thought the name was creative or catchy or distinct, a way to set my writing projects apart from my work documents and personal files. But the title stuck, and I began to lovingly categorize all of my posts and pieces (for the likes of Darling Magazine, Bungalow Magazine, and, of course, Through Painted Deserts) in my Coffee & Tacos folder, which began to grow and flourish as I continued to write.

And, somehow, inevitably I suppose, I fell in love with the name. Maybe it’s because I’m so drawn to the concept of cultivating community around the table, of engaging with others while sharing good food and drinks and honest discussion, of finding God and truth and vulnerability and happiness while rooted firmly in a chair surrounded by loved ones and full plates. Or maybe it’s because I found myself gravitating towards other great blogs that had unique names, especially those that were food-related in some capacity. Or maybe it’s because, simply, I really do love coffee and tacos so dang much (if pressed, I’d say that Good 2 Go Taco is my favorite spot in Dallas for both) that I wanted to name my blog after them. My instinct is that it’s the former, that I care so much about loving others by feeding them and opening our home to them that I wanted this blog to have the same effect – that, maybe, you’ll decide that this is a place where you can be loved and fed (or, at the very least, entertained and inspired).

Bear with me as I adjust to this new format – I considered waiting until I had mastered this new site to start posting but that just seemed silly. The writing is the most important part after all, right? So if things change or break or look funny, hold tight – I hope to get the hang of this soon.

Now – stay awhile, won’t you?