Thank You, Tinder

Hi, friends! We're Arnelle and Emil — two people who met one fateful day in 2016 via Tinder while Arnelle was traveling with one of her girlfriends through London. At the time, Emil was living in London and Arnelle was living in San Francisco, but Emil was born in Perth, Australia and raised in Devon, England, while Arnelle was born in Cebu, Philippines and raised in the north Bay Area, California.

Before we met we'd been traveling as individuals for years. But once we met, our long distance, across-the-pond relationship was conducive to a travel lifestyle, enabled by our freelance careers (Arnelle as a photographer and content creator, Emil as a director and filmmaker). For four subsequent years after we met, we managed to travel to see each other every month. Sometimes we'd visit each other in our respective home countries of England and the United States, but mostly, we'd pick some place in the world to meet and adventure through together. By now, we've been to over 80+ countries collectively, over 40+ of which we traveled to together.

When Travel Meets Home

One of our shared loves from the outset was finding and collecting beautiful artisan handicrafts to take home with us when we traveled — pottery, textiles, sculptures, decor. This meant that when we finally moved in together in Austin, TX at the start of the pandemic lockdown, we had plenty of beautiful collected global objects to fill our shared apartment.

We both enjoyed curating meaningful spaces before we met, but living together quickly turned those common interests into fully fledged passions. Now, we intentionally carve time out on every trip to hunt for all the amazing things we can fit in our luggage to bring home with us, sometimes even purchasing an additional luggage abroad on rare occasions if we need more space.

By sharing our travels and our home design journey on social media, we ended up catching the attention of folks at Travel Channel and HGTV, and we were even featured on HGTV’s Handmade Home showcasing that first apartment we lived in and curated together. Arnelle wrote an accompanying piece for HGTV.com and is now a freelance writer for HGTV.

Where We Are

The Austin chapter of our journey has officially come to a close and while we now reside in the Pacific Northwest (see: Journey to the Pacific Northwest: A New Chapter On the Horizon), Austin will always be a second home to us. Our properties there (check out Mesquite & Fir 🥳) are the embodiment of the evolution of our shared tastes. Since that original HGTV apartment tour, we bought our first home (and it's now available to book on Airbnb), traveled to more places, collected more objects, bought our first investment property and refined our style. As we move through life together, now with our son in tow, our tastes and our style continue to evolve. These spaces are a manifestation of our deep desire to curate spaces for people to enjoy that are an extension of who we are and the places we've been.

In August of 2024 we purchased Janet, our beloved classic RV (see the full tour below), and she is our home away from home on wheels. The years ahead will include many roadtrips with her, and we're on a mission to see as many National Parks as possible with our son.

About The Space Between

Think of this as our little corner of the internet where travel, home, and all the beautiful spaces between collide. Part blog and part online magazine, this space will blend personal updates, practical tips, causes we care about, and features of your favorite designers, accommodations, brands, and more.

It's about the grand adventures and the everyday ones, too. It’s for the individuals and families packing up to explore somewhere new and for those cozying up at home, creating spaces that reflect their journey.

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By signing up, you'll get access to the full archive of everything that's been published before and everything that's still to come. Your very own private library. A paid membership will feature some really cool benefits, more on this soon.

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In addition to our regular web content, we deliver a weekly newsletter straight to your inbox. What's special about this newsletter and how is it different from the blog? Think of as a concise weekly roundup of the best content that also features expert tips and community insights that you won’t find here on the blog. Becoming a member of the blog automatically signs you up for the newsletter, and vice versa.

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Join a community of other subscribers who share the same interests. Our hope is that this becomes a place to spark meaningful conversation and build an online community that gets to meet in-person from time to time as well. 😌

Thank you so much for being here, and we're excited to give you fresh content weekly. 🤍