The Magnolia Manifesto reads: “We believe everyone deserves a seat at the table and everyone has a story worth telling.” Chip and Joanna Gaines are aiming to breathe life into that axiom with the launch of their new Magnolia Network, a partnership with Discovery TV, which is set to kick off in the fall of next year. While 2021 seems way too long to wait for this highly anticipated content, there’s still plenty of news to digest and get excited about in the meantime. The most prominent of which is the unexpected announcement from Chip and Joanna themselves that they’re coming back with Fixer Upper, the massively successful HGTV show that ended for good–so we thought–in 2018 after 5 seasons, and 56 homes got the loving Chip and Jo treatment.
The couple spread the good news in a recent Instagram video, where Joanna was recently seen asking: “What did you do, Chip?” and her husband responded “I signed us up for another season of ‘Fixer Upper. I answered the office phone like you told me never to do.” She responded with the sweet little reveal of a secret she hadn’t told him, “I kind of missed it,” Joanna quipped. Now, all of America can look forward to watching Chip and Jo return to the endearing and heartwarming hard work of finding and renovating our future homes. And, yes, “ours” could mean yours, especially if you have a home in or near Waco, Texas, you could be the next candidate for a transformation. For folks 21 years or older, all you need is a 50K minimum renovation budget and a willingness to hand over creative control, and your entire property, to the dynamic duo as they work their magic. Renovations begin as early as fall 2020, so now is the time to apply.
What can you do if you can’t invite Chip and Joanna to your house? Well, you can always join me in obsessing over what’s to come on the Magnolia Network. You can watch the trailers for a slate of new binge-worthy shows up on their site already, and you can even join us in the sneak preview. Along with the announcement of Fixer Upper’s return, Magnolia revealed two new shows: one featuring interior designer Brian Patrick Flynn and his team as they take us into the “the most breathtaking spaces,” and tackle “decorating projects on any budget or within any scope, all with a dash of humor.” The other show, with the working title Self Employed, features entrepreneur Jonathan Morris journeying to find America’s most inspiring small-business owners.
We also can’t wait for Home on the Road, a six-episode series following husband and wife Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano Ramirez of Johnnyswim, as they tour North America in one bus with 15 band members and their two little children, Joaquin and Luna, who are both along for the adventure. It’s been a family thing from the beginning, as Chip and Joanna,–longtime fans of the band–tweeted that they attended a Johnnyswim concert to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary and ended up getting pregnant that night with their fifth child. Now, the couples are friends and collaborators, and as Abner says in the Home on the Road trailer: “Scared or not, we’re going for it!”
Scared and going for it is something Joanna Gaines has taught us to embody over the years and she recently shared with USA Today that she’s got some nerves about starting her own cooking show, “I’ve never had a cooking show before, so, I get butterflies when I think about it. I can shoot with my kids in the kitchen when they’re shooting me on their little iPhones, or on my iPhone. It’s a whole other thing when there’s, like, 20 people looking back at you,” she explained. The show will take place at the Gaines’ gristmill, a rustic old flour mill currently getting a Chip and Jo treatment to be ready for the 2021 premiere. Joanna said: “Just like with Fixer, it’s not like the first episode we nailed it. It’s not like the first season we nailed it. It was this ongoing learning experience, and that’s how I’m going to look at it with the [cooking] show…” She went on to say the goal is not perfection, instead, It continues to be love.