Why I Blog ~ SITS Day Five

Today is the last day of the Back 2 Blogging event via SITS!

And I have had so much fun this week, not only in posting, but in visiting so many other wonderful SITSta bloggers and catching a ride along their journeys. 

Today, we have been asked to "write about what blogging means to you. Why do you blog? What purpose does it serve you and how have you benefited from sharing a piece of yourself online this way?"

***********************

Why I started blogging was much more vague than why I continue to blog now that I have dived into this online ocean. 

When I began blogging, I was serenaded by the creative & crafty, particularly papercrafts, even more specifically, stamped papercrafts.  Once I waded into blogging and inhaled the vapors of this amazing world, I was hooked. 

While papercrafts will always hold a very special place in my heart & inky, stampy hands (I started stamping in '94, scrapbooking in 2000...yup, after sixteen years, I think my love is here to stay!), I was hooked on the creativity that exists across the board and no longer wanted to limit myself to papercrafts.  I wanted to celebrate all kinds of creativity and began to share friends' & family members' creations as well as explore new ways to adventure through my own creativity.

All the while and from the beginning, I've been me, a Mama of two amazing kidlets, a wife to Hubby, a friend, daughter, sister, and yes, since February 2009, a blogger. 

And yes, blogging has given me the technical, aka kept my skills current, forced me (sometimes unwillingly) to learn to read a bit of html and even write a line or two, and taught me what social media is (and yet every time I even start to blink, there is more to learn!).

And yes, blogging lets me write and write and write.  I've been writing since I was a kidlet...its where I find my voice, where I am braver, where I can play.  And can I just tell you, I am sure that since I began blogging, my wonderful friends are probably thrilled that I do not write novel length emails to them so much anymore (occasionally, I still sneak them in....shhhh! :>).

With all that, blogging has given me something even greater than I ever imagined.  I have been amazed, time and time again at the community that is amongst bloggers, around the world.  Always curious how other people live, in different parts of my own country and across the globe, its the connections that have formed via this wonderful world of blogging that keep me writing, learning, and full of inspiration.

So, why do I blog?  To write, to learn, to find inspiration & hopefully inspire a wee bit myself, to connect, to learn some more, to appreciate where I am in life, to aspire to where I might go, and to continue to seek out and find the little bits & pieces o' life that make me {smile}.

Amazing what we can find in places that we never even knew to look.

*********************

Thanks to Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances for sponsoring SITS Back 2 Blogging and offering up the uber beautiful Turquoise Sky Thelma & Louise from Electrolux! 

Women who { Inspire } ~ SITS Day Four

Women who inspire us.

A woman who inspires us.

A woman who inspires me.

That's what SITS gals are sharing for day four of the Back 2 Blogging event going on this week.

******************

Initially, I thought of the present...

...and some of the women who inspire me creatively (including Dana of Paper Daydream & Elise of Mamacow Creations).

...and women who inspire me personally through over twenty years of Four Musketeer friendship.

As I kept thinking about the subject of women who inspire us, I reached into my history.  Actually, I reached into all of our history and arrived on the doorstep, quite literally, of a woman who has inspired me since childhood and was inspiring women long before that.

We share a birthday, this woman and I...though many years apart.  I remember meeting her in books as a child and learning of her strength, her fight, and determination to make this world a better and more equal place for women, for all humanity.

                       



Susan B. Anthony was an abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, temperance worker, suffragist, and women's rights campaigner.  I highly recommend (when you are done reading here, of course! :>) clicking on her name to learn more about her.  

Those were all her titles, for all the different peoples she fought for.  But, to me, she was was someone who didn't take 'no' for an answer....at least, not when it came to treating people fairly, equally.  As a woman, I owe her (and many other women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton) my right to vote in this country...my right to have my voice count. 

I can't help but wonder, without the rights that Susan B. Anthony fought for, would so many of us women be blogging today?  Would I?  Could I?

                  

For a time, as a kidlet, I lived near Susan B. Anthony's old stomping grounds, in upstate New York.  And I remember a classmate's birthday party that I went to at her house.  All these years later and I still remember the sort of reverence that a room full of young girls showed while 'partying' there, learning, and celebrating our growth.

One hundred ninety years since her birth, one hundred four years since her death, and she still inspires.

Who inspires you?

********************

Thanks to Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances for sponsoring SITS Back 2 Blogging! 

 
Prompt #2:Describe a woman who inspired YOU.

SITS Day Three: What's in a name?

What's in a name?  Or in this case, blog post title? 

Suppose I must admit it here, my post titles are not overly witty.  Having thought of them as identification rather than an enticing call has led to that.  Post titles that are identifying for creative challenges are quite helpful (such as KWerner Color Inspiration #55...my first time playing along!), but not witty.

And there are informative & identifying post titles (such as Thank You Temple Grandin & HBO) that work great for search engines.  But, there's no flavor and it certainly does not convey how excited I was by the end of the Emmy's.

In the last few months, I've wanted my post titles to be more interesting (such as A Keen Party).  But, what was keen about what kind of party?  That's not so great for peeps using search engines looking for you or your topic.

And while I'm quite obviously still working on it, there are a few post titles that while not overly witty, do mean the most to me, the ones that make me smile (Acrylic Play, How do you create?, and the post I'm re-sharing with you today, Strawberry Charm).  And that's mostly due to how I felt about the topics I wrote on, which ranged from nervous anticipation to creative playfulness to sweet Mama joy.

*****************

May 12, 2009
Strawberry Charm

Last month, my son and his class went on a fieldtrip to the local Ag Fair. He had SO much fun and is still talking about his experiences today. In addition to that lasting excitement, he has a little something growing rapidly that he brought home from that Ag Fair.

They sent each kidlet home with a little strawberry plant. His Dad helped him plant it in the backyard and other than that, we, hubby & I, have done nothing. We watch our son drag the hose across the yard to go water it pretty regularly.

While I was out back taking pictures with the kids yesterday (they had control of the camera, so most of them are of the cats and a few Really unflattering ones of me!), I was so delighted to see just how big his strawberry plant is getting! I snapped a quick pic and thought I would share it.

******************

Thanks to SITS for creating the Back 2 Blogging event and sponsors, Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances.

******************

And in case you are wondering, that sweet strawberry plant grew into a healthy producing plant that over the last almost year and a half, has divided itself four times.  Our sweet boy has picked a handful of strawberries off of it every week this summer.  In fact, he just harvested two more sweet red berries to eat earlier tonight!

Were there any berries growing in your garden this summer?  And of course, what do you think about blog post titles?

I {heart} Fort Bragg: SITS Day Two

Its Day Two of SITS Back 2 Blogging event and today, we've been asked to "Re-upload a post you wish more people had read and explain why it was important to you."  

I wrote & posted Where I Wish I Was in June, 2009 when my blog was quite the youngin' at a whopping four months of age.  At that time, I was predominantly posting papercrafts, specifically, stamped cards.  So, this was one of the few non crafty posts that I had shared at that point.

Why is it important to me?  Fort Bragg is somewhere I love to go.  In fact, there is NO WHERE that I relax quite as fast as I do when Hubby & I drive into town.  Hubby & I have celebrated most of our anniversaries there.  Many bits of our wonderful Fort Bragg anniversaries remind us of our fantastic honeymoon in Seattle, Friday Harbor, Victoria & Vancouver.

Hope you enjoy taking a quick blogging trip to Fort Bragg with me as I stroll down memory lane! :>

******************

Every year for our anniversary, hubby and I take off to Fort Bragg on the northern California coast. We absolutely love it there. I'm one of those people that has a hard time shutting off my brain and whenever I arrive in Fort Bragg, it always amazes me just how quickly I completely let go and relax! But, can you blame me?

This is the view, looking to the left, from the deck off of our room at the Beachcomber Motel. Sigh. Gorgeous panoramic views, fresh ocean air, and sleeping with the door partially open at night (yes, there's a security bar!)....its like heaven, to me.

Thanks to this lovely economy that so many of us are experiencing right now, we have made the decision to not go this year. Booooo!! Boooo!! The pricey projects around the house that need to be done will thank us for the decision, but I'm not too thrilled about being a responsible grown up right about now. Hmph! Thank you for indulging me in my pout for just a moment. Now, I'll move on! :>

I love this large single tree that I always watch (and take a gazillion pictures of every year) the sun slowly set behind. Each year we come back we always notice which limbs have crashed down below. These pics are from our 2007 trip. Somehow I forgot my camera in 2008 and so the only pics I have are from a disposable and are not on the computer.

In 2007, we lost our sitter, my Mom, at the last minute due to a family gathering and so we brought the kidlets with us and made it into a little family vacation. Consequently, we altered some of our activities that we usually do to accommodate young kidlets interests and patience levels.

Each year we gallery hop through Fort Bragg and Mendocino in search of a new piece of original art to give as our anniversary gift to each other. That particular year, we knew the kids would not be up to a long gallery hop, so we only visited about four or five. We also took them to the toy store, an ice cream cone after dinner, and a walk through town to eat it.

In the morning, after breakfast, we took the kidlets to what is always our last stop on the Sunday of our annual trip, Glass Beach. Our son had a blast climbing the rocks, checking out the sea critters, and looking for drift wood, cool rocks, and sea glass. While the larger pieces of glass have all been picked over through the years, there is a ton of little colorful pieces of ocean washed and smoothed glass all over the beach. And when the tide is out, there are great tide pools.....lots of sea weed to walk through, but wonderful treasures to look at!

You can see sea anemones, mussels, limpets, jelly fish, and a crab or two. Do you see him? If you can't, enlarge the pic by clicking on it. Say "Hi, Mr.Crab!!"

What? Are you coming to see us? Coming to say 'hello'? Hi Mr.Crab! Come closer, I want a better picture...please? Oh no, after this pic, he'd had enough and quickly scurried below the water.

Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and most of the northern California coastline is just a dream and I feel fortunate to live so close by. I know we'll make it out to the coast a few times this year and I really look forward to our next trip to Fort Bragg. Where are you looking forward to visiting soon?

******************

Some thanks to shout out to Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances for sponsoring the Back 2 Blogging event put on by SITS!  And of course, Electrolux's Thelma & Louise are mighty beauties that will go to a blogger participating in this event! :>

So, over a year later, into fall rather than summer, I still ask again, where are you looking forward to visiting soon?

At home, I'm looking forward to visiting with family and friends who will be visiting two weekends in a row for a kidlet's birthday.  And after that, I'm looking forward to visiting my friend Jenn to celebrate her birthday! 

Your turn!  Looking forward to hearing what's coming up for you! :>

SITS Back 2 Blogging: Day One

Its Back 2 Blogging week with the SITS gals this week and just look what kind of incentive they have come up with!!

Just look at that beautiful Turquoise Sky Electrolux Washer & Dryer, aka Thelma & Louise!  OOooooo...soo pretty.  What?  What's that you say?  They're uber functional too?!  Happy sighs.  Thanks to Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances for sponsoring this blogging event! 

Today, we are uploading our first blog posts ever.  For me, that was February 6th, 2009.  Have to admit, I was a little daunted by that....probably why its taken me so long to post today!  But, I am here and I am posting.  So, here ya go, my very first blog post evah!

******************

WOW!!!

A little over a year ago, I didn't even understand the point of a blog! It simply did not make a whole lot of sense to me. Then, I discovered the wonderful world of craft blogs......and boy was I hooked! I'm sure I spend way too much time blurfing, but I just love seeing what all the talented crafty people are up to and creating. I have been amazed at not only the talent that is blogging, but also the community that develops between bloggers. All of it began to seem a whole lot less impersonal. So, here I am, dipping my toes into this ocean and attempting to gain my own first hand blogging experience. Wish me luck!

******************

Okay, so my toes did more than just a playful splash in this blogging ocean and while I have so much more to explore & learn, I must say, I have loved this blogging adventure.  I am so glad I have embarked on it. 

Come back tomorrow to see what we're working on next.  And if you are participating in SITS Back 2 Blogging event, let me know so that I can come by & see your take on it!! :>