Happy Birthday little blog! Time has passed so slowly and so quickly at the same time over the past year. In the life of a go-get-it type of person, patience is sometimes rare, and I have had my moments of wanting to give up this past year. I can’t thank YOU, yes you reading right now, enough for any and every time you stopped by this website over the year. Thank you! There’s a giveaway at the end of this big ol’ post to thank you a little more! 🙂
Lessons learned:
Photos are important. If you look back at some of my old posts, even a couple months ago, the photos are tiny and AWFUL. I am pretty proud of the improvement in my photos, even if a lot of times it is just because of chance and fiddling with the camera settings!
Every blog has its own voice. I don’t need to try to write like or live like or eat like anyone else. The more a blogger realizes this, the more he or she shines, and seriously, the more fun blogging becomes. It is a hobby for most of us, after all, though I would certainly take a blogging job!
Likewise, feeling jealous or competitive in the blog world is frustrating and pointless. It saps your own energy and takes away your voice a little bit. It may at times be hard to feel as though you are working hard at what you do and seeing other people get opportunities you would love to have, but it is all about patience, consistency and content. Keep readers coming back by writing what you love.
Community is key. I have had so many great opportunities to meet and get to know other bloggers. Events such as the Healthy Living Summit, the Foodbuzz Festival, the Healthworks Blogger Bash, the Austrian Wine Tasting, lunch with the Stonyfield CE-Yo or just running get togethers have really given me the opportunity to network, make new friends, share frustrations, and find great new blogs. It’s actually pretty crazy how many bloggers I have met in real life! I also have loved having the opportunity to “meet” bloggers through my Friday Foodie Feature. . . and I need Foodies to feature for upcoming Fridays! Please email me if you would like to be featured!
Over the past year, I have also observed lots of blogger trends. As I kind of jump back and forth between being a healthy living blogger,a foodie blogger, and a wine blogger, I have to say that the most trends came from the healthy living world. On one hand, it’s great to learn about so many new foods/exercises, but on the other, it’s kind of interesting to see how much “jumping on the bandwagon” there is. And I am totally guilty of doing it too! As long as it’s a healthy bandwagon, I say get on board.
Trends I have adopted:
- Green smoothies – all the way! I swear by these and their contribution to my overall health,energy levels, hair, skin and nails. I am drinking one right now: kale, blueberries, almond milk, banana, ginger, maca powder
- Amazing Grass: I was a convert after my first taste. I KNOW that no matter how hard I try, I am missing things in my diet. Trader Joe’s Super Red Drink Powder is a very close second to Amazing Grass now in my diet.
- Almond butter: I prefer to it peanut butter, but I think I have overdosed on this delicious stuff.
- More natural, organic food. I did this before, but the year of blogging and lots of blog reading has REALLY got me looking at where my food comes from. Everybody wins!
Trends I never really got:
- Smoothie in a Bowl (SIAB) and Oats in a Jar (OIAJ): never really saw the excitement of either!
- Jillian Michaels: I just can’t watch her videos, I just can’t.
What trends have you adopted from the blogging world, and what trends have you bypassed? I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!
And now for the giveaway! I have worked with so many great companies over the year that have generously allowed me to do giveaways: Honest Tea, Good Health Natural Products, Blue Diamond, The Olive Press, Cabot, Equal Exchange, and Olivia’s Organics to name a few.
This one is from me to you: one lucky reader will win wine and cheese, a $25 gift card to wine.com and a $25 gift card to Cabot. It will, as always, be a random drawing which will take place this Saturday, June 5.
To enter:
1) Leave a comment on your favorite and/or least favorite blog trend!
2) If you have a blog link back to this giveaway.
3) If you are on Twitter or Facebook, give it a shout out.
Good luck, and thanks again for reading!
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Great job-congrats on your first year–here’s to many many more–cheers from an old friend from Piscataway!
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Thank you so much!
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Congrats on your first year! I’ve always been a green smoothie drinker even before blog world. I do love Amazing Grass! That has been a great find! I’ve never made SIAB, smoothie in a glass works for me. I also don’t like oatmeal – or any breakfast food really – so never tried OIAJ or any kind of “healthy” pancakes. Just not my cup of tea!
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Congrats and happy blog birthday! Trend I’ve adopted: becoming less afraid of and using more of more obscure veggies like kale and roots – there are so many great ideas and step-by-step preparations online now that there’s no excuse to use everything in the farm share box anymore!
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I’ve definitely started to use lesser known vegetables in my cooking. The amount of leafy greens I now eat is amazing. The one thing I don’t get is this need to add bacon to everything. Bacon is fine now and then, but seriously, it doesn’t need to be added to everything we put in our bodies.
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Agreed. As a mostly vegetarian, I think it’s a pretty weird trend. Bacon certainly tastes and smells good, but maybe not in everything!
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Love the blog – happy blog birthday! One trend I didn’t join in on is doing giveaways for companies that I have no relationship with.
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Thank you! Yes, I do receive a lot of offers for product giveaways that really have no reflection of my blog. Sometimes they make me laugh. . . diet pills and the like. Have they read my blog before?! 🙂
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Congratulations! A year is quite a commitment! As far as food trends go, I’m definitely doing my best to eat local or organic meat and produce and to cut back on processed foods, especially different veggies that I haven’t cooked in the past. However, I can’t get on board with the green grassy juice drinks. Yuck.
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Happy Birthday to your blog! My 22 birthday was just last week, and after a year of drinking (legally) I’ve finally acquired a pallet for wine, so I love reading about it on here! It’s so funny how you talk about all of these food blog trends, I was just discussing them with my man today and he had no idea what I was talking about. Now I’m reading everything I mentioned to him! Though many of them seem kind of silly to me, too, I’ll be honest and say that I just emptied a jar of PB&Co Cinnamon Raisin PB today and I planned on Oats in a Jar for breakfast tomorrow because this pb is spectacular 🙂
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Congrats on one year! That’s great to have come so far. My favorite trend in the blogging world is giving a shout out to a fellow blogger. Like you said, it’s so easy to get competitive and strive to beat out a blogger.. but what fun is that? We should all celebrate each others cuisine and writing!
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I have to agree – Green Monsters totally rocked my year, and while I didn’t get into The Shred per se, I do enjoy Jillian’s other dvds/on demand offerings.
Happy Blogiversary!
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Pingback from Two Years Blogging on June 1, 2011 at 8:46 am
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Just came over from your *second* blogiversary and see you wrote about trends and bandwagons here. I have pretty much avoided those! I’m all about comfort food, but comfort food that is healthful, organic, sustainable, local, etc. And that’s how it’s been with me my whole life, long before any of those things became fashionable.
PS Who is Jillian Michaels?
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She is a fitness instructor/health guru of sorts from The Biggest Loser. Last year the blogging community was kind of obsessed! Thanks for commenting. I really appreciate having you as a reader and having your beautiful blog to read! 🙂
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