16 Years of Blogging

How many more recaps like this will I write? I have no idea, but welcome to year 16 in my blogging journey. I’ve written recaps sharing my blog story all the way back to the beginning in 2007, so if you missed those, it might be worth a read. Blogging has been part of my life for so long that I can’t imagine not doing it anymore. This year has some changes coming, however, and I’m excited to share those with you all!

I have to say that this is the year I start pulling back a bit and not posting as much. I’m not planning to quit in the foreseeable future, I will probably leave my blog up until the internet is no more (I doubt that will happen) or I get too old to type on here, whichever comes first. Ha! But, I no longer have the burning desire to keep climbing higher on the internet or social media. That feeling has been with me for a few years and is even more pronounced now. I want to settle into a semi-retirement I guess you could call it, posting when I feel like it and still sharing some old content as I have been doing for several years too.

I’ve written around 4,000 posts on this blog over those 16 years and that’s a lot of talking! It’s been so fun for me and I can’t imagine stopping it, so I will not. But…and there’s always a but, I want to be free to slow it down even more than I have and not worry at all if I don’t post. I’ve watched others stop blogging and just cold turkey quit. I don’t plan to do that either, but slow blogging is a term I’m going to embrace.

Mark and I have been in our house for 5 years now and we are almost at the end of our project journey in this house. No, we aren’t moving either as many I’ve seen do, to buy another house or build a house to then showcase on their blog or social media. We’re not about to do that. We love our house and are staying here for the long haul, but that means we don’t have a lot more projects to do and that might get a little boring since I do write this blog and DIY and home improvement are a big part of what I write about.

My goal for this year is to travel more. I’ve been saying that for awhile and we are finally going to do it. The last couple of years have been weird travel years anyway, with the pandemic things have been not so normal, but hopefully that’s all opening up more now. Thank goodness for that!

{This Daisy dog gives me joy!}

On that note, let me just say that as I said for the last couple of years on my yearly recap that I’m still extremely concerned about our country and the world in general. Our entire country seems to have lost its mind all at one time, on every front and it’s very disconcerting to say the least. I’ve never been very political on this blog, but the last few years have caused me to do more research and reading than I ever have in my life and what I’ve found is not a pretty picture. Many of you know exactly what I mean. I won’t get any deeper into the state of our country on here (you don’t come here for politics), but life has been very hard and is likely to get harder this year for so many. It breaks my heart to see where our country is at this time. If you have been reading my blog for long, you know I’m a conservative girl and that’s where I lean politically. That hasn’t changed a bit but my eyes have surely been opened even more the last few years. God is our only hope, our refuge in time of trouble and I know that His will and truth will prevail. That gives me much comfort in what we are all facing in the future. The outlook looks so dismal, but my faith is strong that God will see us through, no matter what comes our way. We cannot give up hope.

I loved the December 31st devotional from my Streams in the Desert: 

Thus far has the Lord helped us. (1 Samuel 7:12)

Yes, He sure has and I know he will continue to help us.

{Charleston}

So back to the blog. We really want to travel more this year…go to new places we haven’t been before, in the US and out of the country. I don’t know yet what all that will be, but I’m going to start planning more trips. I have to find places we can visit that don’t require the vax, you know the one. We did not, nor will we ever get the shots, so that could be a deterrent for where we travel depending on policies in the future. That’s not a political statement, nor do I wish to argue, but that’s our position and we are united on that front. For instance, Viking requires all passengers to be vaxxed, so it looks like we will never go on another Viking cruise unless their policy changes. I’m reading up on those policies to find out which cruise lines don’t have the mandate. So far, from what I’ve read, NCL and Royal Caribbean do not. I’d like to do a European cruise this spring/summer and then we plan to go back to New England in the fall. So I can see us doing way more travel and weekend trips and of course, I’ll share all those here on the blog. You might not see a lot of brand new things going on house wise, but I’ll keep the blog going at a pace I’m happy with. Now is the time for us to travel before we get any older.

I can’t believe that the time has come for me to draw SS payments, but it’s here. My full retirement age is 66 and 4 months and if you’re close to my age, you know what that means. April here I come! I’m looking forward to a little more travel money to play with. There are so many places I’d like to see and visit and that will be a clear focus for us as we move into this year, so be prepared for me to take longer breaks between posts. I’m just not sure yet what all I’ll be posting, but I do think it will be less. My plan is for my blog to be part of my retirement income and I’ll keep it going even if one day I stop posting much of anything new.

I’d love to hear from all of you too.

What do you like the most? Please feel free to chime in here and let me know what you think on what I post here on the blog.

I know my posts about my parents are always popular and you love them, so of course I’ll continue to share our family. That’s a given. We don’t know how long we will have mom and dad with us, so I will do recaps all along about them and their health.

I’ll continue to do the weekly series Home Style Saturdays and Style Showcase with my friends. You’ve probably figured out by now that those posts are recycled posts that we share with each other, so chances are you might not have seen them all and it gives us a great opportunity to share content with each other’s audience and yes, helps us keep traffic flowing on our blogs. Thanks for supporting those weekly features! We all have some really great content and sometimes it gets buried so it’s nice to show it off again.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue the Friday Favorites series on a regular basis. I might do once a month or so, we will see how it goes.

Life feels so short at times, the days fly by and we want to make the most of it, so thank you for joining my journey and reading along. I will probably continue some fashion posts during the year, but that’s not going to be a huge focus for me either. I may do a couple shares a month. If anything, trying to share fashion when I started that a few years ago has gotten even more challenging since I don’t plan to buy new clothes all the time just so I can share them and make commissions. That’s the thing about being a fashion blogger, you have to constantly share new clothes to make a living. I’m so glad I didn’t choose that solely as my topic. Once those clothes can’t be affiliate linked, they are useless to share. So that’s not what I want to depend on to make a living, nor do I want to spend my time on that. There are a ton of fashion bloggers to follow if that’s your thing. I love clothes, but I can’t do it all the time.

I’d like to get more involved in my community, so that’s going to be a focus too. I am a member of our local Acworth Business Association and I’ve enjoyed getting to know other women in my community. I’m trying to join the tourism board as a volunteer and I’m hoping a spot opens up for me this year on that. So those are a few things I’d like to get more involved in. I’d like to help make my own community a better place.

How can you support me and my blog? 

God has blessed my blog more than I could have ever dreamed 16 years ago when I started it. I make a very nice living off my blog. My ad network revenue is the main way I make this blog work. So let me mention this to you all.

The best way you can support me and my blog is to continue to come here, LIVE on my blog when I post and open my emails when I send them out and read the posts here. That’s the VERY BEST way to support me.

That’s the main way I make an income and blog pageviews is how I get paid from my ad network. I’m so grateful that I have the opportunity to make a business of this blog and it’s supported me well for over 10 years of making money. God has truly restored everything I lost when I moved from Birmingham to Atlanta all those years ago (2011). He is faithful and has never let me down and I’m eternally grateful!

I know that ads are annoying and I still get comments about that sometimes. I think reading on a phone is probably the most annoying way to read a blog and that’s where most of the ad intrusion comes in. I read on my laptop for most everything I read these days and I don’t see the popups like some of you have said. But, again thank you for looking past the ads and for your support all these years. I couldn’t do it without your continued support.

Amazon Shop and Home Decor links

The other ways you can support me is to buy through my affiliate links on Amazon and Like to Know It. I don’t share links constantly, but if you can please help me out there too. I make commissions when you use my links and that adds to my income.

You can find all my links under Shop my Home on the home page of my blog on the menu bar.

I have an Amazon shop with lots of good products that I use and some that I love and recommend as well. The shop has categories you can look at with lots of products. Anytime you buy from Amazon and use my link, I earn a small commission without it costing you anything extra. Thank you for buying through my links!

I also have many items linked in my Home Decor page here on the blog that I update along the way. Some of the links are things in my house and they might not be available anymore, but I link all I can that are active.

Another Fact of Blogging for So Long

My email list has declined over the years instead of growing. People unsubscribe and remove themselves and so that’s also disheartening, but a real part of blogging that I have to deal with. My pageviews here continue to decline year after year, so I don’t know what things will look like in 5 more years. Five years ago, my pageviews were double what they are now. That’s the truth of running a website and I face all the challenges with a BIG dose of reality. There’s so much competition for pageviews and even though there is room for all, people only have so much time to go around and reading blogs might not be at the top of the list all the time. I totally get that. That’s why I want to step back and just do this at my own slower pace. I can still make a nice income, but I don’t feel the pressure to try to grow anymore. I still see the hustle going on out there and I don’t want to be a part of that. I’ve done very well over these years and have had much success at blogging way past any of my expectations and I’m so grateful for the blessings that blogging has meant to me.

As I draw this to a close, thank you all again for ALL your support and love over the years. I’m not going anywhere, but again, I do plan to slow it down and that means less posts and more breaks over the year. Posts may be more sporadic and slower to come. If we go on vacation, I’ll no longer feel the need to do a lot of posts to share when I’m gone. I just don’t have it all figured out yet, but I feel the need to take any pressure off and just be me, living life at the pace I feel like going. That includes social media. I still have a presence on all the social media sites, but I don’t feel the pressure to perform there at all anymore. I will share when I want to and I do not care if I grow on those at all either.

This recap might be a bit different from the others, but it’s where my heart is headed for now. Thank you all again, I could have never made this blog successful without a core audience to share with and you all make that possible! With that being said, bring on 2023! I’m ready for it! And I’m ready to travel and see more of the beautiful world that God created for us!

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