Why I Blog for Bliss

Welcome to old & new friends! Thank you to Kari for hosting & Tara for writing an incredible book Blogging For Bliss. I already bought my copy & have it, but can you believe I'm waiting to read it? I'm saving it for the upcoming 12 hour plane ride. I'm like a kid at Christmas when I new books & magazines :) Make sure you visit Kari's blog & look at all the participants on her sidebar.

Blogging opened a new world for me. I started blogging July 2006. Wanna see my first post? (Scroll to the bottom of the page on the link) I don't even know if I want to show it. I've come a looong way!

I began blogging that summer because of my husband's deployment. I was transitioning not having him around, moving to FL, selling 2 homes, becoming a SAHMomma, & suffering from postpartum depression. I was pretty much a mess. I turned to art to find something. What I found was this world of blogs. It was this creative soul, Gina Armfield, that introduced me to blogging. I was hooked. There was a whole world of creative people that had stories to share, friendships to give, shopping trips to take & loads of inspiration to look at. While I am no longer in that difficult stage of my life, thank goodness, I still read blogs to escape. I find such joy reading about what finds someone scored at an estate sale or what they made with their new supplies.

I blog personally for a few reasons. Being in a military family & living all over the place it gives me a place to share my artwork & a few family stories with family & friends. When I was younger I kept journals & as I've grown older I stopped. My blog has been a visual & written diary of my creative journey.

Blogging has taught me new things:

I take much better pictures now! I also have my camera with me at all times. Right now I'm enjoying pictures of the outdoors. (I'll have another post this week of my friend's beautiful garden.) I've even taken pictures of my food.

Before
Now

I'm learning Photoshop & doing some fun digital work!

I'm obsessed with old chippy rusty things & musty old paper. Who knew? It's funny, as I really started getting into estate sales & flea markets I found myself interested in the same things my mom is into. Ten years ago I would have been bored out of my mind :)

I've had the privilege to participate in many swaps & make tons of friends along the way!

I was excited when I finally met a blog friend live in person earlier this year. Also another first, I went to my first art retreat! Cindy Dean that was you!! We both met through a blog event, One World One Heart, & were both published for the first time together in an article about the event!

Thanks for visiting & getting to know me a bit better if you didn't already. I'm really looking forward to this party. If you haven't already, get the book. Not only is it total eye candy, but there is technical information in there. Yes, I'm really going to read the info on HTML codes. You'd think I would have figured it out by now. And make sure to visit Kari to see a list of all the partiers.