Month: August 2007

Categories
Ryan/Married Life

Bragging right

I have to brag about my husband. While he was home alone for two weeks, he tackled the huge project that has been on my to do list every month for more than a year. We don’t have any before pictures of our closet/laundry room, but let me describe it to you: The laundry shelf was organized—but that was about it.

There was a stack of very large Rubbermaid containers with some random things in them that reached to about hip height. Sometimes this stack ended up in front of the dryer door and had to be shoved aside. Usually it was between the extra washing machine and the built-in wood shelves, effectively blocking off 2/3s of the room. On top of the dryer and the extra washing machine were all manner of precariously stacked items that belonged somewhere deeper in the closet, but either we couldn’t get back there or they didn’t fit anymore. Things like Christmas decorations, painting supplies (we’ve been done painting for almost a year and a half)

The beyond there, the closet was completely impassible: a box fan, a storage drum, a couple hundred pounds of pasta (no, really), ski poles and boots (we haven’t been skiing since before we were married) (oh, and we have no skis), an old printer—and that’s just what was on top.

I was moved to tears to come home to this:
our closet

Oh, and did I mention that he does laundry—and dishes?

Categories
Random

Travelogy

Well, we’re finally home after three weeks of being on the road. It’s so nice to be in my own bed again—I hope Hayden thinks so, too! And of course, it’s wonderful to be with Ryan again!

Here’s what we’ve been up to the last few weeks:

  • Ryan’s brother’s wedding in Louisville. Very fun, very event-filled. My parents & youngest sister drove out to visit with us (and help wrangle Hayden during the ceremony).
  • 10-hour car trek with an almost-18-month-old from Louisville to my parents’ house in North Carolina. Surprisingly, Hayden did very well on the car ride. He even fell asleep twice in the car (he hardly ever does that).
  • The museum we always went to when I was little. Hayden liked playing in one of the space ships—it had buttons that he could push. He also liked playing in the small children’s play area, but by the time we’d seen the baby bears playing, he was waaay ready to be home.
  • The lake we always went to when I was little. Mom said my first trip was when I was about Hayden’s age. I loved it. Hayden, not so much. We bought him a little floaty, but he was too scared to stay in it. However, by the time we left that night, he was completely fearless—and very frustrated when mean ol’ Mom wouldn’t put him down in water that was up to her chest.

    • Hayden on the carousel

  • The carousel at the mall. Hayden liked it for the first few turns—he even held on all by himself at his peak (and we even got a picture!)—but after that, he was too upset to even go near one of the horses. Much more interested in the gate around the carousel. But we did get him some cute flip flops.
  • Lots of family time. We had “casual” and “formal” family times—a big family dinner to just visiting and hanging out.
  • Sickness after sickness after sickness. Between Hayden and me, we had to go to Urgent Care three times and get four different prescriptions—in three days. Hayden had a double ear infection, then either a bad reaction to the infection or the medicine. The doctor didn’t know what was wrong with me, but gave me medicine anyway.

It was great to see my family and spend time with them—but I’m glad to be home with Ryan!

Categories
MetaBlogging

Blog Carnivals, Start to Finish

Table of contents for Blogging Add-ons

As one of the events in the BlogOlympics (at the silver medal level), you can choose to participate in a blog carnival. At the gold level, you can host a blog carnival. If you’re not sure how to do this, here’s your chance to learn!

Finding a Blog Carnival
To participate in a blog carnival, first you have to find one. BlogCarnival.com features a good list of blog carnivals. You can use their search functions to find carnivals on categories that you write on—parenting, family, homeschooling, etc.

One precaution you have to take as you screen potential carnivals—see if they’re current. A lot of the carnivals listed haven’t published in months. BlogCarnival.com lists lots of carnivals that have been marked as discontinued, but many others haven’t been officially discontinued but aren’t published anymore. Look at the date of the previous and next carnivals—if it’s coming up, you’re probably safe.

Of the carnivals listed on Blog Carnival, my favorite has definitely been the Carnival of Family Life. The brainchild of Kailani at An Island Life, it’s getting to be very popular!

Another way to find a blog carnival is word of mouth. That’s how I found out about Works-for-Me Wednesday, one of the most popular weekly carnivals out there! Every week, bloggers (mostly mothers) share tips on everything from shopping to cleaning to scrapbooking to blogging. Participate this week!

Participating in a Blog Carnival
It’s important when participating in a blog carnival to write an on-topic post. Find out the theme of the carnival, especially if there are special themed editions for holidays. Works-for-Me Wednesday has monthly themed editions on the first Wednesday. An off-topic post is unlikely to be included.

Finally, don’t forget to submit your post to the carnival! Use the method they ask: a Mr. Linky (WFMW Wed), the official BlogCarnival.com submission form (CoFL), or comments or forms on the site itself. When you’re dealing with dozens or even hundreds of entries, it’s difficult to track down all the entries submitted in “unorthodox” ways.

It’s generally best to submit recent posts to the carnival, if not new posts. Some carnivals have rules about the age of submitted posts; be sure to follow those guidelines.

If you’re targeting words people use in search engines (‘keywords’), be sure to include those in the title of your post. They’ll then be used in your link.

Hosting a Blog Carnival
If you volunteer to host a blog carnival (or start your own), there are a few guidelines that will make your hosting stand out.

If you’re using TypePad or WordPress, be sure to send trackbacks or pingbacks. This is often one of the first ways I know that my entry has been included in a carnival.

Try grouping entries in a new way. One of my favorite Carnivals of Family Life was hosted by Digital Rich Daily, where he took the time to categories entries by themes for each letter of the alphabet.

Make sure you use working HTML links. If you use a Mr Linky, it generates JavaScript links. Once you’ve completed your carnival, you can get the HTML code and paste it in the place of the JavaScript code to ensure that your participants get the links. If you’ve asked your participants to link to you, it’s only polite.

Conclusion
Participating in an on-topic blog carnival is a good way to drive traffic to your site and earn links—and hosting is even better! Find a good blog carnival to participate in and complete a silver medal event in the BlogOlympics!

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Categories
Contests

The BlogOlympics

blogolympics logo
View the Closing Ceremonies!

As announced last week, today is the first day of the BlogOlympics! Who doesn’t want to be an Olympian? Over the course of the next two weeks, you can become one!

How to Participate

  • To earn a medal, you must complete one event at that medal level:
    • To earn a bronze medal, complete one event from the bronze list below.
    • To earn a silver medal, complete one event each from the bronze and the silver lists below, for a total of two events.
    • To earn a gold medal, complete one event each from the bronze, silver and gold lists below, for a total of three events.
  • There are several events that overlap between the levels (for example, the bronze level of commenting is commenting on 5 new blogs; the gold level is commenting on over 16 new blogs). Completing this event at a silver or gold level counts as only one event—to earn a silver or gold medal, you must also complete a different event at the lower levels.
  • The events must be completed over the course of the next two weeks (on or before August 24).
  • To be an official participant, you must also link to this post.

The Events
This list may grow over the course of the BlogOlympics.

Bronze

  • Comment on up to 5 new blogs
  • Subscribe to a new blog (instructions on subscribing)
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site
  • Add a blog to your blogroll
  • Overwrite old draft posts that you’re no longer going to use

Silver

  • Comment on 6 to 15 new blogs
  • Participate in a blog carnival
  • Participate in a group writing project
  • Subscribe to 3 new blogs (instructions on subscribing)
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site three times
  • Contact a blogger about guest blogging on their blog
  • Add three blogs to your blogroll

Gold

  • Comment on 16 to 25 new blogs (and over)
  • Sign up to host a blog carnival
  • Host a group writing project (or plan one)
  • Subscribe to 5 new blogs (instructions on subscribing)
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site five times
  • Review someone else’s blog on your blog
  • Interview another blogger
  • Send a completed guest post to another blogger
  • Write two “pillar articles” or pieces of “flagship content“
  • Come up with a system to keep track of your blog drafts

Receiving Medals
Once you have completed your all events, please comment (or ping/trackback) on this post to let me know so you can be included in the Closing Ceremonies. Don’t forget to include what medal you’ve earned. Also, please take a badge at your participation level (and include the link back here or to the Closing Ceremonies) to show off your Olympian-ness.

You don’t have to go into great detail (ie telling me which new blogs you commented on or subscribed to), but feel free to share which events you completed! Since the Olympics are about individual excellence as well, this will be on the honor system—I’ll believe whatever you tell me.

The Medals & Badges
BlogOlympics gold medal

BlogOlympics silver medal

BlogOlympics bronze medal

Started some events, but didn’t have time to finish? Take the participant badge!
BlogOlympics participant badge

Good luck!!

Who Said That

Categories
Contests

The Upcoming BlogOlympics

On August 8, 2008, the XXIX Summer Olympics will begin in Beijing. The Olympics are games designed to foster an international community—a lot like how blogging is about community. So this year, why don’t we prepare for the Olympics with our own version of the Olympics—the BlogOlympics?

On Monday, I’ll have badges for Gold, Silver, and Bronze “medals.” To earn them, starting on Monday, participate in events at each level: for a Bronze, complete a Bronze event; for a Silver, complete a Bronze and a Silver event; for a Gold, compete a Bronze, Silver and Gold event. Like next year’s Olympics, the BlogOlympics will end on August 24.

And of course, one of the requirements to participate is to link to the official post that begins the BlogOlympics on Monday.

The Events
Here’s a list of some of the events that I came up with—please suggest more in the comments!

Bronze

  • Comment on up to 5 new blogs
  • Subscribe to a new blog
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site
  • Add a blog to your blogroll

Silver

  • Comment on 6 to 15 new blogs
  • Participate in a blog carnival
  • Participate in a group writing project
  • Subscribe to 3 new blogs
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site three times
  • Contact a blogger about guest blogging on their blog
  • Add three blogs to your blogroll

Gold

  • Comment on 16 to 25 new blogs (and over)
  • Sign up to host a blog carnival
  • Host a group writing project (or plan one)
  • Subscribe to 5 new blogs
  • Submit or vote for a post you like on someone else’s blog on a social networking or bookmarking site five times
  • Review someone else’s blog on your blog
  • Interview another blogger
  • Send a completed guest post to another blogger
  • Write two “pillar articles” or pieces of “flagship content“

Since the Olympics are about individual excellence as well, this will be on the honor system.

Leave your ideas for events in the comments and spread the word!

Categories
MetaBlogging

Setting goals for your blog

Table of contents for Blogging success

What is blogging success? Is it subscribers? Comments? Writing honestly? No matter what you define as blog success, it’s important to set out at least one specific goal for your blog so that you have something to work for and can see how far you’ve come.

So, what should your goals be? It depends on what you want to work on and where you want to grow. There are lots of areas that you can set goals in, for example:

  • Writing: more personal, more on-topic, more frequent, etc.
  • Organization: posting on a schedule, better using categories
  • Comments, visitors & subscribers: more.
  • External blog rankings: Technorati, Alexa, Google PageRank
  • Search engine visibility: ranking for your blog name (if it’s fairly unique), ranking for your name, ranking well for keywords that you’re targeting

Realize when you set goals that you can’t completely control all of these factors: you can’t make people subscribe to your feed or comment on your posts. So if you set more than one goal, be sure to include at least one goal that you have control over. On the other hand, don’t set more goals than you can handle or remember.

Your blogging goals should be:

Recorded
I’m sure you’ve heard the platitude that a goal that’s not written down is just a dream. So write them down. Put them in a place where you can find them, see them often, and hopefully be reminded of them often.

Specific
“More subscribers” is too vague—if one person more person subscribes tomorrow, is your blog a success forever? Use numbers where they make sense: the number of posts per week, the number of minutes your visitors spend on your site.

Measurable
Whether the measurement is quantitative (like pageviews) or qualitative (like more personal writing), make sure you can appreciate a difference. “Increase my blog’s stickiness” isn’t measurable; “Increase the average number of minutes my visitors spend on my site” is. On that note, if you’re measuring something like daily unique visitors, make sure you’re equipped: use a web analytics program, like Google Analytics. (See my Guide to Google Analytics for Bloggers to learn more!)

Personal
You and your blog are unique. Set goals that are suited to you—things you want to achieve; things you know you need to work on.

Discrete
By that, I mean they need to have deadlines attached: in 30 days, in 3 months, in 1 year, etc. This is not as crucial, but really increases how hard you’ll work to achieve your goals.

Achievable
Set your goals high, but not so high that it’s nearly impossible to achieve. Going from 100 to 1000 readers in a month would be hard (depending on your blog, of course). Look at what you’ve achieved in the past: if it took you 30 days to go from 50 unique visitors a day to 75 unique visitors a day, it would be probably pretty easy to get to 100 unique visitors a day, but much harder to jump to 150 unique visitors a day. Set your goal somewhere between there, based on how much you want to challenge yourself.

Not the end of the world
Last year, ProBlogger wrote a lot about blogging goals (they even had a group writing project about it!). As he set New Year’s Resolutions for his blog goals, he said:

The goals are not things we whip ourselves over in the coming months when we fail – but they help us to focus on the year ahead and move into it with a positive outlook.

So set goals to help your blog grow. Work toward them. But, as in motherhood, work toward balance, too—don’t work so hard on them that you don’t enjoy blogging anymore!

For more tips from experienced moms, visit Works-for-me Wednesday at Rocks in my Dryer

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