Apparently I missed my five-year blogging anniversary last year. Today marks SIX YEARS of blogging at MostlySewing.com! It was mostlysewing.wordpress.com back then, but the point is I started.
BEGINNER BLOGGER
Here’s my embarrassing first post. I talk about fear of failure and not wanting people to know what I’m writing about. Well, almost no one read my blog for years, so I shouldn’t have been so concerned! Also, I remember going through this phase where I didn’t capitalize anything – but why?? Maybe it was in rebellion to grammar all day? So glad I got over that one.
Starting a blog back then was strange. No one I knew was blogging, and Pinterest hadn’t been invented yet (or I didn’t know about it), so there was no one telling me to post on a schedule or find my niche or anything. This is my second post from the next day (yayyy 2 in a row) where I talk about the fabric I bought without providing any photos…
I skipped all of Sept 2010, then wrote two posts in October which state something like, “No one reads this, but here’s an update on my life.”
In a post from March 2011, I said that I started taking Tae-Bo! What?? I totally don’t remember this… So glad I have a blog to document everything I’ve forgotten.
In Summer 2011, I started blogging more often (but not consistently). These posts are fun, but have terrible photography 🙂
- Handmade Books
- Aprons!
- Ceramics Class
- Sewing Skirts! I’m actually really glad I found this, because I was looking for a pencil skirt pattern.
Then no posts until December. Basically, I never posted during the school year. I was an English major writing too much for class, and no time for extra blogging.
In 2012, I changed the header of my site to say “Mostly Wedding” as I blogged about the wedding planning process. I started blogging much more frequently after I graduated college.
A FEW FAVORITE POSTS
These are 2012-2014, because I love all of my posts from 2015-2016! Since we bought our house, I’ve had the space to be creativeand the recent posts really show that!
But until 2016, my blog should have been called Mostly Crafty, because I rarely posted sewing projects. This year, I decided to fully live up to my blog name and make it a blog mostly about sewing 🙂
- Our Love Story
The story of how Eric and I met, dated, and were engaged! - My Craft Cabinet Makeover when we were in our apartment
- Our Christmas Stockings
- When I made this Sock Monkey! I need to make another one!!
- Burlap Coffee Cup Sleeves
- Weekend Antiquing with Eric
- My First Half Marathon!
- Tour of Our Apartment! We don’t live there anymore, so I’m glad we have these pics to look back on. I should probably make a scrapbook spread of these.
Like I said, you should just go through the archives from 2015-2016, because all of the posts are pretty fun.
CURRENT BLOGGING
2015-2016 have definitely been the best years for my blog, as I actually attempt an editorial calendar and SHARE all of my posts.
Before last year, I never really shared what I was writing with the world. I never posted on facebook because I didn’t want my friends and family to read it and judge my writing skills. I didn’t understand pinterest, so I wasn’t really utilizing it.
Ultimately, I knew my content wasn’t that great. I wasn’t taking good photos, and I didn’t write clear tutorials. I realized that I should only write posts that I felt confident sharing. Of course, there are still days where I’m not excited about what I posted, but for the most part, I’m proud of the blog.
Now if I could only figure out how to get ahead of schedule and have some free time, that would be great…
THOUGHTS ON BLOGGING
Looking back on these posts, I really love all the life updates I posted. Maybe because I’ve been such a bad scrapbooker, I haven’t really thought about all the trips we’ve taken and fun weekends. When my blog is so scheduled or focused, I don’t get to share these things as often.
I may be the only one, but when blogs are just a bunch of tutorials, I don’t read them everyday. I keep them in my feed and use them as reference later, but I don’t actively read them – Maybe that’s why blogging has declined over the past few years?
It’s great that people have been able to monetize blogs and create such beautiful resources online. But I think it’s important to post enough about life that you still know the person behind the blog (if there is one… so many are now teams of editors and contributors). I guess Instagram and Snapchat fills that void?
Doing the Scrapbook Sunday with a monthly recap provides a little update on my life, but I think I’ll plan on adding in more personal posts. Still keeping the blog primarily sewing, but remembering to post about trips or home improvements more often. Or maybe I’ll just do a better job of keeping up with my scrapbooking and share those on Sundays 🙂
Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts on blogging after SIX YEARS!
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Happy Anniversary! 🙂