Creative Genuis Award ....
Another On Line Mom …
May I introduce to you, Jennifer, a lovely SAHM, married to her hubby four years and they have two children, Mimi and Tommy.
I asked Jennifer how she got into blogging. “At first it was a way to document my children’s lives. I considered it to be “online scrapbooking”. It was also a way for my out of town family to keep up with the children. Now, I use it to make a few extra dollars each month. I do write about 4 or 5 sponsored post a month. I use the dollars to buy FOR ME (which many mom’s forget to do!). I use it for makeup, pedicures or a new pair of jeans!
Now that sounds like good sound advise! Ladies you may want to consider do this for yourselves!
Jennifer is a “Southern Gal”, brought up wearing pearls, never leaving the house without wearing makeup, and always having a fresh baked goodie on hand to offer guests! Jennifer loves cooking, especially baking cookies!! She loves getting recipes from Southern Living and AllReceipes.com. Also, she loves cooking many of her dinners in the crock pot because with her two young kids in the house she finds that she does not have much time to prepare meals.
Growing up she always wanted to be a mom. She had a good childhoood home life, filled with tradtitions and she couldn’t wait to make a “home” for her husband and children.
Some of her favorite blogs are Angry Julie and Barely Keeping It All Together. These do sounds interesting, maybe we will have to check these out.
Jennifer is definitely representative of a lovely Southern mother for today’s generation. It was a joy for me to learn just a little bit more about Jennifer and for you , you just might want to pop on over to her blog, Another On Line Mom and see the latest that Jennifer is up to.
Thanks Jennifer for the visit; I sincerely enjoyed it!
Blogger was started by a tiny company in San Francisco called Pyra Labs in August of 1999. This was in the midst of the dot-com boom. But we weren't exactly a VC-funded, party-throwing, foosball-in-the-lobby-playing, free-beer-drinking outfit. (Unless it was other people's free beer.)
We were three friends, funded by doing annoying contract web projects for big companies, trying to make our own grand entrance onto the Internet landscape. What we were originally trying to do doesn't matter so much now. But while doing it, we created Blogger, more or less on a whim, and thought — Hmmm... that's kinda interesting.
Blogger took off, in a small way, and eventually a bigger way, over a couple years. We raised a little money (but stayed small). And then the bust happened, and we ran out of money, and our fun little journey got less fun. We narrowly survived, not all in one piece, but kept the service going the whole time (most days) and started building it back up.
Things were going well again in 2002. We had hundreds of thousands of users, though still just a few people. And then something no one expected happened: Google wanted to buy us. Yes, that Google
We liked Google a lot. And they liked blogs. So we were amenable to the idea. And it worked out nicely.
Now we're a small (but slightly bigger than before) team in Google focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world's information from the personal perspective. Which has pretty much always been our whole deal.
Raising Chickens ... Yes, we decided to give it a try.Do any of you "raise chickens"? The first thing I found was that we had to get acquainted with the "chicken vocabulary". Some examples:
1. Pullet ... we kept hearing that this is what we needed. So, what is a pullet? This is a female chicken that is less than 1 year old.
2. Hen ... A female chicken, but she is more than a year old and she is ready to lay the eggs.
3. Chic ... Now this is those cute little fuzzy birds that have just been hatched. We decided we did not want to fool around with these, even if they are so very, very cute!
4. Cockerel ... Now I had never heard of this one. This is a male chicken that is less than a year old. (We did not want this one either).
5. Capon ... I have heard of this one but never really knew what it meant. This is a chicken used for meat. (Nope, did not want this).
6. Chicken coop ... Well, I think we all know this ... a cozy apartment for the chickens to live in - sometimes called a Hen House.
7. Rooster ... almost forgot this one. This is the male chicken that is less than a year old. I understand that you can get these free as it only take one rooster for a little flock of hens.
8. Free Range or Pinned up ... We all know about this because of the controversy going on and all the T.V. ads ... We are going to have a "free range" apartment.
Now that we have our "chicken talk" established my husband decided on the living quarters for our flock and now off to shop and find the right "pullets".
Porter's Poultry Place
Garden Valley, Ca.
530-335-9121
We found our place and now to meet the owner, Darci, and her daughter, Katie. This was a delight. Darci and Katie are both charming, warm, outgoing, and love to share about their chickens. We were well educated by Darci on all the aspects of Raising Chickens!
Darci started her business about 4 years ago with a flock of 6 chickens. Now she is in full swing, offering a variety of breeds. She now sells chickens, eating eggs, fertile hatching eggs, laying hens and gives away free roosters.... she is also involved in 4H projects and raises Exhibition Poultry, which are quality show birds.
The most exciting part of choosing Porter's Poultry Place was being able to choose from so many different breeds. We decided on a variety of 5 different breeds for our little flock of laying chickens ... so it looks like we are now in the Chicken Business , or at least eggs for breakfast!
Katie is holding one of the exhibition chickens that did not qualify because the crown was not perfect. So, we got to take this one home with us. Woo Hoo we have a Beauty Queen in the Hen House!
Who is Vanessa and what is her work all about? Well, let me introduce this amazing young lady. Vanessa is 19 years old (yes, but oh, so talented - her talent and computer skills far outweigh her age). Vanessa lives in the Philippines with her family and is currently a senior in college majoring in Computer Education. After graduating next year, (and she can hardly wait!) her desire is to be a Computer teacher and also continuing with her other passion of blog designing.
Vanessa started her on-line business, Paperback Designs in December 2007. Vanessa is always pleased that others have entrusted her to work on their blog design and in return she always gives her best. She designs with passion, with perfection in mind. She is always intrinsically motivated because she loves what she is doing; she has a passion for designing. Even though there is a lot of competition in her field one thing she is proud of is that she is dedicated to her work and she is not concerned to compete with other designers. As Vanessa expressed, "it is a community where we can all learn from each other."
I ask Vanessa who are her greatest supporters? The reply- "My parents. They always encourage me to do whatever I am passionate about for a long as it will improve my whole being. They're just the coolest people in the world!"
Her hope for the future is to travel someday, go to faraway places, meet different people and continue to be inspired. "For me, inspiration is the number one factor to being a good blog designer, it is the source of my creativity. I also want to teach someday, to cultivate the minds of the youth. "Education is life.". For me, learning is a continuous process. As long as people love my work, I will continue to design and in the process to learn.
I am just starting out myself, but my advice to other artist new to the field is to persevere and do whatever you love doing. Never do a job if your hearts not in it. If you love designing blogs, or creating graphics, go for it! And also be committed to a job, never give up. There is no such things as "impossible to do it" or "can't do it" if your are willing to learn.
Now I would say that is a lot of wisdom from such a young lady. Personally I have been extremely pleased with her work. She designed this blog , maintained, completed, and made great suggestions for my web site (www.overthetopaprons.com) and designed numerous other projects for me. (Address labels, avatar, widget,hang tags, promo button, business card, etc.) She was quick, efficient, affordable, and understood exactly what I was looking for.
You can see that Vanessa has a lot of talent and she has a lot to offer to just about everyone. You might ask why did I choose to interview Vanessa - well for such a young woman she is pretty incredible - she is unique, she is special, she is one of a kind.
Baby Bathing Apron .... The baby can play and go splish splash while mommy stays dry. Mommy and Me is monogrammed on the apron to add to the cuteness... the fabric is 100% cotton chenille and a cotton pink with white dots ruffle trim. (apron available at: www.overthetopaprons.com)
Do any of you get curious as to why people blog, what there goal is for their blog, why they spend the time blogging? I am doing a series of interviews called "Why I Like To Blog". I thought if I am curious about this subject maybe some of you would be curious also.
May I introduce Jolene, the creator of her blog:
My first question to Jolene was: Why do you like to blog? Jolene actually started blogging in 2007, the original purpose was to help promote a business and found it to be a fun experience and then decided to continue on even though the business venture never really took off. She is motivated by her "fabulous readers". "Just knowing that some people actually do like to read what I have to say, and they actually come back o find out what's going on with me, that alone is enough to keep me going." After a stressful day, Jolene finds it relaxing to sit down and just start typing a blog post, getting lost in her typing and posting.
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Jolene's blog is a little bit of everything, mostly focusing on her life in general. Sometimes making money is a part of that, but it is mostly personal with money making as a side dish :).
Jolene is proud of the fact that her current blog design was mainly created by herself along with the help of some other wonderful sites that were kind enough to explain how to do a variety of things with her blog . She comments that even though it may not be "perfect" she is very proud of the accomplishment.
Jolene lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her husband and two boys. Her main focus is her family. She is a stay at home mom enjoying the fact that her boys can grow up knowing that mom was always there for them. She home schools her children which means most of her time evolves around her kids which means things can get a little crazy. Her parents were definitely an influence on making the decision of where she is today...she can remember doing stuff as a family and that is the way I am today. "I want to do things as a family."
I asked Jolene if she had any advise to other readers or bloggers and she shared, "Don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot say or do on your blog. Your blog is your own little online world; make it what YOU want it to be. If someone else doesn't like it they don't have to read it! Your blog is an expression of you, so make it yours."
As far as a business consideration, Jolene is currently trying to get more involved with CafePress and designing T-shirts and such and it is turning into a fun family thing as everyone contributes their ideas. Sounds like a great idea and goes along with Jolene's thinking - family focus and family fun!
You asked me why did I choose Jolene to interview about her blogging experience? Well, she is unique, she is special, she is one of a kind!
There are so many On Line Socal Groups and then subgroups within the main group how do you decide which ones you want to focus on? Just to name a few there is: Twitter Moms, Posh Momma, Posh Parent, Beautiful Fabulous, Flicker, We Love Etsy, Face Book, My Space, Entre Card, Etsy Teams, Squido, Indiepublic .... perhaps you even know of many others?
My question to you is if you do belong to a group which one do you spend the most time on, what do you like best about it, and how do you benefit from it. And then the bigger question, do you feel it is worth your time? What is one of your favorite groups that you would recommend to us?
It would really be fun and informative if you could share some of your likes and dislikes of different groups with the rest of us. How about it .... and let's see which one of you belong to the most groups - yep, go ahead and post your numbers. I will post the winner.
When hurricane Hannah separated two white tigers from their mother, Anjana came to the Rescue. �Anjana, a chimp at TIGERS in South Carolina, became surrogate mom and playmate to the cubs, even helping with bottle feeding, according to The Sun).
The Apron Rage started a little over 2 years ago and it is going stronger than ever. I think it is because so much is going on the the world, right here in the US, and just the fast pace of life, that it makes all of us want to "pull back a bit". We want family and friends around us where we feel safe and comfortable. And we all know what comes with feeling comfortable - food - yes, it is a way of showing our family that we love and care for them and care about their well being. It is a way of showing our friends that we chaish them, and love to have them in our homes. Well, why not look chic, stylish, a bit charming or just down right terrific when you are cooking for your family or entertaining guest? Put on the little apron that "says you", pick a style that expresses who you are - have fun, and bring out the smiles. You will feel terrific and oh, my, others will see you look terrific.
So, the return of the apron is a good thing, a fun thing, a must have. Now, is all my modesty, I must invite you to vist my new website. The focus is on making and designing aprons for each unique look. That is what is so marvelous about all of us, we are are different, we are unique, we are special, we are one of a kind ..... so why not express that in the kitchen! (my web site is: www.overthetopaprons.com)
My site is not completd as far as stocking it with product, but I am on my way. Very soon I will be have a marvelous give-a-way to celebrate the opening of the website. So, please check back. In the meantime, it would be so nice of you to go to my website (www.overthetopaprons.com) and leave a comment or suggestion in the Guest Book - I would so appreciate that! Thank you good friends, you are what makes blogging fun!
Fun, Retro, a bit Marilyn Monroe ! Can't you just see yourself having fun in this little number and whether you are cooking for your family or entertaining friends get ready for the ooos and ahssss; you couldn't look more chic or sassy.
(This is available on my website: www.overthetopaprons.com)
