Since the President gives the country a State Of The Union address and our governor gives a State Of The Commonwealth address, I thought I would give my own version, The State Of The Blog address. As of March 9th, 2013, I have been blogging for 4 years at this little site. When I look back at some of those first posts, I will chuckle at myself and realize how far I have come in my writing and photography skills. I am still not the greatest, but at least I have improved. While my dad was in the hospital and rehab facility for weeks these past few months, I worried that I would have to give up blogging for a while since there wasn’t much free time. Thankfully he is now at home and doing great so back to blogging I go, very happily I might add.
This is my creative outlet. The cooking of the food, the photographing of the food, and, finally, writing about all of it brings me joy. This is kind of like my alter-ego and it is a place I can go express myself and write about what I want to write about.
Since this is definitely not my full-time job (hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?), I try to keep my hobby as inexpensive as possible. The most expensive thing I have bought for blogging is a new camera, but we use that for many other things. I have purchased a few bowls, plates, and pretty dishtowels to use as props, but that is about it. I love to look at other blogs that are professionally designed with all kinds of buttons and gadgets, but didn’t want to pay for it. Enter my amazing husband, C!
A few weeks ago, I needed to learn how to enter HTML code into a blog post using Windows Live Writer (another great FREE product). While C showed me how to do it, he asked if there was anything else I wanted to add. YES!!! Many blogs had “Pin It” buttons so readers could “pin” their posts and I wanted one. We did a little searching on the WordPress site and found by going to “Settings” and “Sharing”, we could make those buttons a reality. Now at the bottom of every post, there is a Pinterest, Print, Twitter and Email buttons. Love it!
Speaking of the print option, this is due to another freebie that C knew about call Print Friendly. Just go to their site and click on “website button” at the top right and you, too, can have a print option on your site. I really like it because it pulls the photos to one side so all of the text is together and that makes it much easier to read as an actual recipe. Also, you can hover your mouse over sections and delete them so they won’t print and empty your ink cartridge. Genius, I say, just genius.
I also added a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button right under my “About Me” info on the right hand side of the page. I love Pinterest so please follow me and see all of the stuff I may never get around to doing or buying. Ha!
If you are new to this space, thanks for stopping by and I hope you return many times. If you are a regular reader, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I love doing this and if only one person gets enjoyment out of besides me, then it is completely worth it.
Picture Perfect Cooking 