Well, 2011 was a long year for my family. Blogging took a backseat for much of the year due to my daughter's unexpected pregnancy and open adoption of a beautiful baby girl, Kalii Faith, in November. Her pregnancy was a huge impact on our family dynamics and opened all of our eyes - hopefully in a good way, but only time will tell. It was definitely an emotional year for all of us.
It did make me take a look at the direction that my book blog had taken since I started it a few years ago. I began blogging because I could not find a book club that met on a day that I could attend! I wanted to find other book lovers to share my love of books with! The first year I did a lot of challenges and was able to visit a lot of blogs and had a lot of fun meeting people. Then I started reviewing books for publishers and authors and hosting giveaways and challenges fell to the wayside, as did most of my impulse reading. I felt like I was on a schedule to read books and over time it wasn't as much fun anymore.
So this year, I want to try to get back to more of the challenges and the visiting other book blogs. I still want to review books, but I think I am going to be choosier in the books that I pick. I hope to host more authors for guest blogs and interviews. My TBR list will probably get longer, as there will be books that I would like to read from publishers, that I will not accept, so as to keep reading a pleasure and not a pressure!
Over the next few days I will be posting about a lot of challenges that I want to try, so you will be seeing a lot of posts about those. Like anything, I will probably bite off more than I can chew and sign up for far more than I will complete. But if I actually completed them all - then where would the challenge be? lol
As the title of my blog states, I also love Needlepoint. I belong to (and am current secretary) of the Lake County Chapter of the American Needlepoint Guild (ANG). I also belong to Cyberpointers, the online group. I am also an at-large-member of the Embroidery Group of America(EGA) and belong to Cyberstitchers, their online group. I love to visit needlepoint shops and look at canvases and threads, subscribe to a few different cross-stitch magazines, and have signed up for a few online classes, and still manage to NOT stitch much at all. I would like this to change this year. I would love to start finishing some of my projects! So hopefully, you will start to see a few more posts about some of the projects that I am working on.
So Happy New Year everyone! I hope that all of my readers meet some goals this year and that I get more of a chance to get to actually know some of you a little better.
3 comments:
It's hard to balance everything, isn't it? I've been accepting less books too, for many of the same reasons you stated. Happy New Year!
It seems many bloggers are re-evaluating this year. I have started thinking twice before accepting review books too. I like to sew and quilt and I can't remember the last time I sat down to my sewing machine. I hope in the New Year we both figure out how to balance it all.
Happy New Year! Sounds like you have some good plans for 2012.
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