Personalized Ornament Giveaway

Go to 365 Days of Christmas, my Chritmas blog, to enter the Personalized Free Christmas Ornament Giveaway.

Tiny Prints

Tiny Prints has brand new beautiful, classy, elegant Christmas cards this year.  You can personalize 100s of cards with your photographs and your words.  There are many options, such as color changes and designs for each card.

Go to my Christmas blog, 365 Days of Christmas, to see what I have to say about Tiny Prints.

Bulk Blogging

I'd like to encourage you to try blogging in bulk, instead of blogging every day. Try blogging by the week or better yet by the month. It really relieves you of the stress of daily blogging. I have over 12 blogs and each are totally different from each other and different than your blog(s).  My personal goal for each blog is 2 - 3 posts per week. That is only 8 - 12 posts a month.  Everything else in addition to this amount is a bonus. Surely you have 8 - 12 things you can write about . . . right now.

Scrapbooking Again

Whoo hoo! I am been in such an uncreative, funky mood for a while now that I was scared that I'd never get back to scrapbooking. This month I created four fanciful bookmarks for my (boy)friend as a Valentine's gift. I also created a beautiful mini album for my daughter. Check out the What I Love About Cassandra album over at my 365 Days of Memories blog.

365 Days of Photos

I've been wanting to do this project for several years now and I am determined this year to actually follow through on this project.

Check out my new blog, 365 Days of Photos, to see a new photo each day that represents me and my life.

Blogging Tips #2 - Badges, Buttons, & Widgets

There's just something about badges, buttons, and widgets that bloggers cannot resist but put them up on their blog.

Pay attention to bumper stickers then think how you can slant it towards your blog.

Always make sure the button links back to your blog.

Keep the widgets related to the topic of your blog. If you blog about pregnancy, create a pregnancy countdown ticker. If you blog about Christmas, create a countdown to Christmas ticker. If you blog about books, create a reading list.

QOTW - Name of Blog

Each week (at least, every other week), I post a QOTW (Question of the Week) so you can join in and we can get to know each other better.

This week's question:
How did you come up with the name of your blog?

My answer:
I have so much to share and God has blessed me with so much. One of my favorite words is cherished.

cher·ish

• care for: be fond of; be attached to
• to treat with affection and tenderness; hold dear
• to keep fondly in mind; entertain, appreciate
• to keep or cultivate with care and affection, nurture
• to entertain or harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely
• to hold or treat as dear; feel love for
• to care for tenderly; nurture
• to cling fondly or inveterately to
• to take good care of; protect
• to cling to the idea or feeling of

My blog description: I share my daily living and struggles as a single mother. I share a part of me and my family. I share my children, motherhood, being single in my 40s, Christianity, fibromyalgia & other health issues, advocacy, my passions, my hobbies, my love of reading, and my love of Christmas. I share what all is cherished in my life.

Disappointed -- Where Did My Commenters Go?

I'm very disappointed with how some of my stuff on my blog just quit working:
Comments from the past 4-5 posts have disappeared.
The comments box quit working.
The Cherished Commenters/Top Commenters quit working.

I have spend hours trying to fix both of these things and have no idea what is going on. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Unintended Consequences of Mom Blogging

It is my assertion that every mom blogger has the right to run her blog the way she sees fit without public condemnation and wayward judgments. Beyond honesty, there are no concrete standards by which all mom bloggers should adhere. Read more at Mom Bloggers Club.

I believe as mom bloggers we have the innate capacity to rise to greater levels of compassion and appreciation for one another

The Blogger Template Book

Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book provided by Blogger Buster. This is a complete PDF guide to choosing, installing, and optimizing Blogger templates.

Blogger Buddy

Tami from Diary of a Mad Woman is super generous with her comments and awards. I am so lucky she found me via this big wide world of the blogosphere. I look forward to hearing from her on a regular basis.

According to Tami, I need to forward this special award. Below, are my blogging friends that deserve this award (probably even more so than I do):

• Teresa at 8 Things About Me
• Phyllis at I Am My Beloveds
• Maggie at Quixotically Chaotic

Ladies, please take this award and forward to your bloggy buddies.

Cherished Memories

A Birth Certificate shows you were born.

A Death Certificate shows you died.

A Completed Scrapbook shows you LIVED!

Cherished Memories 4 U Blog
Now Open!

My friend, Teresa, and I have started a new endeavor. Actually, we have been teamed up for several years as scrapbookers and even longer as friends. We had a Yahoo Group and then a Forum and recently decided to move our scrapbooking ideas, tips, challenges, games, etc., to a blog. It is a collaborative effort that we hope will be a success.

Cherished Memories is about cherishing family and loved ones and getting those memories on paper. Cherished Memories is all about scrapbooking and paper-crafting. We play games, host swaps, send RAKs, and have a busy schedule of contests, challenges, and activities. We also learn new and re-visit old techniques, share layouts, and chat.

How Often Should You Blog?

Although there isn't an exact science when it comes to how often you should post, it is a good idea to post regularly. I personally try to post 3-4 times a week. Since I use Blogger, I also have the ability to schedule my posts -- which I love.

When you start to build up a readership, you need to post regularly to keep them coming back. But don't start posting dozens of times a day, or your blog may be seen as Spam by the search engines and this could have a serious effect on your ranking.

After you have been posting for a while you will find your own formula for posting simply by keeping track of the results you receive.

The Ultimate Blog Party 2009 - Blog Hopping Review

I stayed up late so I could get my blogs (and their URLs) added to the list earlier this year. I wanted my blogs to be near the beginning of the list since last year I was listed way past 1,000. My girlfriend, Teresa, and I were IMing each other and having trouble accessing the 5 Minutes for Mom site at Midnight. Bummer! After waiting one hour for the post to show up at 5MFM, we both grew anxious and tired. Just as we gave up and said good-night the site was up and running.

I was lucky and my blogs were listed at:
35. All Things Cherished
75. 365 Days of Memories
88. 365 Days of Christmas
98. 365 Days of Organization

Whoo hoo! I was so excited to get all four blogs listed in the top 100, I couldn't sleep for hours. : )

My goal was to post at least at half of the blogs listed by midnight the first day of the Ultimate Blog Party. At midnight, the number was 808 blogs. I did not make my goal, but in two weeks time I seriously made a valiant effort but as you know life takes precedence. As of today, I have made it to 332 blogs out of 1,562 (the final number at midnight of the last day of the party) and posted at most of them. Sadly, there were many blogs with no party posts, some blogs that were businesses only, some blogs that had disappeared (due to lack of a proper ISP address), and some blogs with duplicate (and triplicate) entries. I did not count the blogs -- approx. 20 -- that I visited from links from other blogs.

One of the best things about this year's party was I won a prize. See my post titled All Things Cherished is Updated.

One of the other best things about this year's party was the many comments I received this year at all of my blogs: All Things Cherished received 140 comments. 365 Days of Memories received 52 comments. 365 Days of Christmas received 45 comments. 365 Days of Organization received 52 comments. Whoo hoo!

Blogs Worth Visiting Again (in alphabetical order):

4 Little Men & Girly Twins
http://4littlemen.blogspot.com/

Autism Interrupted
http://autisminterrupted.blogspot.com/

Brea's Mommy
http://breasmommy.blogspot.com/

Divine Chaos
http://www.mydivinechaos.com/

Farm Home Life
http://farmhomelife.blogspot.com/

Full Nest
http://ourfullnest.blogspot.com/

Her Media
http://her-media.com/

I Am a Money Magnet
http://jamieisamoneymagnet.blogspot.com/

Just Jingle
http://justjingle.blogspot.com/

Life On The Roof
http://lifeontheroof.blogspot.com/

Make Life Delicious
http://makelifedelicious.com/

Making Memories
http://angie-beem.blogspot.com/

Marta's Meanderings
http://martasmeanderings.blogspot.com/

Modern Media Mom
http://www.modernmediamom.com/

Moms By Heart
http://www.momsbyheart.net/

Muddy Boots
http://muddybootsblog.blogspot.com/

My Creative Adventure
http://by-jen.blogspot.com/

My Sweet Babboo
http://unst.blogspot.com/

Ordinary is Amazing
http://www.alenesnodgrass.com/

Scoring Deals
http://www.scoringdeals.com/

She Wants to Be Organized Everyday
http://organizedeveryday.blogspot.com/

Something About Parenting
http://somethingaboutparenting.typepad.com/

Sunshine 4 Teachers
http://www.sunshine4teachers.blogspot.com/

The Attitude of My Heart
http://theattitudeofmyheart.blogspot.com/

The Italian Bella Diaries
http://theitalianbelladiaries.blogspot.com/

I have enjoyed your blogs and have grown to become a regular reader. I may not often post but I do enjoy your posts, blogs, and inspiration. Thanks. Please help yourself to the I Linky Love You award on my sidebar and add it to your blog. See you around the blogosphere.

All Things Cherished is Updated

Have you noticed? I got a blog overhaul.

I was extremely excited and surprised to hear from Pamela and the 5 Minutes for Mom team during the Ultimate Blog Party. I won prize INTL 28, a Sassy Frass blog design.

I got a new custom header with matching background, revamped columns, a button you can grab, five buttons for my sidebar, and a signature button. Whoo hoo!

Melanie from Sassy Chic Designs was pleasant, patient, and professional.

I'm so excited about the new look of the blog. What do you think? Please be kind, though.

Since Melanie did such a super job on my blog I wanted to introduce her to you, my readers.

Melanie, a wife, mother, and employee. She enjoys blogging, photography, scrapbooking, sewing, cooking, and, of course, sassing blogs. Melanie had so much fun learning how to make her blog unique to reflect her distinctive personality that she now will help you do the same; hence Sassy Chic Designs. Melanie says,"Your blog is your home online and you have your house decorated, right?, so let's get your blog decorated."

Business Blogging

Blogging in the last few years have become more and more popular. In fact, it is now a common household term. Most everyone with a computer now has a blog, irregardless if they are business people, work at home people, or even the stay at home moms. If you haven’t jumped into blogging, here are a few reasons why you should start blogging now.

If you haven’t noticed, blogs are a great communication tool. If you blog about your business, your blog will most likely have posts that focus on your business but, that doesn’t mean you can’t let your hair down a little. It’s quite alright to post about your personal life sometimes. You don’t have to go into detail - just enough for your readers to be able to relate to you.


Blogging allows you to let your “voice” be heard. Your readers will get to know you a bit more and you will be able to form a relationship with them. Soon, you will have some kind of interactivity with your readers especially when you allow them to comment on your blog. When possible, reply back to the comments. The back and forth bantering and conversation-style writing will keep your readers coming back for more.

You can use your blog as a way to figure out what your readers want from you. Ask them to leave you suggestions or questions about your business. You can even use these as the beginning of a new blog post/discussion. When you address questions from readers and you provide them with the answers they are looking for, you instantly promote yourself as an expert in your field. Soon, your readers and visitors will develop trust in you and your opinions.

Trust is a wonderful thing. The more people trust you, the more they will use and recommend your product/s. People only do business with people they know and trust. Blogging allows you to give your readers a sneak peek into your life and how you work.

If you already have a traditional website, blogging is an awesome way to promote your website. Blog about articles that are in your website - blog only a snippet of the article - like a teaser and add a link to the complete article in your website. This is an easy way to get incoming links to your existing site in your blog posts.

Blogs are also an excellent way to enhance your writing skills. Blog entries do not have to be very long.

Blog Gone Stale?

Run Out of Ideas? Help Is Here and It's FREE

Here's the problem with blogging. Thinking up what to blog about daily is exhausting. Researching, developing activities, planning posts takes up a lot of time. As if that isn't bad enough, when doing your research, it is so easy to get sucked up into other peoples' blogs and not accomplishing anything at the end of the day.

Blog Energizer can help. We find stuff for you to blog about. All you have to do is pick them up.

Blogging Tips #1 - Tracking Your Blog in the Blogosphere

Are you curious who reads you? Do you want to know more about the people who link to you? Are you curious if someone is writing about the things you’ve said?

Bloggers love feedback. Whether it’s comments or emails, knowing that someone else out there was touched in some way by our writing gives us fuel to continue blogging. So how do you track what others are saying about you? What if there exists a whole group of fans who link to you, talk about you, but don’t send emails or leave comments?

The following is a primer on how to track conversations in the blogosphere.

Permalinks, Addresses and URL’s
The first thing to learn is your website URL. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and is the “address” of your site on the Internet. A permalink is the the address, (or URL) of a specific blog post. When searching, learn to type in your main or homepage url to find people linking to you.

For best results in searches, skip the www.

Technorati
This is the big daddy of blog search. Technorati allows you to search by url, by tags, and in a directory.

Step 1: Claim your blog. Technorati has to know you are there to track what you are doing. Claim your blog, sign in to an account, and list a bunch of keywords that people can use to find your site. There are over 6,000 Mom blogs already in Technorati, so be creative with your tags.

Step 2: URL search. Find Posts that link to you. Type the URL of your blog into the box and click search. What comes up are all of the blogs that currently link to your blog. You can rank them by freshness, or authority, and it is the most comprehensive list. Not everyone is listed, but Technorati is a great way to find out who is linking to you.

Step 3: Searching in Tags. Tags are labels that people put into their post. Wordpress and Typepad allow you to customize your site to add Technorati tags, and it is a powerful way to push your posts to a larger topic. Check out “pregnancy” as a tag or “after school snacks.” As you can see, there aren’t many posts for after school snacks (only 22,000), but it does tell you when someone last wrote about them. The more specific you are in your tags, the better chance you have of being found. Pregnancy has more than 354,000 tags so the more specific, the better.

Step 4: Search in Directory. The tags you wrote when you claimed your blog places you in categories in the directory. While a tag search looks for individual posts, a directory search looks for blog descriptions.

Google Searches
The simplest way to track your blog in Google, or any search engine, is to type http://www.yourblogurl.com. This should bring up a list of all the pages cached in Google that link specifically to your website. This works fine for high ranking blogs, but it’s not complete, and doesn’t tell you a time reference.

For great ways to use Google to search out all kinds of topics, check out their cheat sheet.

Google Alerts
Log in to Google (create a personal account if you do not already have one) and create Google alerts. These emails track keywords, names, and websites you enter and forward them to you when Google first caches them Google alerts work both to tell when someone is linking to you and when they are speaking of you without a link.

BlogPulse
Search engines all have different algorithms, so for fun, type your name and blog into different search engines to get different results:
Sphere
Blogger
MSN Live
Ask.com
Dogpile
Blogpulse

There are literally hundreds of different ways to track yourself in the blogosphere. Find the sites you like best and join in the conversation.

365 Days of Christmas is Hosting a Giveaway

Check out my blog 365 Days of Christmas for our first big giveaway. Judy Pancoast, a new friend, artist, composer, and producer of children's music has graciously offered a CD, "The House on Christmas Street" for our drawing. Go to 365 Days of Christmas for more information.

All About Memes

Let’s talk about memes, what they are, and why they are good for your blog.

What is a meme?
A meme is a group of bloggers who blog about something similar at a set time, and then visit each other in order to get to know each other better and grow traffic to their own blogs.

How does it work?
Generally, a meme is hosted by a particular blog. Some, like Thursday Thirteen, have a dedicated site of their own. Others, like Tackle It Tuesday are hosted by a pre-existing blog. Each week or month, depending on the meme, a new theme or topic is posted and then participants post links to their meme post. For example, every Thursday, Thursday Thirteen participants post a list of 13 things on a topic of their choice, and then post their link on the hosting site. Participants then visit each other throughout the week and leave comments for other participants.

What is the benefit?
Doing memes can bring in new readers and improves traffic stats. Regular participation will produce loyal readers and build a more personal connection with your readers, which is good for your blog.

Is a meme a good option for you?
Participating in a meme takes time. In order for it to be effective, you need to take the time to visit and comment on other participants blogs each week. Otherwise, they will quickly stop visiting you as well.

There are many memes to choose from on many different topics.