This past week has seen several changes to Red!, and I wanted to tell you all a little bit about them as well as my goals for Red! during the rest of 2012.
This is where it all started. Things are basically the same, but I'll be posting much more frequently this year than in the past. I've been on a bit of a blogging spree so far this year, and even if it wanes a bit, my goal is to maintain at least 2 posts a week.
In August of 2010, I began to notice that around dinner time every night my Facebook news feed would be filled with friends who had run out of new ideas for family dinners and fallen into a rut, eating the same old tired foods over and over again every night. So, I launched this recipe blog to facilitate the sharing of family-tested and -approved recipes.
Quote of the Day has replaced Red!'s Life Lessons.
Life lessons started out as something that really excited me. I had planned to micro-blog each day, telling of the lessons I learned each day just by living my life. Unfortunately, my days tend to be more routine than I realized, filled with quick lessons specific to my life that were not noteworthy enough to blog. Because of this, that blog went dormant after only about a half-dozen posts. But something I do hear each day is at least one quote worthy of sharing, hence the new—and much shorter—Quote of the Day format.
The Getz List is no more.
The Getz List was a short-lived, quickly-forgotten blog whose sole purpose was to rant and expel anger on a variety of topics and people. What I discovered, though, was that I tended to do a much better—and far more clever—job of that on the main Red! blog, so the Getz List became my place to make "anonymous" stabs at unaware offenders. But I try to hold myself to a higher personal standard than that; I try to be more direct when I'm having a disagreement with someone.
Welcome to Red!'s "Big' Fashions blog!
Maybe it's because the average American woman is not a size 4 (regardless of what advertisers would have you believe), or maybe it's because we tend to gravitate to people "like" ourselves, but most of the women I would consider to be my friends simply are not skinny. Yet every blog and article you read on fashion seems to be about fashion for those thin "perfect" women. But that I am not skinny does not at all mean that I don't like to look nice and be happy with what I see reflected in my mirror! So, my friend Sharra and I will be co-authoring this new blog, focusing on fashions for plus-sized women and all the fabulous shoes we can find, from stilettos to flip-flops and all the styles in between!
Fully-Unified Theme
With the death of The Getz List went the last of the blue backgrounds from Red! All of Red!'s pages now have a single, cohesive theme. Also, the 4 separate blogs within the Red! family all have an identical bar at the top of each page (just below the title banner) with buttons to allow you to navigate quickly and easily among Red!'s different parts.
Red! has goals!
One thing I know about myself is that I keep interest in projects for much longer and more consistently if I am working toward a specific goal...or 2 or 3. So, this year, in addition to having goals for my own personal life in 2012, I have set some goals for Red!'s 2012 year as well.
- I hope to maintain a more constant posting schedule. I plan to post twice weekly on the main blog, every weekday on Quote of the Day, bi-weekly on "Big" Fashions, and monthly on Family-Friendly recipes.
- I hope to have at least six guest posts published on the main blog this year. These are posts that will be written by someone other than myself, and will be written specifically for Red! rather than being reposts from another blog or article. Are you interested in guest posting on Red!? Send me a message and let me know!
- I would love the opportunity to guest post on a blog I've never written for before. So, if you have a blog or know of someone who does, and would like to give me this opportunity, let me know! I'm fully open to a post exchange, where another blogger and I would each write a post for the other's blog. It's a great way to increase your visibility, so keep it in mind, fellow bloggers!
- I hope to write at least one post per month in response to a reader request. To do this, however, I must first have some reader requests/suggestions to use as topics! Is there something you would like for me to write about? Let me know!
I look forward to your continued readership during the remainder of 2012, and I hope that you're looking forward to reading what I will write. If you enjoy my posts, please share them with your friends and others who you think might also be interested. Thank you so much, and I hope your 2012 is off to a wonderful start!
MY best friend hosts a very interesting blog, and while there are stark differences in belief, I think you would both enjoy one another's writing. Check out www.crayonwrangler.com, see if you like it & maybe you two could do a blog-swap. I know she adores guest writing. I suggest reading her backstory first, though, so things make sense, lol.
ReplyDelete