You Pinspire Me
Well, here we are. It’s the weekend, and in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t done a lot of weekend posting in the last 6 months because we’ve been doing a lot of week day posting – and something’s gotta give, sometime!
However. Special occasions call for special exceptions. And this is, indeed, a special occasion. For the second time in 6 months, Anne over at Food Retro has bestowed upon me a blogging award, of sorts. The first was the Sunshine Award. Why didn’t you hear of it, you ask? Because I neglected to complete my half of the chain letter honour, which is to say, I never wrote a post answering a bunch of questions and tagging about other poor saps in the process. Surprisingly, no bad luck befell me other than the fact that Anne didn’t take the hint and she nominated me again for one of these silly things.
Without further ado, here are the requisite questions, followed by my heartfelt answers.
1. What am I working on?
I feel, right now, as though all that I’m ever working on is playing catch up with laundry & dishes & house work in general – why is it that as soon as we start to spend a couple hours outside during the day, my house falls apart from the inside out?
Besides the obvious. I’m working on getting some of my fave original summer BBQ recipes up. I’m conspiring with Anne to take over Twitter (or at least, a tiny little corner of Twitter). I took a seminar last month on pitching to brands, so I’ve got half a dozen leads that I’ve been following up, some with very exciting results so far. I’m preparing a post about one of my favourite Bands, Ash & Bloom, who are having a CD release this coming week here in Canada for their debut album, Let the Storm Come. I’m writing, writing, and rewriting my first submission for Blunt Moms. I could go on, but I’m afraid of overloading your brain.
2. How Does My Work Differ from Others of the Genre?
That’s an excellent question, but I think that I’ve got a pretty good answer to it: I love to share great recipes, crafts, sales, and ideas, but I don’t pretend to be Super Mom. I’m not an expert in the kitchen, I do make a lot of mistakes, I can’t ice a cake for a magazine spread, and my pictures don’t look like they belong in magazines.
I try my best to do crafts and educational activities with the kids, but many days, that just doesn’t happen. We eat Kraft Dinner for lunch about once a week. WITH non-organic hot dogs. I use the TV as a babysitter during snack time in the mornings for an hour so that I can get something accomplished. I am neither an anti-DIY Pinterest-hater, nor am I a fanatical product of Martha Stewart. My philosophy is that you don’t have to do it all, but you DO have to do something, once in a while. I hope that my work on this blog represents that.
3. How do I Write / Create What I Do?
Photo Credit: Hendrik, 3yrs old. “Mommy Blogging”
It almost always starts with Pinterest. (I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Pinterest kinda had something to do with the blog that we started…) Then, it moves on to the practical application: the kitchen or the dining table, most of the time. I rearrange the recipe, add & subtract ingredients, put the food together. Or, we take out the paper and the paints and the scissors, and get messy.
The camera comes out, obviously, and I badger my poor son as he’s measuring flour or painting his caterpillar to stop moving & look at the camera. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but 3 year olds can do neither of these things.
Then, we taste / look at the final product and discuss whether it’s blog-worthy.
I always start with editing my pictures at PicMonkey, and then I move on to writing. Interestingly enough, I started with the writing process for this particular post. Probably because I’m going to have to go out and hunt down stock photos for this one.
4. How Does Your Writing / Creative Process Work?
The only time I have EVER written anything well ahead of time was when I was studying in Oxford for a semester, and I HAD to do my research & write up an outline well ahead of when the papers were due because we weren’t allowed to take the books out of the Bodelian Library. It felt good to finish a paper well in advance of the due date. And then I saved over my papers with a blank document. (According to the very drunk British man that I sat next to at dinner that night, I was, indeed, “Wallowing in a Quagmire of STEWpidity.”)
I’m a last-minute writer. My best work has always come out when the pressure’s on, so that’s sort of the path that I’ve followed thus far with my posts for the blog. It makes for a lot of late nights, and my addiction to Twitter & Facebook sure hasn’t made completion of posts any easier. 
I’m told that I’m now to nominate three fellow bloggers to participate, and, as I procrastinated a couple weeks on writing this post, I wouldn’t be surprised if every other blogger in the world has already received & sent this chain letter honour. However, I’ll take a stab at it.
Laura, My Life in the Sun
I met Laura on Twitter last fall and, as we were both newbs for the upcoming Blissdom Conference, we connected. I’m happy to say that we actually connected IRL (in real life, as the saying goes) and that she was not one of those people who’s online personality is the exact opposite of what she portrays in social media. I’ve absolutely loved watching her blog grow over the last 8 months – if you haven’t been there before, you really need to go check it out.
Jacqueline, Two Fun Moms
Jac is new to the blogging world, but we go way back to choir days in university. She has always made me laugh (the year she was planning her wedding, we sang Bach’s Wachet Auf. In the first Chorale, there’s a line that reads, when translated, “Prepare yourself for the wedding.” Jac seemed to think that Dr T had chosen the piece just for her benefit.), and now I get to laugh with her once more on her blog. I’d say there’s about a 50/50 chance of her following through with this chain letter honour.
Marya, You Pinspire Me
Hey, there is nothing in the rules that says I can’t nominate someone from my own blog. Besides, I like to read a little more about what’s going on in Marya’s life other than the recipes that she’s made or the super awesome soccer mom tips that she’s collected! We’ve been blogging together for 2.5 years, and she’s a pretty darn good blogging partner to have, if you ask me.
I was JUST holding my head up the same way. IT WAS FREAKY!