Blogiversary – Year One: Done

Friends, today marks exactly one year (!!!) since the first time I mustered the courage to post about my little diy and craft projects online.

Let me first say that I am so thankful for every single reader and every last view my posts get. I cannot express that enough. Thank you. All of you. I started this blog to share my DIY and decor adventures – good and bad – with the world in hopes to provide relevant information to other diyers out there. I hope I am accomplishing just that. But even if I’m not, the friendships I’ve made and the community I’ve found on this adventure are a huge and important piece of my life, one that I am happy to have and excited to grow. In short, you guys rock my socks.

Now, if I may move on from the mushy stuff, I will say that although I’ve learned a lot on this adventure, I know there is much more to discover. I am committed to continually improving the content I post here.

One area that I am excited to work on and develop is photography. Being a visual, pinterest addicted, pretty image lover – I am aware that my shutter skills are… ahem… quite lacking. For the past year (and several years before that) I’ve been taking photos with my point-and-shoot. The one that I bought when Canon first released their digitals with colorful bodies (mine used to be a vibrant blue but has faded considerably). It’s old.

While this camera is wonderful in many situations, a poorly lit condo is not one of them. My pictures are just, well, flat. On top of the lighting being bad in here, I also face the challenge of night photography. Being away from the house a minimum of 11 hours per day for work and doing my best to tend to my social life on weekends means most of my pics are taken after 8pm. Not so bueno. So, as a one-year-blogiversary present to myself, I went out and got my first big girl dSLR! I’ll pause while you snicker at the absurdity that I’ve taken a fuzzy cell phone picture of a fancy camera….

I’ve read lots of reviews and have been watching sale sites for this guy, and when the opportunity arose to get one at a crazy good deal, I pounced. The Canon Rebel T3i is supposed to be a great beginner dSLR, and I’ve been a big fan of my Canon point-and-shoot, so I’m really excited to push and challenge myself with this brand new hardware. Here are some pics of The Turk (who was quite curious of the cam) that I took right out of the box on full auto. Not works of art but definitely an immediate improvement to the point and shoot.

Another area where I want to improve is content organization. My tags and categories need a re-work, so you may or may not see some minor changes here and there in that arena.

I also want to be better about posting more of my projects / crafts here. I do at least three a week – I should be writing about them.

Enough of my declaration of accountability, though. Here’s a gallery of a handful of my most popular posts over the past year.