Happy New Year to you all! I certainly hope that each and everyone of you had a safe and happy holiday season! I thoroughly enjoyed my break from blogland and dove into my family with every ounce of my being. Our break began with 2 snow days from school before winter break was supposed to start and inches and inches of fluffy white snow! I found myself hunkered in with my kids enjoying nothing more than staying in my jammies, playing games, drinking hot cocoa, and forgetting about everything but them. It was pure magic each and every day as we anticipated and enjoyed one family function after another.
My heart ached after new years as I sent my son back to school, and turned the house from Christmas land back to normal. I think that is a sign of s great holiday, but I am always sad to see it go but I am excited to be back to blogging, and can’t wait to start of the new year.
With the new year I always feel a new motivation to do better, know better, and try harder in all areas of my life. Unfortunately my all or nothing personality makes balance and moderation a difficult task for me to grasp, but I will do my very best to keep a the balance between blogging and real life. I seem to either give things 120% or feel as though I have failed and it’s not one of my best qualities. This year my hope is to bring you more budget friendly ideas that focus on what is most important… family. I found myself really pushing hard to bring you lot’s of great holiday ideas before Christmas hit, and felt a bit overwhelmed with keeping everything else in check while doing so, but for my faithful readers, it is well worth the effort and I hope you got some great ideas. This year I hope to grow my blog in many different ways and perhaps change things up a bit! I have been researching, learning, and looking for ways to make A Spotted Pony more user friendly and appealing. I hoope to implement some new things this year. With that said, I would love some feedback from my readers in hopes of making A Spotted Pony a place you love to visit! Is their anything you think might help you navigate the site better?
One thing I have always felt was lacking from the blog are outstanding photographs to share with you all! My very sweet hubby gave me some great tools for Christmas that will hopefully shoot my photography skills to the next level. I am so excited to dive in and really learn to use my camera and accessories to their full capacity! So you may see a change in the number of posts due to my extra efforts being focused in different ways, but I am hoping to go for quality, and not quantity!
When I began my blog I envisioned a place where I could share projects, ideas, and things that inspire others to create. While I have certainly made a platform for myself that pleases me, I hope that it does you too! In doing my research I am finding that other bloggers say you can’t have a blog without building a relationship with your readers and sharing things about yourself and your life. I have always seen my blog as a place to share ideas, and not as an outlet for my feelings, or a log of our families daily activities which is something I have really shyed away from. I feel like our families happenings are our own business, but wonder if that is something that others are missing? As a busy mom, I find that I love to read other blogs, but don’t really have a lot of time to do so. For that reason I like to share things that are short and sweet, and only projects that I would pursue myself and ideas that anyone can implement into my own life. That is why you find few posts about our personal lives and my feelings on this and that. My hope is that I can give you posts that are short and to the point, but most of all useful! I find it hard to believe that anyone really cares how I feel about certain topics, or that anyone cares about the daily antics of a stay at home mom, but maybe I am wrong.
So, here is the question? Is there something you feel like you are missing when you stop by to see whats new?
Do you want to hear about being a stay at home mom or topics pertaining to momhood? For example (some thoughts I have imagined sharing, but didn’t):
So you decided to become a stay at home mom – NOW WHAT?
Keep your sanity when you don’t leave your house.
Maintaining your health and waistline when you are right next to your pantry 24/7.
Parenting a child with heart disease?
Keeping your faith when life throws a curve ball.
Life after a miscarriage.
Putting your marriage first once in a while.
Mom’s set the tone for the entire household – make it a positive tone!
The struggles and joys of being home with your kids.
Here is another thing. I show you pictures and thoughts about the things that we do, but of course, I only show you the things that we enjoyed or turned out well. There are a lot of projects that we try and projects that I do that are a complete flop. Our life is clearly not like the photos you see on my blog because we are living proof that life can get messy. Remember I show you edited versions of everything. Some days our house is a mess, and so am I! We live in the country in a small town with pets, friends, family, and sometimes pure madness.
Do you want to hear more about real life stuff that doesn’t pan out?
Living in a small town?
Our country life at the Bond Pond (our little hobby farm)?
Our pets – our horses or about being a mom to a dog with special needs (i.e. no eyes – you read that right)?
…Speaking of me being a mess – What I wore Wednesday has been a lot of fun for me over the last few months and has really helped my try a little harder on myself. Although I enjoy doing what I Wore Wednesday, I find it to be taking up a pretty good chunk of my time that I alot to blogging. It is something I enjoy because I love sharing easy hairstyles and budget friendly outfits, but it is certainly not one of the most important things to me in real life and you would be surprised at how much time and effort goes into recording what you wear each week.
What are your feelings on what I wore Wednesday? Do you want to see more, will you miss it if it goes?
Other than that I would love to hear any feedback you may have on things you love to see already on the blog, things you would like to see more of, or things that you would like to see that you haven’t. I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts, even constructive criticism as long is it is kind. Do you have questions that you would like me to answer? I put my heart and soul into each post, so I don’t take harsh comments lightly – so be nice please :)! Most importantly I am always a mom first – my blog takes a back seat to our real life and my kids, husband, and pets – while I strive to create content that my readers will enjoy – remember that I do it in between my real life – and I already know full well that the old blog is far from perfect!
You can look forward to all sorts of great posts in the next year, and I am looking forward to getting to know my readers better! Thanks for stopping by and for any ideas or comments you might have! Happy 2013!
Hi Kim,
I just wanted to send some encouragement your way. I love reading your blog! I don’t always have the time to make things but I tuck the ideas away for another time. As for whether you need to share more personal stuff on here, I think that it totally up to you. You probably don’t realize that you do it pretty routinely already while writing about your projects and recipes – just little anecdotes about how you spend your time and what it important to you. That would give anyone a glimpse into your life.
I love your What I Wore Wednesday posts because I am so NOT stylish. I live vicariously through you! 🙂 🙂 But maybe if you feel they take too much time, you could just post the outfits that inspire you from Pinterest and maybe do the What I Wore posts once a month or something? Just an idea.
Your sunny and positive personality always shines through on your blog and I’ll keep reading it as long as you keep writing it! But putting your family first is the right call if you ever need to leave this behind or put less time into it. Don’t ever feel badly about that!
Take care, Kim!
Kelly
Thank you so much for the encouragement Kelly! I hadn’t thought about how in each and every post I usually explain not only how, but why I do things… which really says more about me than I thought! Thanks for bringing that up – because although I want to keep connected to my readers I don’t want to over expose my family – I like sharing glimpses here and there like you said.
Great suggestion about what I Wore Wednesday! I am super excited to hear that you enjoy them and I think I will continue them in some shape or form – just maybe not to the extent that I was before.
Thank you so much for reading and for commenting regularly – it really means a lot to me… especially coming from someone who I admire so much. I know that you have a heart full of joy and love for your family just like many of my other followers and knowing that you are reading enjoying my blog makes me want to keep doing it! It is a test to balance blogging and running our household, but I feel really blessed that is benefiting our family, and nothing worth doing ever comes easy, right!
Thank you again for your kind words Kelly! You are always so sweet and encouraging! We loved your Christmas card and letter too – so fun to hear what you guys have been up to! What a great picture of your sweet family and thanks for the extra little surprise too!
Kim