How I got started blogging

This past Saturday was my third blogiversary! I thought I would use this opportunity to answer a question I got from a few people during my reader survey from last fall.

There's a short answer, and a longer answer, so I thought this blog's origin story deserved explaining in a post of its own.

I started this blog on a whim. It was early January 2010. My daughter was about eight months old, and I was beginning to have more free time available. So like many, I started a blog to fill those small bits of time when she was napping. I thought it would be a fun way to show family and friends all the projects I did around the house, but soon found that it was a great way to keep myself motivated to create and accomplish more.

Although I started this blog just three short years ago, I feel like that's not the real beginning of the story.

I have always been an artist, a creator, a writer, a publisher. That sounds a little weird to have always been a publisher, but it's true. I was making books at a very young age. I still remember one I made out of a cardboard soda crate and poster paint called "I love mom." It's probably long gone by now, but it's so representative of what I still do today: making something out of nothing.

I was an art student in high school and college. Sometimes I wish I had pursued that as a career. I wasn't discouraged from it, but sometimes I'm too practical for my own good. (Side example: I even talked myself out of an engagement ring, because in the end, the money was "ours" anyway. What was I thinking?)

In college, after bouncing around a couple of majors, I ended up majoring in journalism and worked on an independent, completely student-run newspaper. We put that thing together from scratch every two weeks, got it printed it up at a real newspaper press and distributed it all over campus.

Sometime in 1998 (still in college), I started a fan website for a rock band from the UK. It sounds a bit pretentious to say you've probably never heard of them, but... you've probably never heard of them. At the time, it was the only site for the band in the US. It was on geocities (who's old enough to remember geocities?), and had some crazy-long URL that had nothing to do with the name of the site. Seems strange now, but the internet was in such early stages at that point.

Now I wish I could see how many pageviews I was getting. I remember getting hits and e-mails from all over the world, but the internet and I were too young to care about stats.

I was stunned to find the site on the Wayback Machine a couple of months ago, and it was so funny to get that glimpse back into my late teens/early twenties. (Oh, and there's no way I'm sharing the link with you all. Too embarrassing!)

I ended the site in 2001, and I continued to design personal websites for friends and myself here and there throughout the years. My first full-time job also included a lot of HTML coding, and professional work sort of took the place of the personal. Looking back, I wish I would have stuck with some sort of site through the 2000s because that's when blogs really took off. Sometimes I feel like I missed the boat. But better late than never, right?

So that's more than you ever probably wanted to know about my history. Was anyone else out there site building at the dawn of the internet?

Elise has an announcement

I'm kind of in between projects at the moment without anything complete enough to show you today. But Elise has an announcement she wants to share:

!!!

The super secret project I've been working on

I wanted to show you this super secret project I've been working on.

Surprise! Baby #2! I'm 16 weeks and the ETA is late March 2013.

We are excited! And nervous and curious and worried... all the normal stuff. We are planning to find out the gender later this month, and maybe then it will start to seem real. Because so far, I've been feeling kind of... distracted? Maybe that's just the way it is after the first time.

After weeks of feeling icky and useless, I'm finally in the high-energy phase, and I'm taking full advantage! Is it too early for the nesting to have kicked in? I'm cleaning, organizing and DIYing with reckless abandon.

If everything stays on schedule, Elise will be one month shy of four years old when this baby is born. I never imagined us waiting this long between kids, but, despite being a sweetheart, Elise was the the opposite of an easy baby.

Neither she nor I slept through the night for her first 14 months. Despite a number of attempts to remedy the situation, she didn't sleep until she started walking and tiring herself out. It took a long, long time for the memory of that to wear off.

Cross your fingers for a good sleeper for me. (Especially because this one gave up her naps long ago.)

My 500th post: 25 facts about me

Wanna hear something crazy? This is my 500th post! I actually didn't even notice it was coming up until I reached about 490.

I wanted to do something a little different to commemorate the big 5-0-0. I try to be personable here, but I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best at opening up and sharing my life's story. I thought this would be a good opportunity to let you know a bit more about who I am.

Pssst: If you're just here for the projects, you won't hurt my feelings if you skip this post. That is, as long as you come back tomorrow!

25 facts about me
because 500 would just be silly

1. I come from a DIY family. My parents have renovated two houses and built two more. My dad can pretty much build or fix anything. I get my "I can do that" attitude from them.


2. I have one brother. He's a music professor and a professional trumpet player! No matter where I am, whenever I hear a trumpet, it's like I'm hearing his voice.


3. I don't have any sisters or any girl first cousins on either side of my family. This didn't bother me growing up, but it kind of does now.


4. I grew up in a small town in Illinois (a village, actually) with a population of around 2700 (at the time -- it has since grown a bit). There were only 15 kids in my graduating eighth grade class.


5. My husband has no recollection of the first time we met (which was years before we started dating). He will be teased about this forever.

6. I love animals. I grew up with dogs, but now I have an 11-year-old cat. Someday, I hope to have a dog again, but we don't have the necessary time to devote right now.


7. I read more blogs than books, but the books I do read are almost exclusively non-fiction.


8. I went into university as an accounting major, but didn't take a single accounting class before I changed my major to psychology. Four psychology classes and I changed my major again to communication/journalism. I completed my painting minor as planned all along, and thanks to a bunch of college credits I earned in high school, I still graduated in 3.5 years. Still, part of me wishes I had gone to art school.


9. During college, I was an editor of a student-run independent bi-weekly newspaper for two years. This was where I met my now brother- and sister-in law (and through them, my husband). So if I actually had gone to another school to pursue a different degree, my life would be much different for sure.


10. My last job before child was at a corporate law firm where I assisted attorneys with their presentations for trial. Sometimes it was high-stress and other times it was super mundane; there really was no in-between. There were large parts of the job I definitely did not like. Looking back, I can't believe I stuck with it for 5.5 years.


11. My husband and I watch a lot of movies. Or maybe I should say, films. (My husband writes a film blog and has written DVD reviews for 10+ years.) So far in 2012, I've seen something like 55 films. My total for 2011 was right around 100 (a mere fraction of what my husband manages to watch). My favorite directors are Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I also have a soft spot for documentaries.

12. I have seen more than 115 concerts in 10 different states. My show going has certainly slowed down in the past few years post-Elise, but we still manage to get out to a few a year. My favorite concert experiences are Radiohead at a small club gig in 1997, a completely transcendant Tom Waits show in 2008, every time I've seen Sigur Rós and all the times I was up front for The Flaming Lips. All mind blowing! We saw The Polyphonic Spree last month, and they were amazing as always.


13. I worked at a record store for two summers and over breaks during my college years. I thought it was pretty cool at the time because I picked up super cheap used CDs, but in retrospect, it was kind of a junky record store.


14. Though young Erin swore that she would never lose touch with music when she had a kid, the inevitable happened and my priorities shifted (including putting my creative endeavors ahead of reading Pitchfork). Still, my husband does a stand-up job of keeping us in the loop musically. (Well, as much as thirty-something parents can be.)


15. I knew this house was our house the first time we saw it. (I guess it didn't hurt that we had seen a lot of bad houses during our search, so when we actually saw one that hadn't been seriously jacked up, it made an impact.)


16. I am such a homebody. Even more so since having my daughter. I could stay home for days and days, and it wouldn't bother me one bit.

17. But I have traveled some (to maybe about 18 states and to London, Paris and Mexico). Not a world traveler by any means. I get motion sickness pretty bad, so the actual "travel" part of traveling is often kind of miserable for me. Puking on a plane = not so fun.


18. I have a hard time making small talk. I struggle with finding the right words. If I've ever left you feeling weird after an awkward conversation, I apologize!


19. I am a pack rat. I try to keep it under control, but there's no denying it. It's less about nostalgia for me and more about saving things that have potential to be turned into something else. Good thing we have a basement!

20. I collect fortune cookie fortunes. From this photo, you would think we eat Chinese all the time, but we don't. This is years and years worth of fortunes from anyone who would give them to me after the meal. Someday, I'm going to make something cool with them.


21. I love treasure hunting! Whether that means rummaging through the clearance racks or literally digging in the dirt in my backyard. I don't know where this attribute comes from, but my brother has it too.


22. Things I love: Diet Dr. Pepper, Donut Drive-In, The Daily Show, alliteration.


23. Things I don't care for: sports, air "fresheners," seafood, crowds, slow walkers.


24. I enjoy baking much more than cooking, but I can't say I have a passion for either.


25. If it weren't so completely unhealthy, I would eat ice cream for every meal for the rest of my life.