My First Blogoversary

BloboversaryToday my blog turns one! Yay!  Happy blogoversary to me.

Yesterday I happened to be watching my traffic and I noticed that I reached unique visitor #2650!! I still can’t believe that many people have seen my blog. Thank you SO much for reading!!  I love all the comments, emails, and facebook messages I’ve received from my readers sharing a similar experience to what my blog post was about or just letting me know that they enjoyed one of my recipes.  Keep the feedback coming!

I was looking back at my first couple of posts and I think I have improved a lot as a blogger. I have had lots more practice writing over the last year, which has never been one of my natural strengths. My next goal for my blog is to improve my pictures. Jesse and I have been saving up for a nice camera that we have had in the back of our minds for a while now. We’re thinking that we should be able to buy it as our anniversary gift to each other. After we get the new camera, I’d love to take some photography classes and learn some simple Photoshop techniques on how to make my pictures look the way I want them to.

According to Google Analytics my site has seen 6,973 visits from 64 countries/territories. Yes, I know it’s kinda geeky to look up that kind of information, but what can I say? Jesse’s geekyness is contagious. Check out some of the countries that have visited my blog:

Countries 1Countries 2

Neat, huh? Thanks again for reading, and keeping coming back for more!

Lemishine

LemishineWe are completely thrilled with our new dishwashing discovery, Lemishine. We thought that our dishes were getting all grimey and gross because of something in our water, but it was just our dish soap. Apparently in an effort to be more “green” many states have banned phosphates from all dish detergents. After a friend suggested we try Lemishine, we did some research and found that phosphates not only clean off food and grease from dishes but also prevent debris from getting reattached later during the wash. After using phosphate free soap for a while, the build up was getting worse and worse. Yuck!

We had resorted to hand washing all of our good serving dishes when they used to go in the dishwasher. We would also rewash glasses when we would have company because the glasses looked so bad. After just one wash our dishes were honestly just as shiny as when they were brand new!

Glasses

Here is our glasses before and after. I’d say the results are just as advertised on the package… definitely worth every penny!

Birthday Weekend

I had a great birthday weekend! It started out with garage sales early Saturday morning. We love the semiannual Westchase garage sales because they always have such great stuff. We scored some great deals and supported the missions fundraising barbeque, like we always do.

Sunday was a fun day hanging out with Mom. We had Mom and Andrew over for dinner and games for Mother’s day. Jesse grilled bacon wrapped fillets from Land and Sea, and they were great. Then Mom and I made my yummy Namaste brownies for dessert! Can’t go wrong with making some chocolate for Mom.

Beach

Monday was my actual birthday. Jesse and I took the day off to relax at the beach. We packed up our lunch and lots of snacks and headed to Howard Park for the afternoon. It was an absolutely beautiful day and a great way to spend my birthday. By the time we got back we had just enough time to shower and leave to small group. Honestly, we were thinking about skipping to go out for my birthday (bad, huh?), then we found out it was going to be game night… perfect! I enjoyed not having to cook dinner on my birthday and we had fun learning to play a new game called In a Pickle.

Today Jesse has been working super hard making up for all the fun we had over birthday weekend. Since he had so many phone calls scheduled for today, it’s hard for me to concentrate with him talking right next to me. Not that I mind that he’s talking, we like when people call for work! So instead, I spend some time “working” downstairs. I needed a change of scenery in the dinning room and went looking for some inspiration on how to rearrange the hutch to make it less boring.

Here was my inspiration:

China cabinet inspiration

Here was our hutch before:

Hutch before

And here it is now:

Hutch after

What do you think? I like it, but I wasn’t sure if it looked too crowded? I have lots of pretty dishes that have been passed down to me from my grandma and great grandma. I wanted to keep them out, but still make the hutch look more fun. I’ll look at it for a couple days and see how I get used to it.