today is possibly.. maybe... my blogs birthday?

Lots of other bloggers know when they started their blogs, they have a very firm date, the first post and from then on their blogs grew and grew, some bloggers know when they reach their 100th post, or 500th post or their 10'000 tweet or whatever milestone crops up, marking the occasion with something of worth.

Me on the other hand don't really know any of that!

I started this blog officially I guess on 11th December 2010 promising myself I would stick to the blog, I had no real idea what I was doing at that point and didn't really expect anyone to ever read my blog, it was like a new beginning a brand new baby I so wanted to nurture and grow.

But after only posting a handful of posts over Christmas, we had a rough start to the new year, real life got in the way and my blog got left high and dry until this very day a year ago. 24th April

Thats when I was able to really start posting again, having just moved house the blog took my mind of things and gave me something to focus on.

This day last year I very nearly didn't bother coming back to the blog, it wouldn't have been unusual, I had done it a couple of times in the past where I started with great intentions then something happened and all them hopes were slashed and put on hold (like my failed 366 challenge), so it wouldn't have been surprising if this blog had sat collecting dust with tangle weed blowing through it occasionally forever more, never to be revisited.

But for whatever reason it was, on 24th April I decided to post again, infact I went abit over board and posted three times that Sunday afternoon! (you can read them posts here)

After that each month my blog grew abit more, I changed the header from the standard blogger variety and put my own stamp on it, I set up a facebook page and joined in more and more of the blogging communities and now I am pretty proud at where I have got, I really do love this little space on the corner of the internet, I still consider myself to be very much a newbie with sooo much to learn and improve when it comes to my blog but I do know the most important thing is making sure that love and enjoyment, that excitement of hitting publish on a post and receiving a comment that drew me into blogging in the first place is never lost.

There are huge talks of the whole business side of blogging flashing around over the Internet at the moment, making money is obviously a huge draw to bloggers and I think theres not that many of us who can truthfully say they would not want to be paid for doing what they love, but it is not easy when you tiptoe into the corners of that side of the blogging world, it is a slippery path one that can make or break a blog. Having a constant thought about how to make money, and wondering what you should be doing more or less of in order to attract that illusive fortune is draining, it is mentally exhausting and will quickly zap the love right out of any blog, and we have to remember that blogs are nothing without the heart of the writer behind them.

So what have I learnt in the past year? Too much to write here.

What do I hope for the next year? To be honest I really don't know but right now I just aim to continue to love care and nurture my blog as it wobbles into its toddler years, and  if by this time next year I can look back on my blog and see 24 months filled with blog posts, brimming with photos, preserving those smiles of my children that I desperately want to capture and store safely forever more then I will look back with a smile on my face like I do now as I flick through the posts of the past 12 months.