blogs

Round ‘Em Up. Biweekly blog round-up.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 15 Comments

There have been so many good blog posts this week around the blogosphere. I’m excited to share some of them with you, and some of my own, for this week’s Round ‘Em Up.

On the blog here for the last couple of weeks, I focused on a lot of different subjects, including:

As for some other awesome blog posts from other bloggers this week:

How about you? Have you found any interesting blog posts that you would like to share this week? Either from you or someone else? Let me know in the comments and leave me a link!

Tuesday Blog Roundup: Catching up on my blog and the blogs of others

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

It’s that time of the week when I like to catch up on some other blogs I’ve been reading and share what you might have missed on my blog in the last week or so. I also love for you to share any good blog posts you’ve read or written as well so please be sure to do that in the comment section.

First, some favorite posts from other bloggers from this past week (or so);

Christmas Tree Tea from Mama’s Empty Nest where she writes about her “hodgepodge” Christmas tree and how it brings up many memories from her past, but especially the time she held Christmas teas after she retired from volunteering with the local PTA groups.

Brenda from Becoming His Tapestry had a timely post just this morning. 10 Ways to Destress This Christmas. My goodness, could I relate. Not because we are busy in this family with Christmas parties or extreme decorating (no one invites us to parties and we barely decorate). I related when she talked about avoiding going into debt during Christmas because God never intended us to celebrate the birth of his son by going into debt. Preach it, Brenda!

Our Little Red House always has some awesome craft ideas and she’s doing 12 days of Christmas crafts for, well, Christmas. This one interested me because it uses old toilet paper rolls and anything that uses up toilet paper rolls interests me. There are only four of us in this house but we seem to fly through toilet paper sometimes.

Mama Duck had a sweet post about “One of the Best Christmas Gifts I Ever Received.”You’ll have to check out the post to see what it is.

I enjoyed this post by Jenni at Housewife Hustle about sleeping goals for her children.I could relate to this one since I’ve had sleep time challenges with both of my children, especially the youngest since she doesn’t yet have her own bedroom. (That will change when we move.)

Dawn raised a concern about blogging that I also have on her blog Every Small Voice in a post entitled Blogging Popularity.

PMeyers writes about Navigating Christmas Without Momon her blog Mind Heart Matters. She lost her mom to a brain tumor this year and she has been writing candidly about that horrific journey in such an uplifting and encouraging way (the way her family handled this situation was amazing, but I wish they hadn’t had to).  Get out the tissues for this one, but please know there is some joy here too and if you are so inclined, leave the blogger an encouraging message.

As for my blog this last week, I was as eclectic as always in my topics.

On Saturday of last week I blogged about how to Tune out the ‘Negative Nellies’in our lives.

On Sunday I continued with the new weekly Sunday Bookends post where I talk about what I’m watching, reading or doing for the week. I used to hook up to a book blogger for this post, but I’m not really a book blogger so I’m just doing my own thing now (although still reading the book blogger posts).

Later in the week, I rambled about theChristmas romance movie binge I’ve been on. Read this weekend about how that binge ended.

On Friday of last week, I shared Chapters 6 and 7 of A New Beginning, my continuing serial fiction that I post on “Fiction Friday” (incidentally, Friday is my worst blog traffic day, but I like the alliteration of Fiction Friday so much, I don’t have the heart to change the posting day.)

Then Sunday I posted another Sunday Bookends, where I talked about Dick VanDyke and my lack of reading lately.

So how about you? Any favorite blog posts of your own or others you’d like to share? Please feel free to share the links in the comments!

Lisa R. Howeler is a writer and photographer from the “boondocks” who writes a little bit about a lot of things on her blog Boondock Ramblings. She’s published a fiction novel ‘A Story to Tell’ on Kindle and also provides stock images for bloggers and others at Alamy.com and Lightstock.com.

 

 

My all-time most popular blog posts so far – or things that make you go, “uh… okay?”

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

Have you, if you are a blogger, ever looked back at your most popular blog posts and thought “that one? Really? Why?” My blog is not very popular. Most days I have two visitors – my dad and my husband. I continue to write because I figure I need to practice my writing skills and because – why not? I don’t really have a life so blogging gives me something creative to do.

I understand why two of my three most viewed posts are popular but there was one that had me scratching my head – primarily because I had no idea where the traffic to it was coming from for a few days.

I posted a post about David Phelps, a singer who is simply phenomenal, and within a few hours, it had over 200 views. I couldn’t figure it out. It seems the blog posts I spend the least time on receive the most traffic, attention or comments. If I spend several days or a couple of weeks crafting a post – crickets.

71YtS+gGgDLThe views for the David Phelps post were coming from Facebook but Facebook said I had very few views on my blog page and the only person who shared the post was my dad. One person liked it on his page. I finally decided there must be a fan page on there that shared it and after some digging, I found the David Phelps fans Facebook group and yes, indeed, someone had shared my post. No one from the group commented on the post, but for some reason, a bunch of them clicked on it.

I guess I need to write about David more often if I want to increase my blog traffic.

As for my other three popular posts, they were both related to farming and the struggles farmers are facing today.

The first is The Heartache is real as family farms start to disappear

And the second is The Farm.

The third was about a local (to me) farmer: Tell Me More About . . . . Mark Bradley

The first was shared about 1,000 times on  Facebook and I’m glad it was. I believe it’s important for people to understand the issues facing farmers today. I truly believe so many are clueless to the fact we will soon be without any small family farms, especially in our area of Pennsylvania.

So, how about you, fellow bloggers: what have been some of your more popular posts and could you figure out why they were so popular?

I’ll leave you all with another David Phelps song – who knows maybe I’ll get some more hits on my blog. Seriously, I enjoy his music and listening to it helps me relax (well, until he hits a high note!)

Favorite blog posts around the web this week

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

I thought I’d share some of my favorite blog posts from around the web this week because I’ve read a few really good ones. I’d also love to offer you an opportunity to share one of your favorite posts from the week from your own blog, or from another blogger.

1) I enjoyed this post about patriotism from Mama Duck. She asked what’s happened to patriotism in the United States today and shared how much the 75th anniversary of D-Day awakened her patriotism even more.

2) I have a discovered a new-to-me short fiction site called Lunch Break Fiction. I suppose this particular blog post about a man accidentally throwing out some important books that belonged to his wife is, of course, fictional, since it is tagged “flash fiction” but it’s so hilarious I am really hoping it might have some truth in it.

 

3) I agreed with this post from Kat at The Lily Cafe about books that feature unnecessary swearing.

“I find cursing to be crude and unsophisticated. I also appreciate the power of words and words like enraged, furious, and incensed carry more power than pissed off. Total honesty. I cringed just writing that. And that’s probably being mild.”

 

4) I could definitely relate to this post by Ordinary on Purpose since I also have a tween in my house. It’s a good reminder that yes, they are growing up, but yes, they will still need you and love you for awhile too.

 

5) As a photographer who considers myself more documentary than anything, I really enjoyed this post by Lauren Webster who followed a married couple while they planted a garden in their backyard.

Please leave me a link to a favorite post of yours or another favorite post by another blogger in the comments!

 

Favorite blog posts from the week

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

It’s time for my favorite blog posts from the week. This is the post where I share some of my favorite posts from other bloggers from the current or past week (or so). I’m trying to make it a regular feature, but honestly, I’m not sure I’ll keep up with it like I should. All I can do is try.

Favorite posts this week:

The Pioneer Woman: I buried the lede

I have followed Ree’s blog for a very long time, even before she was Food Network’s golden child. I was once a strict mommy blogger and she was doing the same – blogging about her life on her ranch and photographing it as well. I followed a photography feature she had at one point. Though her name is now big business she still blogs from time to time. In this post she writes about her oldest daughter graduating college and her and her husband’s new ice cream shop.

This post by The Lily Cafe about miscarriage hit home for me. She writes about what she could have used after her miscarriage 26 years ago. A hint: it wasn’t comfort or talking non-stop about the miscarriage.

Michelle at Blessings by Me wrote this great post about vertical gardening which interested me because my daughter wants a garden this year but I don’t want to dig up the ground since we could be moving in a few months.

Jenni from The Wilde Way, a new blog for me, caught my attention with a post called Mother’s Day: A Reconciliation. I could relate to the idea of not being sure if I liked Mother’s Day because I often felt like I didn’t deserve the honor.

Another one that hit home for me was from Brittany at Ordinarily Extraordinary Mom about making friends later in life. Boy, could I appreciate the advice on how to make friends when you’re no longer a kid or a young mom. I’m in a period of life where I have no friends so I can use all the help I can get.

How about you? Read any cool blog posts this week that you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments or link me to one of your own!

 

Favorite blog posts from the week

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

I found some new bloggers this past week and also some really great posts from the new bloggers and the one’s I’ve been following a while (aren’t you glad I didn’t say “the old bloggers!”). I thought I’d share some of the posts in case anyone is looking for a good read or a new blogger to follow.

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Christine at In This Ordinary Time talked about moving in this post from last week:

“We too are transplanting. Or being transplanted. Or however that works. Settling into the house, setting into the community… all that jazz. It is often hard to be patient with the process, even though we’ve done several of these big moves before and know (or should!) how it works. As the song from the Daniel Tiger movie about moving goes, It takes time, it takes time to make a new house feel like home.”

I could relate since we will be moving at some point in the future after my husband starts his new job next week.

This post by Megan at Mender and Maker wasn’t written last week, but I found it, and her, last week, so I’m sharing it here. She wrote about “The Mess of Motherhood,”:

Because I’m a nerd, I went to a LOT of school. My direction was science, so I took enthralling classes like bio-statistics, organic chemistry and anatomy/physiology. Along those lines, I became familiar with the Laws of Thermodynamics. My favorite (and most applicable here) is the second Law which states that “all things tend toward entropy”, or chaos. Another way to put this is that all organized systems eventually become more disorganized with time.

Sigh.

Such is the life of a mother! As a Type A personality/control freak, having young kids in the house has been among other things, ahem, challenging.

To be brutally honest (as I always hope and try to be), the last few months have found me a little stuck in what you might call a desert. A desert of spirit, of mind, of faith. It has sapped my energy and creativity and has made the most mundane task feel like lifting weights. As I swept the floor the other day, I looked down and I realized I was looking at the most excellent visual example of how I have been feeling. Please observe: [read more HERE.]

I loved this post by Mama’s Empty Nest about her forsythia bush, maybe because my mom has been commenting so much on the forsythia bush behind their house, which she can see from the kitchen window.

Of course, Mama’s Empty Nest titled her post: “Words for Wednesday: forcynthia,” playing on the spelling a little bit.

“You read that title correctly. No, I did not make a typographical error there. I didn’t misspell the word forsythia, I truly meant to post forcynthia.

What in the world? you may ask.  As she nears that ripe age of 65 is she starting to lose her faculties? Or is it simply that the appearance of sunshine and spring-like weather addled her brain? Is she giddy with spring-time bliss?

To answer those questions: No, I don’t think I’m losing my almost-65-year-old mind. No, my brain isn’t addled…at least not yet. And maybe, yes, I could be giddy with spring-time bliss.

But the most accurate answer is there is a story behind the title of today’s post and I am going to share it with you.

[Read the rest HERE. ]

So, how about you? Have any favorite posts this week? Yours or someone else’s? Leave me a comment or a link in the comment section and hopefully, you’ll check out some of these posts today.

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