Happy Blog Birthday!

happy blog birthdayThe Reading Residence blog is one today! For one whole year, I’ve been here, writing away. It’s become ingrained in me now to blog. I cannot really imagine not doing it, which is odd when I’ve only been doing it for a year. I’ve published 527 posts in that time, which seems a fair few! So, as one year seems special, I’ve paused to reflect on it and share a few thoughts…

Well, there’s a lot I’ve figured out about blogging itself, and I wrote another post about that recently, sharing my top 20 tips for bloggers. So, so much more to learn, and I look forward to it all. I run a weekly series now, The Blog Lowdown, where bloggers guest post and share how their blog runs behind the scenes, and their top tips, which has been inspiring, and lots of fun to do. I hope to keep on learning and enjoying it all.

My Favourite Posts:
OK, so you’ve seen I’ve written 527, right? Tricky to choose a handful only! So I’ll go with these, as I loved writing and sharing them, have fond memories about them, and the variety across them reflects the variety here on the blog.

Family days out, like Ramble and a Crumble, National Botanic Gardens and Hatton Country World.

My Fictional World – a meme that I loved writing, being a bookworm, and one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having people join in with. It’s still open for new linkers, too 🙂

Fun things that the kids and I have got up to, such as The Happyland Hunt, Wild Art and Our Fairy Garden.

Special moments and memories are close to my heart. I loved A Letter for Daddy, Little Man Forgives Boo and Father, Daughter.

And I adore my Bring Back Paper campaign, which I started in April, celebrating all things papery, such as my love of books (books, not Kindle!), stationery and snail mail.

My Most Viewed Post:
Aside of course from competition posts, as they can be very popular, by most viewed post is actually the post that I wanted and needed to be the most viewed. It got plenty of views thanks to the wonderful blogging community retweeting and sharing it. It was the hardest post that I’ve written to date – Put Yourself in the Picture.

I’ve Loved:
Inspiration from other bloggers has been huge. I don’t just mean inspiring me as a blogger, I mean inspiring me as a mother. And in so many ways, be it crafting and creating with them or enjoying our family days out (we joined the National Trust after reading about it from other blogs, which has led to so many great days out and a huge love of the NT! It also offers constant support, reassurances, and that feeling of ‘being in it together’ that you get after tough days…weeks!

I’ve become passionate about gardening. This is a huge spin-off benefit and delight for me. One of the earliest things that I decided to blog about would be redoing parts of my garden, and sharing the progress – Project Garden. Somewhere along the way, gardening has become so much more than just a one-off project to me.

Word of the Week. I started a weekly linky up in January, as I liked the idea of writing a post every Friday summing up my week in one word, and thought it’d be fun to invite others to do the same. And people have done the same! Every single week a few bloggers pop over and link up, sharing their weeks, and I really enjoy reading them all.

Photography has become a real interest for me, and I was delighted to host some great photographers here when I ran my Learn With Me:Photography series. I’ve learned loads, bought a camera that I love, am often thinking perspectives and light now, but I am still a total novice!

Working with so many great brands. There are really too many to mention all of them here, but blogging has introduced me to new brands, product and days out, and I know we’ve been really fortunate. Our recent trip to Bluestone was simply fabulous, and there have been countless other toys, products and fun days, all thanks to this blog.

But the biggest thing? The people. Yes, it’s true, corny though it may sound, it’s been the people that I have ‘met’, either on-line or in person, as a result of blogging that have really made this last year for me. So many great people that I feel I ‘know’ through reading their blogs and chatting over social media, that I met at the fab Tots100 blog camp, and that I now meet up with in person for chat and play dates for the kids. I even met one of them by choosing to holiday at her lovely Coombe Mill, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.

So Thank You
I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading and coming with me on this first leg of my blogging journey. Thank you so much for taking the time to read, comment, chat, support. Blogging is not only a fun hobby, but now also an income for me, which I couldn’t possibly have imagined this time last year. Here’s to another year, and who knows where it’ll take me – I’m looking forward to finding out!

Hope you’ll continue to read?

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33 thoughts on “Happy Blog Birthday!”

  1. You really have grabbed all of the opportunities that blogging has to offer with both hands Jocelyn! I think my one year blog birthday came and went a couple of weeks ago without me noticing! It’s funny to think of the relationships that grow through blogging too – it just occurred to me that there are people who I interact with on, if not a daily basis, then certainly a weekly basis, who I have never actually met but I’m sure if we do meet it will be a weird feeling of old friends/new friends! Happy Birthday Reading Residence! X

    1. Jocelyn Reading

      Thanks, Sam. Yes, it;s exactly that – you know people, yet have never met them! Having now met a few, too, I can confirm that it’s lovely 🙂

  2. Happy blog birthday! You’ve been incredibly prolific. I’m almost ashamed to say that I’ve been going just over a year and I’ve only written ~60 blog posts, sometimes I struggle to get one written each week!

  3. Happy blog Birthday and congratulations on acheiving so much….and 527 posts!! wow, that’s almost double mine and my blog has been up for three years…last month, missed the birthday again, lol

  4. Life at the Little Wood

    Amazing Jocelyn – happy blog birthday!! You remain one of the most dedicated bloggers i know – and one of my absolute favourites – so here’s to the next year, and many more beyond that! xxx

    1. Jocelyn Reading

      Thanks very much, and that is so lovely of you to say. Nice to know you’ll be reading 🙂 x

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