Let's Get Back to Piddlin'

Are you still piddlin’?

The question came in my mailbox recently when a blog-reader noticed I hadn’t posted in a while – since September it turns out as I looked at my last blogpost. Yes, I’m still piddlin’. I just haven’t been blogging.

Around about the time of my last blogpost, I started to get really busy with volunteer work (I’m a PTA officer and fall is school budget advocacy season. As is winter, and spring), I was feeling the pressure to get more novel writing done (from myself) and… and I really started wondering what I wanted to continue to blog about. So I put down my modern-day equivalent pencil and took an unannounced, unplanned, undetermined break.

Ahhh. Breathe.

And now it’s December and I’m back. I don’t think I’ve taken such a long break in a very very long time.

Have I figured out exactly where we are going here? No. But I realized that’s part of the fun here, at least for me, and I hope for my blog readers. We’re just piddlin’! And since when has piddlin’ had direction?

And it’s December, my favorite month of the year so how could I not get back to piddlin’ because of all the wonderful things that happen in December that I would want to share with you all. I mean, there’s that crazy Elf on the Shelf, Advent chocolates, Christmas preparations, cookie parties, winter games, Rudolph and all that. And I’ve got to pick out next year’s planner. How could I not pick my pencil back up?

So I’m back. Thanks for hanging around. Or coming back. Or coming for the very first time. Let’s get back to piddlin’.

Chat with me on Facebook & Twitter!

Best of Just Piddlin': Top 10 of 2013

Thanx for Just Piddlin’ along with me in 2013!

I've had a wonderful year blogging and chatting with you.  Checking over my blog posts, these were the 10 most read posts of the year (no particular order).

Working moms and stay-at-home moms, alike, were represented in these motherhood and parenting posts:

• "Lean In" Isn't Such a Bad Message
• Now That You're a Stay-at-Home Mom
• Shall We Give The Kids a Sticker for Breathing

These dishes perfect for busy moms who want home-cooked food for their busy families were popular:

• Next Best Thing to Fried Shrimp - from Witchery in the Kitchen
• Asian Chicken in the Crockpot - selected as a Circle of Moms Recipe of the Day
• And for birthdays, holidays, or any reason to have cake - Cake Decorating - tips from Fancy Cakes by Leslie

Perhaps I’m not the only one struggling with the “where’s your family from” projects, as many of you read up on Another Family Heritage Project.

Fellow yarn-holics picked up their needles for this one: My First Knit Hat

Folks were busy cleaning out their closets & looking for tips on what to do with those old clothes: Re-Use & Recycle Old Clothes

And friends were looking for answers of why they were de-friended (or justifying why they de-friended folks): 5 Reasons You & I Are No Longer Friends

Was your favorite in the top 10?

In 2014, we'll continue striving to grow Just Piddlin' and make it better - for you, the reader, and me.  To learn more about this whole blog-o-sphere, I attended 2 blogging conferences - Disney Social Media Moms and Blogalicious - conferences will be in the plans again in the coming year.  We received a pile of products and books for review which was a lot of fun and look forward to continuing to bring you great products and recommendations.

Book reviews will continue, but I’ll be changing the reading plan a bit.  I’ll let you know in the beginning of the month the Book I'm Carrying Around and invite you to read along and discuss the book with me.  (I’m busy trying to pick out what to start the year with.)

I’ll still be In the Kitchen, cooking and trying out recipes, especially anything chocolate.  Feel free to recommend any great foods or coffee/chocolate shops you think I should try if ever in your city.

And of course, I will continue to be a busy mom of 4, who is always carrying around a skein of yarn, a book, and my perceptions of the world.  I hope you’ll keep piddlin’ along with me.

Please feel free to let me know in the Comments below what you would like to see in 2014.  We'll see what we can do.

Join the conversation on Facebook: Just Piddlin' with Frances

Blogging Tips for Life

I feel like I'm really getting a good value for my registration dollars when info I pick up at a conference can be applied to other aspects of my life.  One of the Blogalicious presentations was themed around 10 tips for successful blogging.  There were eight presenters on that one panel - add it up, lots of tips!  Some were repeated, so those pop up as really key, and some were very applicable to other businesses or regular life.  I'm flipping through my notes and will share with you 5 Tips that I think are good one's, just for regular life, even if you don't have a blog.  (The @ references are the speaker's Twitter handles.) 

1 - Network and get out in front of the computer - from The CurvyFashionista.  I'm online almost daily - email, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest. All that. There are folks I've had online conversations with but could not pick them out of a real-life face-to-face lineup. This conference has been fun, partly, because I've gotten the chance to meet the person behind the tweets or blogposts or Facebook statuses.  I met several people who actually live in my county, in my neighborhood, even. How often do you get out into your real world and have real conversations? Try it.

2 - Be selfish with your time - from @teachmama.  Message for moms. How much of our time do we give away, especially if you are a stay-at-home mom and folks always ask you to do stuff for them? Yes, it's nice to do stuff for people, I could take on "Professional Volunteer" as a job title, but how true that we need to say "no" sometimes. Just last week, I was thinking that I need to establish a max number of meetings/evening activities  per week so that I can be home to tell me kids good night more. Crazy that I have to think of that right? But between sorority, PTA, Girl Scouts, other random stuff, I often have something on the calendar every evening.  I do need to be more selfish of my time.

3 - Have a daily routine - from @amyvernon. She spoke on having a routine for your blogging tasks, but we do that for regular life, right? Brush your teeth, take a shower, drink coffee. What about the other stuff that we need to do that would benefit our daily maintenance - read your Bible, take a deep breath before waking up the kids, drink coffee, go thru your emails, run 20 minutes, go on with your day. Check off the stuff that is important to you being you before you do the other stuff.

4 - Keep it classy - from @DeEttaMJones.  However you present yourself, how you communicate with others, how you dress.  Whatever you do - be classy. To me that doesn't mean it has to be expensive and label-laden, but be the best you. 

5 - Show folks a solution - from @yolymason. I.e. Be useful to people. Don't be the person who is always presenting a problem - you know those folks and you hate when they come around with their drama. Don't be that person. You don't always have to know the answer, but be willing to help folks find the answer. Be valuable in other people's lives. 

That's it. Five. Apply to your life, or to your blog. 

Who knew this would be a job? Blogging at Blogalicious

Hey y'all! I'm down in my old neighborhood - Atlanta, Georgia! Hubby and I lived here for a bit after we finished getting educated.  I'm here for the Blogalicious! Conference - a social media collaboration for multicultural bloggers.  

 

Being here is so far from where I even imagined when I first claimed "slackermomof4.blogspot.com" as my online space. Let me tell you how much blogging was a passing experiment for me when I started - I went to Korea for a week and didn't even post! What? Yes. Not a tweet, nothing. I think there might've been a Facebook post?  So here I am, enjoying some delicious biscuits and butter at a conference to learn how to make this digital spot a better experience for the both of us, you & me.

 

There's a lot of tech-y stuff being talked about. SEOs and mobile capabilities and analytics and such, much of which I will have to have hubby decipher and re-explain to me when I get home (or one of the kids) so I won't bore you with all that.  But I did want to share with you something I've realized with much more clarity while here, just in one day.

 

(Pausing to taste this shrimp & grits.)

For all we stress about over what our kids are learning or not learning, whether they are in a magnet program or academy or whatever special program - and, I'm including myself in that stressed out parent group - the important thing is that our kids not only learn at a challenging level, but that they learn to learn and to be flexible.  We don't know what they will be when they grow up, because we don't even know what there will be to be when they grow up.

 

A hundred years ago, folks were farmers and planned for their kids to be farmers.  And they grew up to be farmers. Some time after that, folks did the same in being assembly workers.  Then somewhere in the recent past, folks were typewriter repairmen and their kids studied typesetting and they became computer programmers.

 

Today, one of the presenters was the social media manager for Kerry Washington. Her job, among other things, is to watch TV, know what Olivia Pope is wearing and be ready to answer Scandal-ous tweets.  And  maybe, I'm guessing,  say "hey!" to Columbus Short every now and then.  I'm guessing.  That is what the woman gets paid to do. Her college major? International business. You see the connection? Right, exactly. She moved from one job to the next, learning as she went and parlaying that and the network she built into the next move.

 

Harriette Cole is here. Did you get married in the 90's? Perhaps you used her book, Jumping the Broom, to plan your wedding. I did. She used to be an editor at a magazine. She now, also among other things, has a crocheted clothing business. See the connection? Now you see what I'm saying?  They've changed, they've adapted, they've learned.

 

Closer to home, my daughter is taking a photography class in high school. I did, too. Do you need a camera, is the class fee for chemicals, you shouldn't wear your best clothes on film developing day, I said when school started. Her response: I have a phone, the fee is for paper, what film?

 

Everything's constantly changing. For our kids to be successful whatever's when they grow up, it's not important that they learn today's technology and lingo and market forever and ever. But they do need to learn it to understand their current world and learn how to learn about the world as it changes tomorrow.

 

As for me? I'm going to finish this peach vodka cocktail (hey, it's Georgia!), go peek at these crocheted creations and then go tweet about this season's white suit. And  her you-know-who in the back of the car! 

 

 

Top 25 Family Blogs by Moms!

A1: Nothing, there is no cash prize.

A2: A cool "badge" for my blog

A3: Maybe increase my audience, grow my readership, talk to more people
A4: Pretty enthusiastic and encouraged.

Q1: How much do you get for being in the Circle of Moms Top 25 Family Blogs?

Q2: If there's no cash, what do you get?
Q3: That's it?  There's got to be more.

Q4: How do you feel now that you've been selected as one of the Top 25?

I started this blog as one of those "let me see what this is all about" type trials.  And with a husband who is all about technology and IT, I wandered to a couple conferences and everyone was tweeting away, so I ended up with a Twitter account, too.  Fast forward to now and I've got a blog that I love writing, a handful of readers, and an integrated Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest thing going on.  So what started out as an experiment has grown into a project that I totally enjoy and allows me to explore my creative writing interests.

I'm still surprised and tickled when someone says, "hey, I read your blog."  Really?  Yeah, I'm amazed that people actually read it and then will tell me which post they liked.  Its like the tree falling in a forest - if you write and nobody reads it, does the writing make a sound?  Thank you for hearing me.  (Okay, almost good analaogy but the end fell apart a little bit, but you know what I'm saying.)  I hope you've found some enjoyment, maybe learned something, maybe felt better.  And as always - feel free to join the conversation.