Mid-Week Links #4

*crickets chirping*

Yeah, it’s been quiet around here.

Ever lost your mojo? I feel like that happens to me on a bi-monthly basis, haha. Definitely not the first time I’ve felt this way, and it certainly won’t be the last.

You know that great feeling you have after you’ve successfully completed a project, or cleared out a bunch of clutter from your basement that was just overflowing with junk? I’m trying to get to that place. I’ve been clearing out life clutter, though. And that is, admittedly, a heck of a lot more difficult to clear out than furniture and boxes of junk.

But today is the first day of Spring and it’s Wednesday which means it’s the day my baby hangs out with his Grandma and I get some quiet time. I’m spending my time, like I do every Wednesday, at my local Starbucks. Something about a chai latte and some oatmeal, it just clears my head.

I feel like I’m waking up, you know? Like I’ve been asleep for months and didn’t even realize it. It’s like I literally woke up one morning and figuratively felt like the fog lifted, too.

I don’t have a bunch of amazing one-liners to share, though. Or soul-piercing thoughts. Or even anything that amazing. Mostly, I’m getting back to the basics. I realized I’d rather have a few things that are really great and worth treasuring, than many things that stress me out and make me feel bad about myself.

Enough vague talk, though. As my waking up relates to the blog (and I have talked about this before… history loves to repeat itself, eh?) it occurred to me I was writing to someone I didn’t know and didn’t like very much. No one in particular, just this person I had in my head who I thought should like me and who I thought I should talk to. I don’t know her name, or anything about her really. Mostly because she doesn’t exist. “They,” and by they I mean people who tell you how to blog, say you should have your audience in mind when writing to give yourself a focus. And it just dawned on me that who I had in mind? Yeah, I didn’t like her very much. She was judgmental. She loved to compare what I was doing to other writers/bloggers and somehow always managed to find me as coming up short. Mostly, she was unhappy. She also had these unreasonable expectations on me. It was kinda stressful.

So I said goodbye to her and decided to start writing for myself, and to myself, and we’ll see what happens. Less instructional, less formal and more everyday pieces of my life, more carefree. This is my blog anyway, right? Not hers.

What will stick around? Money Monday, for sure. But I don’t know how in depth I’m going to go. I love talking about budgets and learning and all that but…I’m not a financial guru and I had psyched myself up to become this person who could be like the go-to chick for advice on money. Confession – when I get an idea, I dream it up to epic proportions and usually get lost somewhere in the dream then feel like a huge failure until the dream bubble pops and I float back down to earth and just kind of abandon the whole project. So, yeah, no crazy financial talk on this blog. Mostly just simple budgeting tips, recipes, recipe reviews and so on.

My new monthly feature, Revisiting, I definitely am keeping around because it’s a fun idea to me and I enjoyed brainstorming topics for each month.

Book reviews are something I want to bring back. You may or may not know this (actually you do, since I’m writing to myself haha) but I was an English major in college. I focused on literature and was a huge book nerd up until a few years ago when I got burnt out on books and also had to downsize my personal library of close to 1,000 books down to about 75 books. Painful process, but that’s what happens when you (A) move in with someone and you have a small space, and (B) are faced with a move and books are heavy and a pain in the butt to pack up.

I’m going to talk more about knitting. Someone told me to not talk about knitting on the blog because, and I quote, “people don’t care about that.” That may very well be true but the fact of the matter is…. I care about it. And I have a really small shop where I sell things I’ve knit. And also I love knitting. Oh and did I mention that I love knitting? It’s like my thing. So it’s part of the deal.

Lastly, I want to talk more about what’s happening in my life. I like looking back on my other blogs to see what I was doing at any given moment. I probably won’t talk about my child as much as he gets older because I don’t want him overexposed online before he’s even 2. It’s hard to reign that in because, let’s face it, he is so stinkin’ cute. But you can expect to hear more about what’s happening in my day-to-day life, inane stories you probably don’t care about (or maybe you do?), and other things that make me laugh hysterically but may make you roll your eyes or otherwise click out of this window…or you might also find hysterical. You just never know with people.

You may have noticed this post is titled “Mid-Week Links #4” but here we are, 933 words in, and no links. So as a special reward for reading (now) 946 words, here are a few links (and this feature will also be staying because I kind of am obsessed with the internet and am constantly reading things on it) –

Even though I said I didn’t want to, I actually became a cloth diaper convert (GASP!). BumGenius has released two new prints and the boy one is called Irwin, after Steve Irwin the late crocodile hunter (the girl one is Maathai). Check them out if you’re into cloth!

How to use spaghetti squash instead of pasta, at Meet the Sullivans. Great post. I wish Ezra like anything from the squash family. Unfortunately, he’s more of a carrot kinda veggie guy.

This post on DIY cat magnets at Design*Sponge had me laughing out loud, literally. Why are cats so funny? They don’t even know they’re funny and that’s the best part.

There’s been talk with a few of my favorite ladies of planning an NYC trip in the summer, so Cole’s round-up of a few of her favorite NYC places and things caught my eye.

I love love love love Meredith’s embellished sweater. She used embroidery floss to add flowers to the shoulders of a plain white sweater. It’s so cute!

We’ve recently been into quinoa again over here so when Gina posted a recipe for Quinoa Pizza Snack Bites I had to pin it to try it out later. I think these would be great for Ezra at lunch or dinner.

I’ve had foxes on the brain lately since we’re kind of a family obsessed with foxes and it’s Ezra’s first birthday party theme. I just ordered this adorable shirt for him to wear on his birthday and I can’t wait to get it.

I don’t know if you heard the news, but Google Reader is going away on July 1st (fifth bullet point down on the list). This seriously came as a shock to me and is kind of a huge disappointment as I use Reader on a daily (sometimes multi-daily) basis. I’ve switched over to Feedly, though, and can’t believe I hadn’t found it sooner. The UI alone makes the switch worth it – it’s just plain pretty to look at. I found Feedly from this Lifehacker article on the 5 best alternatives to Google Reader.

Happy Wednesday 🙂