We are taking this week and next week off from doing school, and Ken will be home all next week {yay!}, so we plan to enjoy some relaxed family time. Therefore, I’ll be taking a little blog break until the new year — which is not far away!

I have been rather haphazard in my blogging. I’m not going to make drastic changes, but I want to get back to some of the things I originally set out to do here.

So I’ve been doing some planning.
(I looove planning!)

Here’s what’s coming up in 2011:

• MORE adoption stories! (A few great ones already lined up!)
• MORE posts on homeschooling — including some BIG changes we’re making!
• MORE posts on marriage, parenting, and family — including blended family life!
• 250 MORE of my “one-thousand gifts”!
• MORE of my sometimes-crazy, sometimes-boring LIFE!
• MORE book and curriculum reviews!

Also… “See Jamie blog” now has a facebook page!
I’m using the page as a spot to post great links on parenting, marriage, family life, blended families, adoption, homeschooling, and whatever else might be fun or useful. Pop on over and “like” the page if you are interested in any of these things! (On a side note related to facebook: I have considered deactivating my personal account, and I would — except for the fact that I cannot maintain a page for our photography business or my blog if I do so. If you are my facebook friend, don’t expect much activity from my personal account; you can keep up with me better on my blog page or on twitter.)

In short, I’m planning to be more intentional in blogging and other time spent online.
See you in 2011!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

So there I was, merrily voting for all my favorite blogs at the 6th Annual Homeschool Post Blog Awards, when I saw that my blog was nominated! Woohoo! I’ve never been nominated before! So, YAY!

See Jamie Blog was nominated for the “Best Nitty-Gritty Blog” category; by this, they mean being “brutally honest and open about mistakes and failures” — which in my mind means being real. I don’t always pull that off, but it is a goal of mine in real life as well as in blogland.

* Wanna vote for me? Click HERE! *

To vote for all the other great categories, click HERE!

Today was the 1st ever Blogographer’s Meet-Up! And I learned some valuable lessons to apply before our next meet-up:

1. Get REALLY specific about where to meet.
2. Wear a neon sign on my head so everyone can find me.

Ken and I waited by the Marietta Welcome Center (and the Cool Bean Coffee Shop) from about 10am until about 11:30am, but never found any of the bloggers we expected to be there. Finally, we just went wandering around the Farmer’s Market.

We bought yummy-smelling homemade soaps, some honey from the same man who did our honeybee presentation a few weeks ago, and had lunch at the Vineyard Cafe. I met some sweet greyhounds, and a very B-I-G dog named Navarre who had just finished his therapy-dog visits to a nursing home.

But still no bloggy friends.

But when I got home, I had an email checking to see if I was okay since they never found me. Fortunately, the did find a few other bloggy friends, and sent me a photo taken by one of the husbands:

Left to Right:  Shelley of Morrisketeers, Ellen of Blue Stocking Belle, Tricia of Hodgepodge and Kim of littlesanctuary.

I’m so sad I missed meeting you ladies!

So how ’bout this: since several folks who wanted to come had to cancel last minute, and since I was unintentionally incognito, let’s do this again soon. If you are in the area (or will be in the next couple of months), please send me an email with the upcoming Saturdays you are available for another meet-up, and we’ll do this again.

But next time, I’m applying those above-learned lessons!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

The 1st gathering of Blogographers (my made-up word for those of us who blog) is coming up soon! Next Saturday, in fact! I thought it would be fun to have a different sort of RSVP and we could all get familiar with each other’s blogs before the get-together.
(Plus, this way, I get to play with a Linky Tool, which I’ve never done before. )

Not sure what I’m talking about? Then read “Blogographers Unite” for an explanation, and then read “Blogographers’ Meet-Up Details” to find out when and where!

And for those who need directions, use this link to the Marietta Square Welcome Center.

If you plan on attending, or even if you’re just a “maybe,” then please link up below!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

Alicia at Joy in the Everyday was a blogland friend before we realized we met in real-life. In one of those it’s-a-small-world sorts of coincidences, we attend the same church, are involved in some of the same activities, and are now both part of the same homeschool support group! She tagged me in this little bloggy thing, and since I run into her all the time, I’d better play along.

Alicia gave me 8 questions to answer: 

1. What is your favorite time of year and why?
Fall. Autumn. Whatever you call it, it’s heavenly! Cooler weather, I can bake like crazy, crunchy-colorful fall leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, no mosquitoes. I could go on and on about my love affair with fall…

2. What is your favorite bible scripture or passage?
I love the book of James. It was my late Grandaddy’s favorite book of the Bible because, as he said, it’s just so practical. Live according to that book, and you are doing God’s will, and living according to His brand of wisdom. Which, of course, is the only real wisdom. This little book also contains God’s command to care for widows and orphans, which is a biggie for me, too.

3. If money were no object, what restaurant would you love to go out to, with just your husband?
Hmm… we’re not big go-out-to-eaters, but we do enjoy a good sushi restaurant (though I’m actually a sushi wimp because I don’t do raw fish). The Melting Pot is yummy if I don’t have to think about the cost, too!

4. What is the last movie you saw in a theater?
“How to Train Your Dragon.” It was at the $1 theater, and we took Lindsey and a friend there to see another movie. Before that, I have no idea. I really don’t like going to the movies. It’s loud, the floor is sticky, I can’t drink my hot tea. And for some reason, although I have a tremendously long attention span for most things, this does not apply to most movies. At least if we’re at home, I can get up and go do a load of laundry, or do something while the movie is on.

5. My favorite book I have read recently is …
Fiction: anything by Charles Martin, like Chasing Fireflies or When Crickets Cry.
Non-fiction: Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining… in You and Your Kids!

6. What is your favorite “go to” item of clothing?
Jeans! They are my mom my uniform. I usually even wear them to church! And if I get to stay home, my sheepskin slippers live on my feet (anytime it’s not dreadfully hot outside, that is).

7. Do you have a good housekeeping tip?
Spaz out about the clutter in the house and then watch your family finally start putting things away to keep you sane. Just KIDDING! I don’t recommend that method at all, although I have to admit it has happened around here a time or two. I’m a neat-freak and clutter makes me seriously crazy.

8. When life is crazy do you have one easy dinner recipe you love?
I’m such a lousy meal-planner. I consider myself a pretty good homemaker — except in this department. So we have occasional fend-for-yourself nights. Or we might get creative and call it “Survival Island,” but that just means we have to eat whatever is left in the fridge/pantry.

OK, so now is the part where I’m suppose to tag blog friends. I’m terrible at the tagging part, because I just never know who to pick. So I’m not going to pick eight, but I will pick a couple other real-life friends who might actually participate. And if you want to join in the fun, hop on in and consider yourself tagged. (Just make sure you let me know, so I can come read your answers!)

I am tagging:

• Wendy – a real-life friend who just began her homeschool journey this year!
• Jonnia – my cousin who is also a homeschooling mom
• Ellen – who is not yet a real-life friend, but is planning on coming to the Blogographer get-together AND she gave me a blog award this week!
• Ken — my husband, who says he wants to start using more words on his blog.

Here are my questions for the friends I’m tagging:
1) What is your biggest spending/buying weakness? (Trips to Starbucks, a shoe sale, etc?)
2) What is something BIG in your life you never imagined but God made happen?
3) What is your favorite book of all time? (Or one of them.)
4) If you could give your teenage self one piece of advice, what would it be?
5) What is your footwear of choice?
6) If you had to name your home-decorating style, what would it be?
7) Tea or Coffee? (If neither, what the heck do you drink?)

That was kinda fun. Now, it’s your turn!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

Recently I’ve realized, I blog differently nowadays. When I began blogging 2 1/2 years ago, I wrote mostly about homeschooling. But since that time, my life has become more {searching for a word} complex.

Right now I simply have less time to just ponder.

Right now…

…I’m still learning how to be mom to a teenage daughter.

…I’m still learning how to help siblings get along.

…I’m still learning how to do the hybrid homeschooling thing.

…We’re working hard on getting our photography business going bigger and better.

…I’m much busier with running around, to and from school and practices and enrichment classes and football games.

…I’m entering an odd new phase of realizing my parents may need help from me, rather than the other way around.

…I’m having a hard time making a workable new schedule for myself, for working out and quiet time, in addition to all our new activities.

…I’m sometimes a little overwhelmed with life in general.

Eventually, with the Lord’s help, I’ll figure out how to do this more complex version of my life. There’s no reason I can’t study Charlotte Mason’s philosophies and teach my children honor. No reason I can’t do nature studies and work on mother-daughter teen relationships. No reason I can’t figure out how to get all the running around done and make time to exercise.

So I guess the main point of this post is: thank you to all of you who still stick with me in reading this blog! I know it’s random, but that’s my life! And someday, after continuing along this road God has me on and learning what He wants to teach me along the way, maybe I’ll have some seriously profound and wise blog posts to share. Until then, expect randomness!

Right about the time I finished this post, I found out I received a blog award from Dawn at 5 Kids and a Dog for being a “Versatile Blogger.” So maybe in the future, I should say I’m a versatile blogger rather than a random one.

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

It’s just over a month until the first Blogographers’ Meet-Up, so I’d better get busy in letting y’all know some details!

So here’s the scoop in a nutshell:

Who: Blogographers (anyone who loves blogging)
Date: Saturday, October 2, 2010
Time: 10AM -  2PM
Location: Marietta Square
We’ll meet near the fountain in the middle of the Square.

The historic Marietta Square is central to many areas, and it’s pretty, too! We can just enjoy the day outside in the park, but there are several lovely little restaurants we can converge upon for lunch — or you could bring a picnic lunch! There’s also a great little independently-owned coffee shop there called Cool Beans.

I’m listing the time as 10AM – 2PM, but of course you can leave earlier if you need to, or you can stay longer if you want to!

There will be a wonderful Farmer’s Market from 9AM – 12Noon in the Square that day, and you could even take in a show at the Strand Theater if you want to make a day of it!

As I’ve said before, this will be a very casual affair: no speakers, just socializing! If you blog, then you most likely enjoy taking photos, so bring your cameras! My husband Ken and I will be happy to answer any photography/camera questions you may have.  We’ll be sure to get a group photo while everyone is there and then email it to you so you can blog it!

Many of you have RSVP’d previously, but please let me know if you are still planning to attend (or still trying to work out the details to do so). I’ll do another post closer to then with a list of everyone who plans to be there, so you know which of your blog friends to look for!

Please share this post so we can have a good turn-out!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

Just a couple of weird (I prefer the term “quirky”), unsocialized homeschool moms:

Saturday morning, Ken taught a Beginners’ Photography Workshop, and I was his trusty assistant. (Just call me Vanna.) Through the big wide wonderful world of the interweb, my blogland friend Kris heard about it, and signed up. She bought herself a super-cool new camera for her big 40th birthday a few weeks ago, but what good is a super-cool camera if you don’t know how to use all the super-cool features? So she made the trek to our house to join the workshop.  I told her one requirement was that we had to have our picture made together, and I had to put it on my blog. She agreed — if she could put it on hers, too. When the class was done, we braved the sweltering heat one more time to let Ken make this photograph.

I know Kris from her blog, Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Kris and I already felt like we knew each other, but we’d never actually seen each other outside of blogland! It’s SO hard to explain to non-blogging friends that you have friends you have never met in real life. I guess that’s part of what makes blogging conventions such a big deal; sure, you can learn about blogging, but the really cool part (speaking as someone who has zero experience with blog conventions!) is finally laying eyes on these people you’ve “known” in blogland, and getting to hug their necks! Kris is the third friend I’ve met in blogland before meeting in real life: Alicia goes to my church, but we didn’t figure that out until after we’d visited each other’s blogs; and I’d bought tea from Mari‘s an online tea shop, but had never met her in person until she came up and talked to me in Trader Joe’s one day!

Kris and I talked about all this when she was here, and that gave me an idea. (My best ideas usually come when I’m talking or writing, which is probably why I tend to do a whole lot of both!) Blogging conventions are fun, but they are expensive. What if we just arranged a meet-up, sort of like the photographer meet-ups we sometimes attend.

I have to go all linquistically geeky on you for just a minute to justify what I think we should call this get-together:

The English suffix “-graphy” means either “writing” or a “field of study“, and is an anglicization of the French -graphie inherited from the Latin -graphia, which is a transliterated direct borrowing from Greek. It often functions literally as a reference to writing (e.g. calligraphy, cartography, biography). However, it also has evolved to denote a field of study, particularly studies that involve some degree of collecting, cataloging and/or surveying (e.g. geography, demography, oceanography).

Almost every blogger writes; most of us have certain “fields of study” (homeschooling, humor/satire, family life, encouragement, etc), and I think most bloggers collect, catalog and/or survey blogs to find and keep up with ones we enjoy. The suffix “-grapher,” is defined as “someone who writes about a specified subject, or in a specified manner.” Doesn’t that mean every blogger?

So, let’s call this thing a Blogographers Meet-Up!

I’m tentatively thinking to do this on October 2, 2010; there will be no speakers, no fees, just blogographers getting together (definitely in some safe, public location!). It’ll be open to any blogger who wants to join us, so if you are in Georgia, I hope you will join us. If you’re not in Georgia, maybe you can find an excuse to visit! After all, we do have a bunch of historical and touristy things around here!

I’ll post more about this as soon as I do a bit more planning!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

Jeanne (at A Peaceful Day) asked recently about the pros and cons of wordpress; I wanted to answer her question thoroughly, but I’m also guessing other people might have the same question. So I’m sharing my thoughts about a few blog hosting sites I have personal experience with.

I’ve blogged at homeschoolblogger, blogger, and wordpress; I also briefly created test blogs on tumblr and typepad, but in my limited experience, neither of those two allowed for enough customization to suit me. (I may be more particular than most as far as that goes, though.)

On homeschoolblogger, I was able to do quite a bit of customization, and the community there is friendly. In fact, I still have some blog friends I met there! But I don’t like the ads. The kicker for me to leave was when a friend’s blog was deleted without warning because she announced a move to a new web host, and they deemed that inappropriate content.

Overall I have been very happy with blogger, and they have recently even added a few features that I have always liked on wordpress, like “pages.” So I’d still recommend blogger. No problems there, and ease of use is high on my list of pros for blogger.

WordPress.com is a free blog host, just like blogger. The only con for me in regards to wordpress is limited customization of themes: only some of the themes allow for a custom header, and there is no way to change width or things like that unless you purchase upgrades. But there are many themes to choose from, so if you can find one you like, go for it! Both blogger and wordpress have the same basic features, but here are some of the things I like better about wordpress:

• How I view comments! I can see all my comments, for one individual post, or for all my posts, right in one spot on my dashboard. I like that!
• Contacting commenters! I have it set where you have to enter an email address to comment, but it does not show up anywhere other than my private dashboard. This allows me to email commenters directly to answer questions, etc.
• Comment moderation! I comment moderation set, BUT once I have approved a comment from a particular person, I do not have to approve comments for them in the future. I like that, too!
• Less spam! There seems to be a much better spam-catching system.
• Image uploading! It’s different than blogger, so if you switch, it may take a little getting used to, but I like it better. I can easily get to any image I have already uploaded in my “media” on my dashboard, and can even to minor editing (like cropping) right there. There is also an option to add a photo caption when you upload; I don’t always use this feature, but I do like it!
• Tags on posts that you can use in addition to categories. Not all themes display tags, but they are handy.
• Word count; there’s very seldom any reason I’d actually need this feature, but I like it anyway. It shows up as you type your draft.

Another important note: it was super-easy to import all of my blog posts and comments to my new blog. Just a click of a button. Super cool!

With both blogger and wordpress (and probably other hosts) you have the ability to purchase your own domain name, which allows you to do away with the “.wordpress” or “.blogspot” part of your URL. On blogger, a custom domain name is about $10 per year, and on wordpress, it’s about $14.

The option with the most flexibility and options is to have a self-hosted blog. What the heck is a self-hosted blog? It means you have your own domain name, but you also have your own web host (GoDaddy is a popular one), rather than being hosted by a blog-hosting site like wordpress, blogger, typepad, or any of the others. Web hosting services usually charge around $5 (or more) each month, but you have unlimited flexibility and more storage. It also enables you to have your own email account, like yourname@blogname.com. We already have our own web host, because of hosting our business website and blog, so Ken and I just purchased domain names (from Network Solutions), and then used wordpress.org (different than wordpress.com — see below!) to create our new blogs.

WordPress.org is a free “publishing platform.” You download and install it after you have your own domain and web host. It has all the features of wordpress.com, plus more! You can download and install all sorts of additional themes (many free; even more available for purchase); you have customization limited only by your knowledge of CSS (similar to HTML); you can download and install all sorts of fabulous plug-ins, too. A few I like: the one that shows my Google Analytics right on my dashboard, and the CommentLuv plug-in to link to commenters’ most recent post.

I hope this post was helpful!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)

As you see, I’ve moved my blog and changed it’s name. Maybe you’re wondering why. Or maybe not — in which case, you can skip the rest of this post.

Well, sometimes I just get ants in my pants about changing things. And although I haven’t completely figured out CSS-codes yet, I know that a self-hosted blog will ultimately allow me much more flexibility. I’ve been using a self-hosted wordpress blog for our business blog, and I like it better.  So that was my original motivation.

But then I had to decide on a domain name. I thought, of course, about keeping Rose Cottage or Jamie’s Cottage or something to that effect, but as I thought more about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted the house as the main focus. That sounds kind of silly because it’s just a blog name, but recently I’ve sort of had a revelation about how I think and feel about our house. I’m not sure exactly when that thought process began. At first I was going to say I’d say it was our Africa trip, and seeing how wealthy we are globally really did have an impact on me, even in little things like realizing we could use hand towels in the kitchen instead of a zillion paper towels. (We never saw even one paper towel while we were in Africa; they were too expensive.)

But really, I think the Africa trip just reinforced what I started learning when I read Money, Possessions, and Eternity a couple of years ago. (Highly recommended, by the way!)

Recently, some friends of ours have down-sized from an already moderately small house, and their actions have really challenged me. And recently we read a book about a missionary family who built multi-level bunk beds in their tiny house to accommodate the street children they ended up adopting. (Really, where did this idea of kids needing their own bedrooms come from, anyway?) So all this has been jumping around in my head. I really don’t want to be a slave to anything material, including a home mortgage.

We live in a rather affluent area, so it’s easy to look at our house and think of all the renovations I’d like to do, or wonder where we’d put more kids if God ever chooses to add to our family one way or another. I’ve worked at making our home pretty, inside and out, so I would’ve thought that I’d miss this house if we sold it. But now I realize that any other house could feel like home, too, if my family was there with me. Right now it does not seem that God is calling us to move or sell this house, but I’d be okay with it if He does.

All that to say, I didn’t want the blog to be all about the house.

So that meant I needed a new blog name, and in trying to come up with one, I joked about “See Jamie blog” because the Dick and Jane books are so retro cheesy — which means they are right up my alley!

The domain name was available, so. . . welcome to See Jamie blog!

(Note: post may contain affiliate links. See disclosure page for details.)