Officially Blogging

I registered "our" blog (lets be honest, I'll be lucky if Tom reads, much less posts anything on the blog) at least a year ago... and then came to realize I had no idea what I wanted to blog about. I admittedly read other blogs, most of which are about my friends growing family's, creative recipes, or decorating ideas and I've been inspired by all of those ideas. So... with some motivation from friends and family (but not Tom yet, he really doesn't get the blogging thing), I'm officially starting this blog. I'm not even quite sure what I'll be writing about, probably some of all the above topics (although our growing family only consists of 4 legged children for now). Bear with me while I get the hang of this, and I'll certainly appreciate feedback. For now I'm declaring this post purposeful by setting some goals for myself:

1. Learn more about my camera. It's nothing fancy, but I default to the "smart camera" function so that the camera chooses the settings for me, which gives me the feeling my pictures don't always reach their potential. I don't document enough of our lives, so I'm hoping this blog keeps me feeling obligated to do so. Maybe I'll even learn a thing or two about photoshop along the way.

2. Stay motivated to keep updating and improving this old house. Our home was built in 1850 and has wonderful character, but our last house was brand spanking new and very modern so our furniture and style didn't mesh with this old charmer. This means refinishing, scavenging antique stores, salvage yards, and home decor stores, and a lot of DIY experiences. This is all new to me, I've always considered myself creative, but not successfully crafty.

3. Keep on cooking. When we moved to Skaneateles we quickly learned that there's a lack of variety in restaurants in our tiny village of only two stoplights. We've always liked to cook, but used to favor eating out or getting take out at least a few nights a week, not really possible anymore (which in all honestly is a good thing for our wallets and waist lines). For awhile I made a goal of cooking at least one new dish a week, but even that started to fail as we identified some favorite recipes and kept coming back to those meals. So I'm going to make it a goal to try at least 3 new recipes a month and post them here to share.

I'll attempt to be fair and always give credit where it's due, but admittedly that may be difficult with recipes as I often lose track of where I find them, and almost always change them along the way. Hopefully sharing the roots of my inspirations helps you to discover new ideas too.