I’m so happy to FINALLY be able to get out and get down and dirty in the garden!  Up to this point the only planting I’ve done is these peas that I seeded back at the end of January. Read more

RAGBRAI: The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.  The Register is the newspaper the Des Moines Register.  That’s who organizes the ride.

 

This is the 47^th year that this ride is being held, but I only heard about it for the first time around 3 years ago.  For the longest time I thought people were saying Rag Ride.  I wondered what rags had to do with the ride.  About 4 months ago I finally saw the acronym in writing.  It’s pronounced rag-bri, ending with a long i sound. Read more

This post is short and sweet.  I just wanted to spread the word! Read more

 

It is difficult for me to write about my mother as she is today.  Yet she is a very large part of my life, and should definitely be included in “All the Little Bits”.  My problem is that part of me worries about how she would feel about me writing publicly about her condition.  However, I know there are many, many other people out there going through the same type of experiences as we are.  It may be helpful to them and others who are on the threshold of making decisions about the care of a parent to know what it is like for us. Read more

On the first Monday of each month, I will be doing a Memory Lane Monday post.  Yes, I know we already have TBT and FBF, but I like the sound of Memory Lane Monday.  Plus today happens to be Monday and I had a memory today that I wanted to share, so there you go.  So let’s step it up, and head down Memory Lane… Read more

A lot of the blogs that I read do a Friday Favorites post, and I really enjoy reading them.  So I want to include that type of post in my blog as well, however I don’t consider myself a very heavy consumer, so I’m not sure I would have enough favorites to post them weekly.  I do realize favorites don’t have to be items that have been purchased.  They can also be events, pictures, sayings, people, TV shows, etc.  I just think to be on the safe side, I’m going to start out with monthly favorites posts.  If down the road, I discover I want to post them more frequently, I can change it up then.  I’d like to do these posts sometime during the last week of the month to which they pertain, but for this first one, I’m a little behind for February, seeing as how this is March 1st, but here we go! Read more

Here I am, dipping my toes into the waters of the blogosphere.  I’ve had the idea of starting a blog for several years now.  Ever since I read a former colleague’s blog, I’ve toyed with the idea of having my own.  After all, I enjoy writing.  I have experiences I can share.  When I told Jan (the colleague, and I also consider her a friend) that I was thinking about starting my own blog, she encouraged me to do it.  And one time a few years ago my daughter told me she thought I should start a blog.  She had a specific topic that she thought I should center my blog around.  A niche, as it’s called in all the blogging advice I read.  But the idea of putting myself “out there” was daunting.  What awful things might happen to me out there in the world of the internet?  Did I really want to expose myself that way?

 

I think I’m over that now.  I mean, really what’s the worst that could happen?  Maybe no one will read my blog.  So what?  Maybe anyone that does read it will respond in a critical, hurtful way.  I’m sure that every blogger out there gets some rude comments, and they’re still plugging away, so I imagine I can live through whatever negativity comes my way, too.  I guess both of those worries are really fear of rejection.  But I have friends and family who love me.  So I’ll be okay.

 

Once I got past all that and decided yes, I’m going to do this thing, I started reading about starting a blog.  There is a wealth of advice out there.  It’s overwhelming!  One website boasted about how they explain everything about blogging in a way that a beginner can understand, yet much of what she had to offer was Greek to me!  I’m sure I need to educate myself, and I will strive to do that along the way, but I want to start this blog NOW.  Another “authority” said not to launch your blog until you had at least 5 posts written.  She said that way you would look “established”.  But who would I be trying to kid?  Everybody has to start with their first post.  It’s not like I’m promoting a business.  I think that’s what the majority of those giving advice assume.  Monetize was a word thrown around A LOT.  But I’m not doing this to make money.  For me it’s just a way to express myself and be part of a bigger community.  So I said to myself, “Oh, I’m just going to start.”

 

But wait!  What should I call my blog?  Oh, the agony of deciding on a blog name! I made a list of possibilities and tried them out on Big Eagle.  Most of them did not thrill him.  He finally did like one in particular, and I liked it, too, but I thought it was a little misleading.  It was a list of 3 things with “books” being the first one, and I was afraid people might think that was my emphasis.  I really didn’t want an emphasis (even though the advice says you need a niche).  Then I thought, “I want all the possible bits of my life to be included.”  That’s when I decided upon my blog name: All the Little Bits.  Great!  NOW I could get started.

 

I got my host account, and I got my domain from WordPress and was ready to blog.  But then I needed a theme.  O-M-G!  SOOOOOO many themes to choose from!  Which would be the best?  I installed and played with a few that I found attractive, but I just wasn’t sure.  So then I started googling to learn more about which themes are recommended.  I read about parent themes and child themes.  Did you know you can’t have a child theme without a parent theme, but you can have a parent theme without a child theme?  How can you be a parent if you don’t have a child, though?  Then there’s the consideration of whether to use a free theme vs a paid theme.  How do all of these bloggers DO it?

 

But finally, here I am.  Blogging.  I obviously don’t know a lot about what I’m doing, but I’m hoping I’ll learn as I go.  There were several of those advice places I visited that did say to just start and the rest would come later.  I sure hope they’re right.