Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Top Five...favorite blogs

In the past year or so I've discovered the blog world.  I know I've had this longer than that and I've read blogs by people I know but didn't read much beyond that.  Now I know there are blogs out there on every topic.  They seem to be majorly written by moms, specifically stay at home moms.  I think we want to feel like we have something to contribute to the world other than perfectly raised children, of course. =)  That's my 5 second evaluation.  Or maybe that's just why I blog.  Anyways.  Here are my 5 favorite blogs to read.  I keep track of them and the others I read on Feedly so I am definitely not checking all these sites every day.  Blog reading is what I usually do when I'm feeding Luke a bottle.

1) Young House Love
This was the first home decorating kind of blog I found and is still my favorite.  I read their book (same name) about a year ago and it made me think of so many different things to do with our house.  If Matt knew this is where the majority of my multitude of home projects come from he'd probably figure out how to block it from our network.  It's a husband and wife team who write about redoing their own home along with various other projects they take on.  I don't earn a cent from blogging but YHL has managed to monetize theirs to the extent they both blog from home full time.  How crazy is that? 

They make projects seem doable for even beginners.  They've made me think a lot about having a "theme" for our house, managing projects, cloth diapering, baby led weaning, projects I can take on myself, and more.  This is the first blog I read when giving Luke bottle #2 every morning.  I like almost everything they do. 

2) Annie's Eats
This is, hands down, my favorite food blog.  Annie is a doctor (in some level of training...she recently posted about passing her boards) in Indianapolis who has 2 kids and still manages to make amazing food from scratch.  I don't know how she does it because I stay home with my one kid and make much less fancy food.  She's a big advocate of making food from scratch and DIYing what you can, definitely an inspiration for me to do the same.  I get so many recipes from her, especially for the DIY stuff (bread, baguettes, cooking beans, pizza crust, English muffins, I could go on and on).   My Pinterest food boards have many of her recipes pinned. 

When I decide to make a new things from scratch (say, hamburger or hot dog buns) hers is the first site I check and pretty much every recipe I've tried has been amazing (if not, it's usually my own mistake).  Last night for supper we had her Mexican Lasagna.  I've considered posting more food recipes here but I'd pretty much just be copying her recipes but less well and with worse photography.  If you have any interest in making food from scratch definitely check out her site.  Or if you just want delicious food (I'm making her pretzel bites for our Superbowl party this weekend). 

3) Under the Sycamore
I found this blog through some comments at Young House Love.  It's run by a mom of 5 kids, one of whom is adopted (something I obviously enjoy reading about).  She just posted last week about how her blog doesn't have a theme and it really doesn't but that's ok.  She has amazing photography and I'm actually signed up to take one of her classes next month (working on my resolution #4).  She posts about parenting, homeschooling, adoption, random home things, the chicken coop they built.  Just Mom stuff, and all with great photography.  Definitely inspiring me to improve my skills there.  This is a harder one to describe than the others but I do enjoy reading her posts every day.

4) Teal & Lime
This is another home decorating blog but different than Young House Love.  I think why I like this one so much is that I really like her decorating style and I like how she tries to teach decorating skills and basics.  I've taken one free webinar through her site and am signed up for another this week.  She has posts about how to decorate a mantel or different takes on styling a bench.  Through her posts and webinar she's made me think a lot about my decorating style (that sounds as pretentious to write as it probably does to read), learning the difference between things I appreciate and things I love, and shopping within your house (which I love doing).  I am by no means a good decorating but I am trying to make our house nicer on a limited budget and she gives a lot of ideas for doing so.  This one can be more like a class whereas YHL is more how-tos.  Both nice but very different.


5) All Things Target
Um...this shouldn't surprise anyone and I apologize for the constant Target love here.  If only they would pay me to talk about how much I like them...  This site posts about Target sales, clearance, and coupons, and ways to combine all that to get the best deal.  This helps me make the most of my Target dollar.  If you shop at Target with any frequency you should check out this site.  I got 3 DiGiorno pizzas for $2.20 this past weekend because of a post here.  (I know I've talked many times how we don't buy much processed food and these are honestly the first frozen pizzas we've bought in years.  When they are that cheap, cheaper than I could make them, it's hard to pass up.  It'll likely take us the rest of the this year to eat all 3 just because it's not something I'm going to put on a menu plan but nice to have on hand for who knows what.)


There are 5 of my favorite blogs to read.  Note, I didn't include blogs of anyone I know personally because I didn't want to offend anyone by picking and choosing so please don't be!  I do really enjoy reading posts by friends and sisters because I like hearing from people I know about their lives. 

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