Wow! Can you believe it? Two years! Yes, that's right, this week marks our two year anniversary of when we started Old Town Home. To be quite honest, it's a little bit shocking that it's gone by so quickly. I still remember the night Wendy and I were sitting out in our backyard and getting our first blog post live, nervous with anticipation for the millions of people that would surely descend upon our site the moment our blog post was officially online. I'm a little foggy on the details, but I think something like that happened...I think.
When we decided to start our blog back in 2011, we weren't really sure what to expect. We knew we had some decent projects we could cover, as well as a few tips and how tos we could share, but we didn't have much of a grasp on what blogging entailed beyond writing our first few posts. We didn't exactly realize the time commitment each post would require, how it would impact our home project schedule, or the work required outside of just writing blog posts. To put it mildly, the last two years of consistent blogging have been quite the learning and growing experience, and now we know just how difficult -- but also fulfilling -- the realm of blogging can be.
You may have heard us say this before, but when we decide to do something, we decide to go all out. It seems we don't have a half speed setting, or a way to moderate the effort we put into our projects, as is evident from many of our home endeavors. When it came to our blog, we approached it in very much the same manner. I mean, just look at our kitchen project as an example; a budget rug and a quick coat of paint somehow turned into new counters, appliances, and decor for two rooms of our house!
From day one Wendy and I committed ourselves to daily blog posts, Monday through Friday, no matter if we were slammed at work, on vacation, or in a project slump of sorts. Some weeks it has been easier to write posts because our projects or real life allowed or inspired them, sometimes it has been harder to come up with something interesting and worthwhile (though we hope we did), but through our first several hundred posts spanning two years, we learned quite a bit about our own blog authoring process and what we hope has made Old Town Home a worthwhile and enjoyable read, whether we're talking about a specific project, and event in Old Town, or some randomness that surrounds our DIY lives.
From the last two years of blogging (and 585 individual blog posts, including today's), there are a handful of very critical yet simple things we've learned along the way that work well for us and have enriched our overall experience and enjoyment of blogging. And while we don't want to be a blog that spends a lot of time talking about blogging, our entire blogging experience has been a bit of a DIY adventure of its own, so we feel like sharing a few of our blogging tips and tricks is appropriate for our official two year blogiversary (I hate that word, by the way). For the bloggers or aspiring bloggers out there, we hope you'll find the information useful. And for the non blog authors who are reading, we hope it gives you a little insight into our creative process that helps us to formulate the items we post each day.
Continue Reading Full Post