I didn’t really know anything of the bloggy world.  I knew some authors who had blogs and blogged about writing things, and who had other odd blogs that were used to promote their writing blogs, and I read Michelle Malkin’s blog occasionally, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about the cyber world of blogging.  I spent some time in the early months of 2009 learning a lot about blogging from the perspective of a romance writer, but I really couldn’t imagine my writing career being enough to keep a blog about it (although, I’ll say that in the last year I’ve felt like I SHOULD because, apparently publishers google search for your name and read blogs in the decision making process, and am currently praying about whether that will just become another part of this blog or its own thing.)

Then, one day in July while in the process of doing a Google search for a prayer, Gregg stumbled upon Passionate Homemaker’s site.  He sent me the link to the prayer, which I really enjoyed, then I moved on with whatever I had going on.  Continuing on in his search for a prayer, he found Heavenly Homemaker’s site, The Pioneer Woman’s site, and Daily Dwelling’s site.  He sent them each to me in an email suggesting that I would enjoy reading them.

I spent a couple of weeks just reading homemaking blog after faith based blog after mommy blog, and one day just felt this intense overwhelming feeling of “make your own blog and make it NOW.”  I can only think that it must have been the prompting of the Holy Spirit, because there was no other reason that I would even think about beginning a blog.  I can only guess there was someone He wanted me to reach, and in order to do it, the timing had to be right then.

I had just recently suggested to Gregg a project I’d been considering.  I honestly can’t remember what it was now.  But I was really excited about it and went to Gregg very enthusiastically and he said, “Don’t you think you have enough on your plate right now?”

He was right.  I had a 1-year-old who nursed constantly, a 3-year-old with insomnia, a very tweeny 12-year-old with a really active social life, and a husband who had been in Afghanistan for 5 months and still had another 15 months to go.

So when I had this burning “NOW” in my heart/mind/gut, I didn’t take it to him first.  Mainly because I didn’t want him to tell me no or to think I was insane for thinking I could.  Instead, I found a wordpress template, signed up for a wordpress account, wrote the first blog post, then hit “publish”.

THEN I went to Gregg with it.  I think I was on the phone, which would be odd for me.  I don’t enjoy talking on the phone and do it as little as possible.  I usually save things big or deep or heavy for email so that I don’t have to use the phone.  But, I remember his voice, so I know we were on the phone.  His response floored me.  “You did?!  That’s WONDERFUL!”  Gregg was immediately on board and immediately started making the blog what it is today.  He did all of the background stuff that I still don’t understand…SEO, code, tagaroo, search engines, etc.  He bought halleethehomemaker.com, transferred the blog out of wordpress, re-designed the template to be 3 columns and created a forum where we could have message board discussions.

With Gregg at my side encouraging every move I made and with me certain that this blog was Divinely inspired and encouraged, I went forward with confidence.  I have so many ideas for posts that I can’t even imagine having enough time in a lifetime to get to them all.  We’ve met so many awesome people, been part of some pretty amazing carnivals, helped fund a young missionary’s vision, and given away some fantastic gifts.  I am even a contributing writer and Team Member at Seeds of Faith.

I look back now and I can’t believe it’s been only a year, and I can’t believe it’s already been a year.

I love this blog.  I love that the one-year-anniversary-giveaway has over 600 comments.  I love that there is a steady number of you who have been with me from the very first post and who still read me every day.  I love that people do searches for “Hallee the Homemaker” because someone has told them about this site.  I love that God has allowed me this opportunity to meet so many wonderful people, to do Bible studies, to have debates and disagreements, to have conversations, to share recipes and stories from life, to pray for each other.

I pray that I continue to be what God wants me to be with this blog.

This coming year will bring:

• “Our Story”:  Gregg and I laughed our way through The Pioneer Woman’s and The Happy Housewife’s stories of meeting their husbands, and we both have been writing our sides of how it all happened with us.
• “About Me”:  It’s one of the first places I go to on a blog, and get annoyed when one isn’t there.  Which is a bit hypocritical considering that I don’t have one.
• More Recipes More Often:  Once school starts back up and my schedule gets firmed again, I hope to post many more recipes and much more regularly.  The recipes are not hard to write out – it’s the formatting and adding the pictures that are time consuming – so right now I have about 20 recipes’ pictures on my hard drive just waiting for me to take the time to devote to them.
• My Christian romance writing blog or page attached to this blog will be launched.
• A posted, purpose driven mission statement, which will include a bit of a manifesto of mine about how my blog is not intended to be a money making venture.  We get the most interesting requests from companies wanting to sponsor us, and we turn them down all the time.
• The conclusion of The Power of a Praying Wife Bible study and the onset of a new study — be thinking about ideas because I’ll come to you again like I did last time.
• Me getting better with networking.  I am terrible at networking with other blogs.  It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that in the divvying up of time, blogging networking gets the short end of the stick.  Most days simply don’t have enough hours.  But my schedule has time for it worked into it – I just need to get strict about my schedule again.

I wish words expressed how much I appreciate those of you who read me.  But, since words seem inadequate, we’ll continue with awesome monthly giveaways.

God bless you, my awesome readers.  Thank you for this year.  Please leave a comment and let me know what you like here so that I know what I’m doing right or what I might need to do differently.

Happy Bloggy Birthday to us!

Hallee

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