If you hadn’t noticed previously I’m participating in the SITS 31 Days to Building a Better Blog!

Add your link below, visit a new blog or two,  and add the hop to your blog!

I love cooking & baking. Even more than that I love eating and I swear it’s amazing that I’m not as big as a house! I’m no twig by any means though and am constantly working on losing weight and eating healthy.

I’ve been pondering some of the blogs that I visit on a regular basis for recipes and cooking related things. And there are a few that really stand out in my mind.

The first one is 101 Cookbooks and it’s all about Heidi Swanson and her travels, life, and the recipes that come from that. All of her recipes are vegetarian and tend to use all natural, fresh ingredients. They’re amazing recipes and I’ve made so many of them! Now, I should mention that I’m not a vegetarian, but her recipes are easy to add fresh fish, shrimp, chicken, or other meat to.

The next one I’d recommend is Simply Recipes. This food & recipe blog is written by Elise Bauer and has some of the best recipes and some great comfort food! One of my favorites has to be the Banana Bread. It’s made with one bowl, no mixer, and the simplest ingredients that you can almost memorize the recipe. My kids and I have made this at least a dozen times and have added different things (sour cream, cream cheese, applesauce, etc) or just made it the way the recipe as it’s written. I often buy extra bananas just so we can make the bread!

My final blog is a favorite because it’s all about baking. And if nothing else I LOVE to bake! If I could I’d open a bakery and have wonderful cakes, pies, cookies, breads, and everything in between. Not So Humble Pie  is written by Ms. Humble and she creates some yummy looking baked goods! I haven’t been following this blog all that long since I only recently learned about it from a co-worker. My kids have loved going through the blog to point out all the things we need to make and enjoying the cool science cookies and then planning on what kind we’ll decorate and submit!

There are several more blogs that I read that are food related, but these are my favorites. I hope that you enjoy them! 

Now tell me what food blogs do you read?

Today’s task is to write a list post and I’ve spent half the day pondering what to write about. It’s a lot harder when you’re given a writing assignment for as opposed to writing about whatever pops into my head at the moment!

I’ve been pondering a post about a ‘Bucket List’. You know, all the items that you want to do before you die, but I was thinking that mine would be more of the things I want to do before my kids move out or before I hit 50 type thing. A short term bucket list. This isn’t going to be that post. I think I want to save that for another time.

I’ve been thinking about the things I want to do short term. The here and now. I have a list but now all I have to do is figure out how to accomplish them.

• Spend more time with my kids
• Figure out how to work part time and still keep my insurance and paycheck
• Plan a weekend away with my husband – and go!
• Clean and organize my office – I never get to it no matter how hard I try
• Get better at this blogging thing
• Brush up on my web programming skills – they’re buried in the closet and kinda dusty!
• Learn to take better pictures

So there it is, my short term to do list! Now that I have it written out and made public I’ll have to really make an effort to follow through on it, won’t I?

So today is the first day of the Building a Better Blog Challenge for me and today’s task is to develop a elevator pitch for my blog.

What is an elevator pitch you ask…
An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch should be possible to deliver in the time span of an elevator ride, meaning in a maximum of 30 seconds and in 130 words or fewer.
– Wikipedia

You could also think of it as a mission statement or the point of your blog. It gives readers something to think about and prompts them ask questions about your blog.

I’ve been pondering this all day, trying to figure out what I want it to be and how to best write it in as few words as possible. This should be easy for me since I write these often for the projects that I work on everyday at work. But for some reason the work elevator pitches seem so much easier than this one and I have no idea why.

So, here it is.

The short ride to the third floor:
My Kids. Work. New Recipes. My Life.

The ride to the penthouse suite:
Life is full of surprises, twists, and turns! You may as well enjoy the ride! I’m a mom to 4 (14, 10, 8, and 5 months), a wife (to my 5th child sometimes), and I work full time and it takes a bit of magic to keep my sanity & things running at my house. You may find things here about family, kids, work, cooking, or just about anything. It’s my life.