Now that Christmas is over I wanted to send out some thank yous. First I want to thank everyone who’s visited my blog throughout the holiday season, and I want to thank you for all your lovely comments. And I hope you will all visit again soon.

Next I want to thank everyone who submitted their food or crafts to the Christmas festival and everyone who gave me permission to use their ideas for the festival.

I’d also like to thank everyone who hosted holiday events on their blog. I had a lot of fun participating and visiting with other participants.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best in the new year. Thanks again!

-Jerri

-Jerri

My Recipes has given me this Lemonade Award. This is the first award that I have received for this blog, and I really appreciate it. Isn’t it cute?

In keeping with the tradition and spirit of the award, I am passing this award on to some other great blogs. So here they are:

Rosie Bakes a ‘Peace’ of Cake – Rosie bakes beautiful cakes and desserts. And I can tell that a lot of love goes in to each recipe.

Secrets of a Southern Kitchen – Charlene posts on my favorite kinds of recipes–the simple ones! I just came across her blog the other day, but I already love it!

Cooking and the City – From Melbourne, Australia, Dell creates a whole host of delicious looking foods.

Living Well On Less – A blog written by a newlywed about saving money. I can relate!

Frugal Finds from Your Frugal Friend – Another money saving blog. Carol posts up links to coupons, freebies, and other frugal tips.

The Recipe Girl – Another great recipe blog. She also posts up pictures of the process for making the recipes. Everything looks delicious!

Sugarcraft by Soni – Anamika makes beautiful cakes for all occasions. She’s a true artist!

Passionate about Baking – Bakelicious – Home Baked Delicious Cake – Another great cake blog. I only just found this one, but I loved what a saw. Lovely work!

Southern Dining Diva – Great blog with a variety of recipes, and written by a fellow Alabama girl.

Ling’s Passion – More beautiful cakes and other delicious looking recipes!

Here are the rules:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.

2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!

3. Link to your nominees within your post.

4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

-Jerri

I’m happy to say that our week went fairly well. The drive got a little crazy as we were going through the rains of Faye. It was the worst weather either my husband or I remember ever driving through, and to top it off, it was dark. We were driving about 45 mph on the interstate and saw several wrecks along the way and actually stopped at one time because I couldn’t see the road at all and was getting scared. I’m still glad we didn’t wait until this weekend to come up. I hear that a lot of people in the gulf region of our state are headed north. There’s not a mandatory evacuation, and we’re not sure if Gustav will hit there or not, but either way, it’s good to have all of our stuff out ahead of time. And I’m happy that my husband and I aren’t sitting for hours in stand still traffic.

All in all, we had a pretty good week. I went to a job interview on Friday for a temporary position. I was very nervous about it, but it went pretty well. Not sure if I’ll get the job or not because I don’t have experience in the area which the position is for, but you never know.

As for the house, everything is looking good. In a lot of ways, it’s going to look like a new house when their done. Once the work is done, I’ll take some pictures and post them. I have a couple of “before” pictures that I’ll try to post as well. They were taken with a disposable camera rather than digital, so I’m sure how good they’ll look once scanned, but we shall see. Anyway the painting is almost finished, and they should begin putting in the new floors sometime this week. We’ll still have to do some cosmetic work to the outside of the house and to the outbuilding. But we can do all of that after we’ve moved in. (and boy, am I ready to move in!)

In thinking about moving, doing home improvements, and doing a little decorating and organizing, I’ve already got a ton of new post ideas. And hopefully in the next few days or week, I’ll get back to doing some regular posts on these very topics. It’s strange how you get so used to posting that you actually miss it, when you don’t get to do it. I also miss my laptop and my highspeed connection. (Right now I’m using my old computer which is on a dial up connection and is very slow!) Can’t wait to get into the new place and get back in the groove!

Well, I’ve reached new heights on my little blog. I am now up to my 200th post. It’s a small step for blogs but a pretty big step for my little blog. Considering that I had only just started reading blogs last year, and I didn’t really put a lot of thought into my decision to start a blog, and I didn’t even know if I’d enjoy blogging or not, I’d say things have gone pretty well. I only hope that they continue to get even better in the future.

I thought for a while about what I would write for this post…Should it be just a regular everyday post? Should I do something special for it? Finally I decided that since this is a “milestone” post, it would be the perfect time for me to talk about future milestones on the blog and the milestones going on in my life.

The Blog. – First , the blog. Not only is this the 200th post, but in about 2 months, I’ll be celebrating the one year anniversary of my first post, which is very exciting for me…I can’t believe it’s been almost a year! I’m already beginning to think about how I will celebrate for the occasion, and that will, of course, include a big anniversary post. Additionally I’ve been thinking of different things I can do to revamp and make the blog better, so I’ve been coming up with some ideas to restructure, organize, and try to make it more focused and cohesive (for lack of a better word). I’m also planning to get a *new* design/template for the website. I’ve been looking at a lot of blog designs to try to get a good idea of what I’m looking for, and before the year is out, I hope to have a total makeover for the site. And I have a few ideas for some future projects that I think everyone will like.

Movin’ On Up (literally) – Next, an even greater milestone….I’ll soon be moving in to a new (to me) house! Yay! More details to come.

For the past week, I’ve been doing some planning and organizing for the future of the blog.

Among other things, I’ve decided to try and be a little more interactive with the polls. For starters, I’ve moved the poll to the topic right of the screen so that it is more visable to new visitors. Secondly, I plan to change the question more often than I have in the past. And in some cases, your responses to the polls will have an affect on the content of the blog. The question that’s currently posted is an example of that.

I actually posted this question a few weeks back, but I wanted to edit it, and it won’t let you edit it once someone has voted, so I removed it and re-added it. So if you’ve already voted, then you should vote again because your response was erased.

The question is: What is your favorite topic? (On this blog or on blogs in general, what do you like to read about?)

The answer choices are as follows:
Recipes
Organizing
Saving Money
Crafts
Housekeeping
Home Decor

I picked these answer choices, because I think of these as the core subjects of Simply Sweet Home. But obviously some of these subjects are featured more than others, and sometimes I wonder, what do people really think of my topics? Do they even like crafts and decor? What about the recipes, maybe they prefer less desserts and more casseroles….? Anyway, I’ll look over any answers that I get to the poll, and this will help me to decide if I want to do more posts on a particular topic.

Personally I love posting the recipes. I also love organizing & information about saving money (though I don’t post on these subjects as much), but I definitely want to focus more on these 2 in the future, and perhaps some of the others as well.

But I’d love to know what you think, so please vote in the poll. And if you have any specific ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.