I am a Honey Bee

All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel

blogging

Top Priorities

What happens when 2 food bloggers hang out for 5 days?

Do they cook a ton? Do they develop recipes? Do they blog a lot?

No! They eat out at restaurants and get take out pizza, drink margaritas and eat chips and salsa for cinco de mayo, go to the zoo and Ikea, watch a lot of Top Chef and other reality TV, and take kids to the ER (well, only once).

Most importantly, they take pictures of their glittery shoes!!!

I really had an amazing time with Amanda having fun, relaxing, and playing around with 3 adorable kiddos.

The shoes I’m wearing (I have the tattoo) are from Mix No 6. in Barbie Glitter Pump. I love them as they are so comfortable and glittery!

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Thanks for visiting. Please leave me a comment to provide some feedback. I appreciate all the comments I receive. 

Wait just a minute!?!

From a Tweet to Tumblr to a blog…

(Source)

I saw a link on Twitter about “What Happens in an Internet Minute” from @NPRnews, which brought me to their Tumblr site. That original artcle was from an Intel’s Inside Scoop blog. hop hop hop!!

These numbers are interesting and frightening. I can’t believe that we are this connected, but in some ways I am glad that we are. I love discovering new links. I love discovering something new. I am so glad that I have created this time suck blog. It has given me the opportunity to try new things and meet new people.

It’s a small world after all.

Techmunch: Top 5

I attended Techmunch in Boston on Sunday. It is a food blogging conference hosted by the site Bakespace. The conference consisted of several classes that focused on such things as marketing, making connections with Brands, and SEO.

 

meeting people at the mixer after all the classes/ a caramelized onion & goat cheese tart

I took a lot away from Techmunch. I could talk and blog for hours about it.

But I leave you with this:

1) Be yourself! 

Don’t tailor your blog to fit into something you are not. Find you passion and your voice. It will make blogging easier and a lot more fun. You will connect the people because you are being real.

2) You photos need to say ‘eat me’.

Take a step back and look at your photos. If you saw them, would you want to eat the thing you are looking at? There are simple tips and tricks to folow that will help you. Stobist was suggested as a site to learn food photography.

3) It takes time. 

Be patient. Things take time. The people that have successful blogs took their time, learned from their mistakes, and improved things from writing, layouts, graphics, and photography to get where they are today. They are passionate about what they do, if you are and you stick to it then you will find your own degree of success.

4) Traffic isn’t the end all and be all in sponsors.

While you can worry about your site traffic all day long it won’t be thing ONLY thing that sponsors look that. Absolutely, sponsors are looking to pay you for reviews or host giveaways if you have a lot of traffic, but there are other factors in place. Are you a good fit for their brand? Are you just generally a nice person? Is there potential?

Additionally, you can’t just agree to all sponsorship. You should not host giveaways or write reviews if it doesn’t fit you (see #1). Does it make sense for you to give ________ away? Is there a conflict of interest because you are supporting another brand?

And last but not least…

5) SEO! SEO!! SEO!!!

There are things you can do on your blog to make your site come up in searches a lot easier. They are fairly simple. They are kinda obvious once you think about them. Do them! You can refer to this PDF for some help.

 

books to win through Harvard Common Press/ Sharon Sprague and Justin Ide chatting

I had a wonderful time on Sunday.

Thank you Babette and the rest of the Bakespace team

Thank you Kitchenaid for giving away a variety of kitchenwares. I won a hand mixer!

Thank you Harvard Common Press for giving away books. I am enjoying the Dark Spirits book already.

Julie, Rachel, and myself

Stalled

I have been feeling stalled lately. I have lost my motivation for just about anything. Our sofa, the Cos, is my friend. I just spend my nights lounging and watching movies. I try to get motivated but nothing is really grabbing my attention. I tell myself that life would be easier if I just did all the laundry and then actually folded it and put it away instead of leaving it in the dryer/on sofa/in wash baskets. It def would make getting dressed in the morning faster. I tell myself that but I still have not touched the piles that keep getting higher.

It’s those types of things that are falling behind in my life. I have like 6 blog posts started, 8 yelp reviews, a few scrapbooking pages, etc. I have always been a person to start something and not finish it but it has gotten bad this summer. This summer of freedom. The summer of no classes, no portfolios, and no registration. You would think I would love the free time but it is such a weird experience I am having trouble figuring out time management. Saying that is just weird. I have been so good at juggling work, school, homework, and lack of sleep for years that not having that extreme pressure has me completely confused.

The biggest issue is that I am a weekend person. I am a weekend warrior. It is when I catch up on cleaning, laundry, being crafty, shopping, meal prep, etc. With the last few weekends away I have thrown my typical schedule upside down. Dont get me wrong, I love my weekends away but it really wrecks my ‘schedule’.

I’m really hoping that I can regroup this weekend and get out of this rut. So far I have planned…

finish up some blog posts and schedule them to post
finish my yelp drafts and do a few more reviews
3 scrapbooking pages
making marinara sauce (about 18 qts) and canning it
begin the process of purging the office  
finish the cube project

we shall see how everything turns out…

 Happy Friday!!!

Made my day

So I was having a ‘Case of the Mondays’ today. The thing that kept me going through the day was that I was wearing fleece lined pants today. Soo cozy….

Well all this craptasticness changed when I check my RSS feed at lunch and saw that Diana at Front n Center gave me the Beautiful Blog award. So trilled!!!!!

 So here I am out of my Monday funk getting to award a few of my favorite blogs with this lovely award and share 7 random things about me.

1. I have never seen Pulp Fiction

2. I can’t dance. Really, I have no rhythm. I try to count in my head but it only gets confusing.

3. Love the show Glee.

4. I’m currently growing my hair out for my Halloween costume. Needs another 6-8 inches.

5. I am agnostic but LOVE to read books on religion and too a class on world religions this past summer.

6. I can’t go to a place without yelping it.

7.  House centipedes terrify me to the point of frozen stuff or running as fast as I can.

So I pass this award on to…

Nutmeg Polymath

Fake Ginger

Emily- My Place

So now you have to pass this award on to 3 fellow bloggers and share 7 random things about yourself. Spread the wealth!