In the Bloglight

Hello and welcome to `a casarella!  Come in and make yourself comfortable.

For those of you who have been around for awhile, please pardon the formality.  (We have company and I don't want to scare them away!)

The guests are visiting from Hometalk's Blogtalk page.  (Not familiar with Hometalk?  You old-timers should mosey over there and check it out.  This post will just be review for you anyway.)

And to my new guests, welcome!  I'm excited to have you here and tell you a little about myself and my blog, 'a casarella.

'A casarella, for those of you who don't speak Italian, means "a little house."  I borrowed the name from a plaque which is affixed to the front of our home.  It was placed there by the previous owners but we liked it and, given my Italian heritage, decided it should stay.

You can read more about this in my very first blog post, found here.

It seemed like a perfect name for a blog.  You see, I'd been contemplating a blog for several years before I actually started mine this past January.  I began reading blogs almost ten years ago when they were really quite novel.  The first blog I ever read was (and is) called Dooce.  The blogger, Heather Armstrong, was a newlywed when I first found her and some of her best posts (in my opinion) revolved around the tiny house that she and her husband were renovating at the time.

Well, things have changed.  Dooce has long since moved out of her tiny house and although I enjoyed watching her decorate and renovate her next two houses, I found many other blogs where I could get a more concentrated dose of home decor and DIY.  After years of poring over sites like Young House Love, Bower Power, Making it Lovely and Remodelaholic, I decided to take a stab at this blogging thing on my own.

As a teacher-turned-stay-at-home-mom it seemed like a great fit.  I could exercise my brain by writing about the things I was already doing as a mother, wife and home-owner.  What could be better?

And thus 'a casarella was born.

As much as I love home design, I could not sustain a blog on that alone.  Though we've done a few big projects around here (like this pre-blog balcony remodel that I wrote about back in February):

...and we're planning a few more (stay tuned for a solution to my office dilemma as well as a revamp of my daughters' playroom), my most popular posts seem to be about small crafting projects:

DIY laundry room art.  Blogged here.

Make your own flower petal lantern.  Blogged here.

...recipes:

Meatloaf-stuffed peppers in the crock pot.  Find the tutorial here.

This cake is as easy as it is beautiful.  Find the recipe here.

...and fun things I've done for my kids:

How to make a "Punch Box."
This poorly photographed (yet extremely thorough) tutorial is by far my most popular to date.  Find it here.

Probably my favorite project: the slumber party birthday cake.  Find it here.

...and their teachers:

I made this for teacher appreciation week
but a whole bunch of people on Pinterest think it would be a great Christmas gift!

Blogging has been a source of great joy (and sometimes great frustration) over the past few months.  Finding balance between my "blog life" and my "real life" has been a struggle.  On top of that, there is a lot to learn: everything from photo editing (definitely not my strength) to coding in html.  Had I known how much there was to learn when I started, I might not have started at all.  Thank goodness for that ignorance!  My advice to aspiring bloggers?  Go for it!  Don't be afraid to learn as you go.  And don't be afraid to reach out to other bloggers for help and advice.  The blogging community has definitely been a great (and unexpected) source of the joy that I mentioned above.

So, Hometalkers, that about sums me up.  Thank you so much for stopping by and I look forward to learning about you in the near future.

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