When one year ends and the next begins, a recap post of the past year's adventures is in order. Or at least that's what I'm learning from reading other blogs. So I figure, why not? I'll do a recap post, too. But first, how about some stats? Wordpress sent me an email the other day that had all these fun facts about how I did as a blogger in 2010. I managed to crank out 164 posts during the year! Not too shabby, eh? When I decided to start this blog, I thought I'd easily write a minimum of 200 in a year. Obviously that was before I actually wrote a post and realized how time consuming they can be. Uploading pictures doesn't happen at the snap of my fingers, unfortunately. My first several posts took me hours to do! I was so lost. Luckily for me (and Doc, who doesn't like it when I spend the entire night with the computer in my lap), I'm getting a little bit faster at spitting them out now.
Did you know that I can tell how many people view my blog each day? It's true, I can. According to the email, April 19th was my busiest day, when my blog was viewed 99 times. Really? One more person couldn't have looked at it to push me into triple-digits? Geez. My daily average is no where near that many views. On a day that I publish a post, I receive around 30 or 40 views. On other days, I may only get somewhere in the teens, sometimes even less. I can really tell when you teachers are out of school and not getting on your computers regularly!
Over the entire year, my little corner of the internet was viewed about 4,300 times. I don't know if I should feel proud you readers cared to check in on me that many times, or scared that all of my silly stories and grammatical errors have been seen that often. It'll be interesting to look back next year and see how Give Everybody Nice Sweaters does in 2011 by comparison.
Another thing Wordpress can do is tell me how viewers came to find my blog. As most of you know, I've got my privacy settings set so GENS won't show up in search results, so I can really only see that you guys come from links in your email or from your Google Readers. Maybe one day I'll get brave and make the blog public so we can see what crazy searches lead googlers my way. Possibly searches on the song lyric the blog's title comes from, or searches on making fabric banners, choosing paint colors for your house, cupcakes in jars, or how to turn a hutch into a puppet stage. Heck, we might even get a few visitors from searches about how alpacas like to do it.
So, who's ready for that recap?
January's when this little blog got started. It was a New Year's Resolution of mine and one I'm glad I stuck with. My family and I went on a ski trip in North Carolina and when I got home, I helped redecorate a friend's master bedroom.
February was hard. I tackled a really old mantle that had lots of lead paint on it, and then decided it was time to kick the ol' caffeine habit.
In March, my birthday month, I finally got around to hanging pictures on one of our bare walls.
April had its ups and downs. I got a New Boss at work, which has been interesting, but Doc and I also went on a fun trip to New Orleans with friends.
Our first anniversary was in May and Doc surprised me with a trip to New York!
In June, we turned a headboard into a bench, lost Minnie for a few hours, and then went on a fun beach vacation with our friends.
In July I turned Doc's trash into my treasure and then hosted a baby shower for three of my friends.
The parties didn't stop there. In August we had a girls' weekend in Greenwood, MS where we learned how to cook at the Viking Cooking School, and then I prepared for an upcoming shower Doc and I were hosting.
The Couples' Shower was in September and so was the Heimke wedding that I helped coordinate.
In October I got to stand by Jenny while she married Darrin. Later in the month, Doc and I went on a weekend trip with Chris and Allison and I decided that I love life on the farm.
November was busy! I spent all my free time in the shop getting ready for the sale, but we managed to squeeze in time to take family pictures and build a lemonade stand.
December was busy with all the normal holiday festivities, but we also had the shop sale, completed another half marathon (Doc running, me cheering), and attended our first ever one-ring circus.
And there ya have it: 2010 all crammed into one post. So far 2011 has already knocked me down with a stomach bug, but my fingers are crossed that it's going to make a comeback and end up giving 2010 a run for its money. I guess we'll see...