Untitled: For a Reason

As some of you may know, I am almost done with this semester. Woohoo! I only have two more finals left, on Monday and Tuesday. One of them is actually a speech, so I only need to study for the other. And if you know me well enough, I probably won't start until Saturday ;)

So with all this extra time, what have I been doing?

I'm trying to make time pass. I've played games, I've napped, I've watched tons of episodes of Family Guy, American Dad!, and The Simpsons on Hulu.com. Not productive at all, I know. But other than that, I've been thinking about my blog. My blog doesn't exactly fit into a category. It's a mixture of reviews and things I want, but mostly I just talk about myself. Like what I'm doing right now.

I would love to have a beauty blog like my friend Lainey's, but I don't have that many beauty products. Fashion? I am not fashionable in any way. I could be, but I don't have the money to. Because I don't exactly have a motive for my blog, I lack encouragement sometimes. There were a few times when I think about deleting my blog altogether. I just feel like I don't have anything to say anymore. To some people, a blog is like a diary. A diary can be a great idea, but in my opinion, it's much too personal. I don't want to gossip about my classmates or rant about my parents to the world. Besides, I don't even think anyone would like to read about that.

Don't you ever feel discouraged sometimes?

Maintaining a blog is a huge commitment and requires extensive dedication, and often, I just feel I don't have enough of either. I have the time and mindset for a blog, but I lack a motive and drive. I think having a themed-blog is so much easier.

I wish I had strawberries & whipped cream! Source

Goodbye Fall Semester!

Today is my last day of classes! My first class (at 9 AM) got cancelled because our professor has jury duty and so, I will start school at 12 PM today :) My weekend had been a little rough. Everything I ate made my stomach hurt :( I'm getting better, but I'm still scared to eat. I have no clue what it is. I haven't done anything different, really. All I did was wait it out. It went away after about 2 days. I tried to research online what it could be, but there's so many different stomach problems! I do hope this won't turn into anything serious.

In the meantime, we're looking for a new apartment! I know, our lease is 1 year, but we've been through so much... broken fridge, cockroaches, bed bugs, broken window, some unknown kind of bug, etc. We feel that our landlord owes us because he didn't really take care of these problems. My roommates and I had to deal with them on our own. Four little girls with no fridge and bugs everywhere? It's beyond scary. We did learn from this experience and know what to expect, but it shouldn't have been this way.

Rule #1: If you want to be a landlord, do your very best because someone's home can be awesome or hell. Someone's comfort and safety is in your hands. Nobody wants to come home depressed every day because of bug problems.

Speaking of rules... let's move on to self-promoters. I support and allow self-promoting, which is posting your link on another site in hopes to bring in more readers and followers. In fact, I leave my url on other blogs sometimes when I comment. However, there are rules. Here's a few I came up with:

Rule #1: Be respectful and considerate. Always reread your comments and messages. If you are going to leave your link and name, make sure you are respectful and considerate. Some people are more sensitive about this issue and you could eventually deal with anger, pain, and a hurt reputation.

Rule #2: If I can see you have an inappropriate url, I will not publish it on my blog. This is not about being sensitive, it's about keeping my blog a safe environment for my readers. I mean, does it look like my blog needs something rated-X on it? I think not.

Rule #3: Do not spam. Nobody likes spammers. Sure, self-promote yourself maybe once a day on one website or blog, but any more than that can irritate the authors/ owners.

Please keep in mind that I do moderate comments. If I find a comment that breaks any of the above rules, I will not publish them. I want to keep my blog a safe, welcoming environment. I believe one of the biggest responsibilities of a blogger is to think of their readers first.

Let's end with a kitty picture, shall we? :)

Source

December Is Here!

I only have about two more weeks of school left! That means final exams, essays that are assigned last minute, and... winter break! An entire month of break. I can't wait! :) Jon will be in Oklahoma for two weeks, so I don't exactly get to spend the entire thirty days with him, but that's okay. I'm bittersweet about him leaving two days after I get back because I do want him to see his family in Oklahoma, but I really want to spend our first Christmas together. It would be magical...

The other day, an idea popped into my mind: I thought it would be cool to have a new blogging goal every year, as part of my New Year's resolution. I know, not a lot of people keep their resolutions, but I really want to try my best! I already have an idea of what I want my new goal to be. My current goal is to get more pageviews than the previous month, but I think I need something more challenging. Not only do I want more pageviews, I want more followers. I've been reading my past blog posts and I've noticed nothing really stands out. That is why I installed a new template yesterday (my other reason is because I was getting tired of the green!). Also, I want to bold and italicize certain words. That way, the words won't all look the same! One more thing I want to do... I need more pictures! The reason why I don't upload a lot of pictures is because my camera sucks and I feel that most of my blog posts don't need a random picture of my face. However, I've found a way around that: I will do my best to post at least one picture with every blog post, using tumblr! If I don't post my own pictures in a blog post, I will find a cool, cute, funny, or weird picture from my tumblr dashboard!

Hopefully starting on my New Year's resolutions early will give me a head start in achieving my goals. Let's get started on those pictures!

I found a really cool December challenge:

Source

Hmm, sounds like something I might want to do!

Happy December :)

Leelou Blogs

Finally, I have found a blog template I like! This one's from Leelou Blogs. There are lots of cute, free templates for two- and three- column blogs under the "Freebies" tab at the top :) Not sure how to install a template? Look for easy instructions below each template. Here's what I did:

1. Download the file from Leelou Blogs
2. Open it (it should open in the Notepad app)
3. Copy the HTML code
4. In Blogger, go to "Template"
5. Click "Edit HTML"
6. Erase any existing HTML codes and paste the new one
7. Hit "Save"

-- If you are happy with the fonts and colors, you are done! If not, continue on to the next few steps:

8. On the "Template" page, click on "Customize"
9. On the left, you should find: Template, Background, Adjust Widths, Layout, and Advanced
10. Under "Advanced," you can change the fonts and colors on your new blog template! :)
11. After adjusting everything to your liking, hit the orange "Apply to blog" button on the top right-hand corner

And there you have it :) What do you think of my new template?

Mission Accomplished

Remember my November goal? Well, I reached it sometime today! Thank you all very much! <3 Basically, my monthly goal is to reach more pageviews than previous month. November was cutting it close. I was behind 200 views just a couple days ago and was afraid I wouldn't reach my personal blog goal this time. How did I do it? Easy.

First, I created a post asking for help. I explained my goal and Lainey (my first follower and now my good friend) recommended my blog to her friends! A very special thank you for Lainey <3 I love her beauty blog; she reviews a lot of products I either have used or is interested in using. Lainey is also really nice and gives great tips! <3

Second, I use Google+. A lot. The past few days, I've been clicking the "share" button like crazy. It shares the post to any Google+ users. Yes, you have to click the button for every single post, but I find that it helps a bit :) You can do this by clicking "Posts" on the left-hand side. You should find a list of all the blog posts you've created. Hover over the post you would like to share and the share button should pop up. This will only work if your blog is linked to Google+ and if you are using Blogger (which is powered by Google).

Those two are the main reasons in helping me reach my goal. Other tips include: commenting on other blogs + providing a link back to my blog, following new blogs, and simply blogging more!

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving break. I will be heading back to my apartment tomorrow, first thing in the morning :( I had a great time at home, but I shall be home again in a few weeks after finals! Try out my tips and let me know which ones worked for you, which ones didn't, or what other strategies you use :)

One Thousand Thanks

Woohoo! I reached just a little bit over 1000 page views! Last night, it was hovering around 980. I guess it wasn't a major success because I get about 20 to 50 page views a day anyway :( I still would like to say "thank you!" to my readers, especially Lainey who was my first follower and still continues to read and comment on my blog! And Natalie, who just started following me recently :)

One thousand page views is motivation to me. I'm normally a person who gets tired of doing the same things over and over. I've had a couple blogs before and gave them up really fast because I had nothing to talk about (even though I still talk about random things, hehe) or my content must have been really boring because no one read my old blogs! I never even had followers or comments before!

With college, I have a lot of free time (except for midterm and final weeks...) and blogging is a great way to use that time! I love writing and working on ways to improve my style of writing. Reading other blogs allows me to discover those techniques. Besides, it's exciting to come home and find 50 page views in one day :)

Next goal... two thousand views! And a few more followers :) Lainey has a super crazy challenge of ten thousand views and one hundred followers before the end of this year. I gave her tons of great tips here and I can't wait until she reaches her goal!