A little bit of honesty

Things have been pretty quiet on this blog for the past few months. I'm not going to apologize for my absence, because that's just silly! But blogging is about honesty, so I figure I owe all my readers a little explanation at the very least.

I love blogging. I love reading blogs - the peek it gives you into other people's lives; I love the blogger community - everyone seems so understanding and supportive of each other and that's more than I can say about most people offline; and I also love sharing a little bit of myself with whomever seems interested in reading. I've been blogging in some form or another since 2002. (Holy shi*, that's over 10 years!) I started out on Livejournal, ranting about my adolescent troubles. Then around 2006 I started The Sweet Tooth Blog (no longer up), my first foray into food blogging, where I documented my initial baking attempts and developed my love for all things yummy. In 2010 Shawn and I started I've Seen Some Things to document our new life after moving to Philadelphia. That blog turned into this one, Pictures & Paragraphs, after we moved back to New Jersey in 2012. I also started Between Three Kitchens in 2012 to step in as an official food blog with multiple contributors, but that went stagnant after only a few posts and I've made only half hearted attempts at resurrecting it. Somewhere along the line I lost my focus.

I wanted to keep blogging, but I didn't know what to blog about. To be perfectly honest, Shawn and I don't lead the most interesting of lives. But that's the way we like it! I work from 7am - 3pm most days, and he works until 7pm most days. In the time between when I get home and pick Shawn up from work, I'm usually running errands, exercising, or catching up on other blogs. Then I'm usually falling asleep on the couch by 9pm. Those aren't the most exciting things to write about, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about what I picked up from the grocery store on Monday, or about my 25-minute workout. And while we do still cook our own meals most nights of the week, they're never anything extravagant or worth posting a recipe for. So that's where I'm stuck. I used to blog about food, but without time to experiment or stray from my usual recipes, there's nothing to post. I used to blog about our excursions, but we spend most of our free time at home these days or we don't take photos when we do go out. I also don't want to be one of those bloggers that just posts photos of their cats (or squirrels!) all the time.

But I don't want to stop blogging. I do enjoy it, when I have something to share! I really like doing the Fun Finds Friday posts, because I'm always finding fun things to share. But lately those seem to be the only posts I've been doing, and even those are difficult somethings. The months of April and May have been super busy; between all the wedding-related stuff (friend's bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and actual weddings!), and Mother's Day/graduations/communions/wedding orders at work, by the time I get home I'm too exhausted to even turn on the computer for anything other than to check my emails. Then I feel bad because I'll go a few weeks between posting things on here. So I guess I'm torn between finding the time to blog, and figuring out what to blog about. I've always had a hard time with simple blog posts. I always feel the need to write paragraphs and post a ton of photos (hence the name of this blog), but I realize that sometimes just one photo and a few words is more than enough, and a few of those a week is better than nothing.

So I'd like to bring this blog back to what it was when Shawn and I first started it. Little bits and pieces of our life: things we're doing, places we've gone, food we've made/eaten, things we've found, things that we're excited about, things we love. I want to make more of an effort to post less, in a sense. More posts with simpler more intimate content. After all, isn't that what blogging is about? I strayed off the path for a little while, but I'm trying to find my way back. Please let me know if there's anything specific you'd like me to keep blogging about!

There are some big things on the horizon for us that I can't share here just yet. (That's one of the difficult part of blogging - you don't want your offline peeps to read about certain things online before you have a chance to tell them in person!) But hold tight and I promise I will share some news soon. In the meantime, thank you so much for reading Pictures & Paragraphs and taking an interest in this little life of mine, and the silly things I share when I can find the time.

I'm putting together a Fun Finds Friday post for later today, so check back!