Blog Housekeeping

While away this week, I've been taking advantage of not having quite as busy of a schedule as I usually keep up at home! Some of those moments have been used to work on my blog.

My post labels had been bothering me for quite some time. There were too many and I felt like they were "all over the place". I really wanted my labels to be more organized and concise and I finally had a few minutes to come up with categories. I was hoping for 10 categories but since I cover many different topics on my blog, I soon realized that I probably wasn't going to get away with less than 15. Unless, I just filed everything under 'misc.' :-)

I've ended up with 16 categories for now.

--Life
--Family
--Cooking
--Planning and Organizing (menu plans, to-do lists, organizing,etc.)
--Practicality (housekeeping tips)
--Homemaking
--Health and Nutrition
--Gardening and Preserving
--Creativity (sewing, crafting, making things)
--Walking with God
--Simplicity ( simple pleasures, living a simple life)
--Frugality (saving money, couponing, budgeting)
--Sharing (hospitality, gift giving, deals, links)
--Celebrations (holidays, seasonal stuff, special days)
--Extra Income (ideas for making money from home)
--Randomness (random stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else)

Bear with me. It will take a while to get through and relabel all of my posts! This has helped me to focus more on what my blog is truly about and hopefully, it will be easier for my readers to navigate as well.

I've been working on some handmade Christmas gifts while I've been away and interacting with family has helped me to come up with some good ideas for those that are hard to buy a gift for. I'll be starting a series of sorts titled "Christmas is Coming" where I will share some of the gifts and holiday ideas that I'll be making and using for this year. Due to family religiously reading and 'lurking' here, I will not be able to share every gift that I'm giving before Christmas but I'll do my best to share those that I can without spoiling the surprise! (Maybe I can share the rest after Christmas!) We aim to keep our Christmas gifts for extended family at $5 or less per person so most of what I share will fall into that price range. Most years, I'm struggling to complete all of my gifts up to the last minute so getting a head start this year will give me time to take photos and hopefully post about some of them!

I have many updates that I'd like to accomplish here but I'm taking baby steps and doing one thing at a time!

Thank you to all who take the time to read and comment here. Reading your feedback and thoughts makes my day!