Why I'm Back

It all started when Alex interrupted the silence of her "create corner" blog by sharing about the 2010 52 books in 52 weeks reading challenge.  Before that I was happily enjoying my long term blog writing break, while once in a while skimming blogs in my google reader.  The challenge, however, stirred something within me.  I love to read, and I love challenges.  I couldn't resist.  I had to check it out. While the rules said that you didn't have to blog to participate, I knew it would be that much more fun, and motivating, to blog about the challenge.  That started the wheels churning about the possibility of reviving my sleeping blog.

I decided to check out the list of participants that had already signed up for the challenge.  This led me to the Book Dragon's Lair.  I noticed in her side bar that she was hosting some challenges and it was there that I found the Reading Through the Seasons 2010 Challenge.  I thought this would help me choose some of the books I'd read for the 52 books challenge.  I had I noticed that the challenge rules stated that books may overlap other challenges and this challenge said the same thing.  I could participate in both without adding to my required reading. Good idea!  That got me thinking...maybe I could find other challenges that would help me in deciding what to read for the 52 books challenge!  I did a google search for 2010 book challenges. There are lots of them out there.  It became more and more tempting to revive my blog so that I could post about these challenges and why I was interested in them.

While going through all the different challenges that I found, I came up with a few of my own ideas for challenges that I want to challenge myself with.  That got me to thinking that if I revived my blog I could post my own challenges and invite others to join me.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.  Yes, I would revive my sleeping blog and join the challenge - er, challenges!

Stay tuned for a list of the challenges I hope to participate in and a couple of challenges I would like to pose.

Like my new look?

I spent the afternoon and evening working on my blog. Found this great document on creating a blogger template. I used a picture of my girls that I took this week as part of the blog banner I created. I originally used a pattern on this page from Squidfingers for the background of the blog. I changed the pattern and the photo to black and white because that's the color scheme I wanted. What fun! I may play some more but I like it so far.

Edit:  I ended up creating my own background pattern and using it instead of the pattern from squidfingers, simply because I wanted my background to better match the blog banner.  I'm pretty pleased with what I've created!  I think I'll keep this look for a least part of the winter.

Edited again in April when I changed the look.  I wanted to show the look that I had created and was talking about in this post.