Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: October Calendar

Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Blogging Calendar. This one is hosted by
Love,Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity  (LOVE the name)

So for this Bloggiesta mini-challenge I made a calendar where I will pre-plan/plot out my posts for that month. I think this is an excellent idea to not only keep me organized, but motivated as well. And any excuse I have to use markers is a-okay in my book. My printer wasn't working, so I hand-made my calendar. It's only in the beginning stages, but it's a good start. On the back I jotted down some ideas for other types of posts. I just thought of an idea to do a doodle-of-the-week post because I love art/crafts and doodling and this would be an excellent way for me to show them off! (But don't expect Van Gough here) 

Here's a picture of my calendar:

And here's the back where I jotted down a few ideas:

 

 

Yay!

I'm chillingly fascinated!

This post is part of the Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge about Discussion Posts. This challenge is hosted by Girlxoxo

She has a great list of possible discussion lists, and as a HUGE lover of lists I had to pick one. I took one of Girlxoxo's ideas and tweaked it a little bit.


5 Chilling/Fascinating Dystopian Societies in Books

dumdumdum...

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins- A world where teenagers are offered up as tributes to fight to the death. Yeah, that's a bit chilling.

2. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld- When you turn 16 you are forced to have a surgery to make you Pretty. But that's okay because who really wants to stay ugly for the rest of their life? NO ONE that's who.  Then you get to move from Uglyville to New Pretty Town and party your life away. Sounds great right? Well little do you know..prettiness comes with a price.

3. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi- I LOVED the idea of this society. Basically you live in pods and are able to visit these fantasy realms. You can do anything, go anywhere, and not be afraid of getting hurt. ANYTHING people.  Sounds AWESOME. The first realm I'd go to would be an underwater world where I could be a mermaid. Hells to the yeah.  Who cares if being away from reality for a lengthy time will drive you a little crazy.

4. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan- This is one zombie world that I would NOT want to be in.

5. Divergent by Veronica Roth- The society in this book was amazeballs. Everyone is put into one of 5 factions, and with each comes specific attributes and characteristics. Craziness ensues.

Bloggiesta Mini-challenge: About Me

I love the idea of this Bloggiesta mini-challenge idea! This one is hosted by Nova Library Mom.
Blogging to me, is a very personal thing, and I don't want my personal voice to get lost within my review and meme posts.

So about me..hmm these things are always hard for me to write. I don't think I'm at all interesting. I'll just give some random facts.

I've been reading ever since I can remember. I remember taking weekly trips to Waldenbooks with my dad. He always encouraged my reading by buying me books. Whenever I would get punished and sent to my room for fighting with my brother (which was pretty much a daily occurrence), you could find me sitting in the bottom of my closet. The shelves were filled to the brim not with clothes, but my favorite characters and stories. Reading is my escape. I missed out on a lot of experiences growing up and books help me live some of those things vicariously through my favorite characters. I guess my obsession with magic and fantasy worlds comes from my lack of enjoyment of real life.

I have a Bachelor's degree in Nursing and regret picking this as my major. I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking. I'm more an animal person than a people person. I've always been shy and socially awkward. Strangers make me anxious, as do really large crowds. One of my worst fears is having to make small talk with people. I'm about to make a major life change and start a new job. On one hand I'm soo freaking excited, it sounds like something that's right up my ally. It's more focused on the administration/business aspect of nursing. At the same time, I'm completely terrified. New place, new people, new job to learn. At least I know the hell I'm walking into every day right now. But I think it's meant to be!

Speaking of animals..I have a huge passion and big heart for them. My dad is a vet, so I've been around them my whole life. My heart BREAKS when I see animals hurting or abused. When I pass dead animals on the side of the road I have to look away, it doesn't matter if it's a deer or skunk or opossum. The Neverending Story and Bambi scarred me for life. I don't have any pets right now, but plan to get a dog when I move out of my apartment. My biggest love is for ocean mammals. Another obsession of mine.

I love art and crafts. I've gone through a couple obsession phases where I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on a craft, then got bored and moved on to another. I have enough yarn, scrapbooking paper, and stamps to last for quite a while!

I started stalking book blogs a couple years ago. I couldn't get enough. So I started my own to talk about the books I've read and because I thought it would be fun. I had a lull there for a bit but I'm back now and am really enjoying it. Bloggiesta has been great. I've already learned so many ways to make my blog and blogging experience better.

Now for some randomness:
-I hate wearing socks but I can't wear shoes without them.
-Whenever I'm driving in my car, I count the numbers and letters on every license plate I see. Weird I know.
-Some day I'd like to go sky diving.
-I'm obsessed with magic, medieval times, Merlin, and Harry Potter.
-I could eat macaroni and cheese every day for the rest.of.my.life.
-I like nuts, but not when they're in stuff. Nuts in cakes, pies and cookies? Bleck. Give me a nut on its own? I'm good.
-My favorite colors are blue then purple then green. I hate yellow.
-My dream job would be a marine biologist.

Well that's that. Now you know much more about me then you ever wanted to :)

My Blog Grade (Bloggiesta mini-challenge)

Smash Attacks is hosting an AWESOME mini-challenge for Bloggiesta. Visit her site for more details.

You can go to this free website grader, enter your blog url and it gives you a grade based on their pre-populated data.

My blog grade is: 66/100

I'm not at all unhappy about this. I was actually expecting much worse. I'm still working out kinks and have only been getting really really into my blog the past month or two. The site doesn't just give your blog a grade, but breaks it down for you into different areas and shows you exactly how they arrived at that grade, and ways to improve. Soo many good ideas and great information. It's soo easy to do too.

DO IT NOW.

Bloggiesta 2012...TO DO LIST..OLE!

Bloggiesta is in full-effect.  This is my first year, so I'm a little overwhelmed. Mostly just clicking and reading right now.  Making a list of things to get done this weekend for my blog and deciding which mini-challenges to participate in. I'm already seeing a LOT of really great, informative information. For more information about Bloggiesta and how to participate go visit There's A Book.

I'm loving the mini-challenges: (I've included the link for the blogger hosting) Go HERE to see a list of all the links for the mini-review challenges, there are some GREAT ones.
I may do a separate final post for some of these when completed or will update this post.

1. Mini-challenge review catch-up, my participation level is Let's Split Up (50% of outstanding reviews). With reviews, I've noticed the best time for me to type up my review is right after I read a book, when it's freshest in my mind and the thoughts are aflowing. The longer I put it off, the more reviews get stacked up and the more I feel under pressure. I've already been keeping a book journal for the past year and half, every book I read has an entry and I make notes, my favorite quotes, and a final rating.  (UPDATE: DONE but I'm going to try and exceed my goal and review one or 2 more)
I have 7 outstanding book reviews, so my goal is to get half of them typed up this weekend:
     1. Wanderlove
     2. Daughter of the Centaurs
     3. Under the Never Sky
     4. The Summer I Turned Pretty
     5. It's Not Summer Without You
     6. We'll Always Have Summer
     7. Uglies

2. Mini-Challenge 20+ Discussion Post Ideas For Your Book Blog  So right now, my blog posts have consisted of mainly 2 things: Book reviews and my favorite memes. I love the idea of discussion posts, and want to start doing more of these. Mostly because they involve making lists, and, well, me and lists are like THIS.   The one that caught my eye was: 5 Chilling Dystopian Government Systems in Books. So you can expect this post sometime next month. UPDATE: DONE, will post 9/30/12.

3. Mini Challenge: Organization and Scheduling Posts-I'm just going to do the first part of this challenge, create a blog schedule.  This, for me, is a must. When I'm unorganized then I get behind on my posting and feel pressured. Which is no fun. And I started blogging for the fun. For a couple weeks there, I was scheduling my posts in advance, including reviews and memes. It was great, I would have my posts all set up for the week and could start on the next week. This gave me plenty of leeway and if I was exhausted from work one day I didn't have to worry about making a post because I already had one planned. So my goal is to schedule one month out at a time and have a set schedule. Ideally, I'd like to have 2-3 review posts per week, my 2-3 memes, and then at least one random post. I don't feel compelled to post every single day, but ideally 5 times a week would be good.

       Sunday- In My Mailbox/Review
       Monday-Review
       Tuesday-Top Ten Tuesday
       Wednesday- Waiting on Wednesday
       Thursday- Review
       Friday-Discussion/random post
       Saturday-Discussion/random post/review

Update: I consider this goal DONE, I'm actually been doing a lot of brainstorming about ideas for posts and have one in mind that I'm actually pretty excited about!

4. Calendar and The Blog Journal Mini-Challenge- I love this idea, having a calendar in front of me will help me organize my posts/ideas. I'm more of a marker girl myself. And any excuse that involves using markers I'm down for. I also like the idea of having a blog journal. I have like 10 notebooks always at my disposal, with various lists in each one. But I like the idea of having one specific notebook to keep all my ideas together in one. Update: DONE

5. Grade your blog mini-challenge- I'm not so much interested in my grade (which obviously is going to be a fail because I'm still learning and really getting into the blogging), but this site gives you some great ideas about where and how to improve your blog. (UPDATE: DONE)

6. Mini-Challenge: Let's Get Personal. This is probably the most important challenge for me. I don't want my blog to become this cold, boring, predictable thing. The blogs I enjoy the most are the ones where the blogger gives a glimpse of themselves in their posts. Blogging for me is a personal thing, and I don't want my blog to be like everyone elses. I just need to find my own voice..working on it.  I am human, hear me ROAR! UPDATE-DONE

7. Mini-Challenge: Building a blog audience-  So for this challenge I will visit 10 new blogs and leave genuine comments on each.  I'm going to make a longer-term goal to comment 5 people a day, whether it's someone whose left me a comment on my blog, or on a post I see that catches my eye. It is true, you have to put yourself out there. People aren't going to just randomly appear and know about your blog. UPDATE-DONE
  SATURDAY- DONE I've commented on more than 10 blogs today that I've never visited or it had been a while. I found a couple new ones to follow:
Books, Biscuits, and Tea
Midnight Book Girl
The Book Vixen

SUNDAY-DONE I've commented on 10 more new blogs, and I have a few more awesome ones to follow:
Recovering Potter Addict
The Paper Reader
Beyond the Bookshelf

ALLLRight. That's it for the mini-challenges that I'm going to participate in. I'm stoked about all of them.

So now for my personal individual goals for Bloggiesta:

1. Add some gadgets- I've been wanting to do this for a while now. The ones I'm thinking about are:
-Currently reading
-Quote of the day
-Favorite book series/books (update-I've decided against this one for now)
-TBR (update-I may do some sort of separate page instead of a gadget)
UPDATE: I consider this goal DONE.

2. Update my READ IN 2012 list, with the links for reviews  DONE

3. Add a Master review list page DONE

That's going to be it for now. I have a lot to do and want it to be realistic. One of the really big things I want to do is get a new blog design that fits the title of my blog. I haven't looked into finding a blog design person yet. That's not something I'll be able to do this year, but it's a definite goal for 2013.  I love blogs with awesome designs. Right now mine is generically boring.

Anyways, I'm so excited to get started!! Bloggiesta ohhhh yeaaah. Leave me comments and I'll comment you back for SHO.  Can't wait to read the challenges other people are participating in.

Bloggiesta..better get the margaritas and chips ready!

So apparently there's this thing called Bloggiesta and it's supposedly super awesome. I'm all about the awesome. I've signed up to participate  and I can't wait to not only learn some stuff about blogging (seeing as my current knowledge is severely lacking) but also to "meet" some new blogging buddies and fellow book lovers. I've been wanting to better my blog for a while now, and this will be the PERFECT opportunity.  It's open to anyone, all you have to do is click this link and it will take you to the sign-up page and give you lots more information. It's going to be September 28-30th.
Awww yeeeaaaah. Stoked.