Tag Archives: blogging

I want YOUR submissions!

April 26, 2013 By in love DIY Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

derby1

Love Library wants your submissions! I’d love to see your best DIY, recipes and book recommendations. This little blog has had as many as 5,000 page views in a day, so this could be a great chance for you to get your work seen.

I am looking for posts with high quality, bright and beautiful pictures. I’m also looking for posts that encourage the DIY spirit and resourcefulness.

Think you’ve got what it takes? Shoot me an email.  I’d love to feature your work!

P.S. Don’t forget to comment on my Reader’s Survey. You could win a book!

love,
melanie

What do YOU want from Love Library? A Reader’s Survey

April 25, 2013 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
Reporting to duty!

Your willing and able blog host reporting for duty!

 

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about where I want to take this blog. And if I’m being honest, I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction of my life too. I’ve got some major life changes coming up– good ones I think– and I’ve had to put on my big girl pants more than once these past couple of weeks and woman up.

Which leads me to this question… What do you all want from this blog? I need sage advice from my loyal and beautiful readers. I’m by no means a professional blogger and some days I struggle with things like:

  • Topics – are there topics (specific or general) you’d like covered in the coming months?
  • Types of Posts - DIY, recipes, books, fashion, personal stuff…. have your say about what you like most/least
  • Posting Frequency – too many posts, not enough, just right?
  • Design – I am planning a blog redesign this summer – so your comments and ideas would be helpful at this point
  • Blog Features – what would make your reader experience better?
  • Community – Are there features that you’d like added to help connect more? Do you feel connected to me?
  • Services and Tools – what could I offer you to help you improve your life?
  • What Frustrates You about  Love Library? What is Best about it?
  • Other Ideas and Feedback – anything goes, big or little.

This list was heavily created from this post on Problogger.

Please leave your answers to one or all questions in the comments. I will leave the survey up indefinitely, but I will offer up the prize of a free book to one lucky, randomly selected commenter on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The winner can be a previous winner and does not have to be a citizen of the U.S.A.

Please help me improve!

love always,
melanie

Happy Birthday, love library!

February 14, 2013 By in love life, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 2 Comments
Photo by heartlover1717 on Flickr

Photo by heartlover1717 on Flickr

One year ago today I started this little blog. It has gone through a lot of changes since the beginning. I wanted to write about weddings, but I quickly found out that I hated writing about weddings. I’ve tried things that have worked and didn’t work, and I appreciate anyone who has stuck around. I’ve got some fun things planned for this little blog and I hope ya’ll stick around for another year!

love,
melanie

Getting Back Into It… Slowly

October 15, 2012 By in love life, love love Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Planning a wedding, working full-time, working out five days a week (who am I?!), trying to keep my house decently clean, and a million other little things have totally taken over any kind of time I once had devoted to blogging. Excuses, I know. But how I feel none-the-less.

I miss blogging. I miss pouring my little heart out to you fabulous folks. I miss hearing about your shared experiences. I miss writing about books. I miss actually reading those books!

But let’s be honest. If blogging was really important, I’d make time for it, right? And I guess at the moment, blogging isn’t the most important thing. I’ve got a little over 2 months until this wedding thing and although I’d like to not care about whether or not we have table decorations, I do care. I want our wedding to be beautiful and memorable. I don’t care if our wedding looks like it came out of the pages of Martha Stewart Wedding, but I do want it to look like we put a little thought and effort into it.

It’s still really hard, emotionally. I don’t have the greatest family support system at the moment and George is stretched pretty thin with applying to grad school. My family seems kind of blasé about the whole thing. Anyone else experience this? In the end it will all be worth it, I’m sure.

I hope after all this is over, I’ll be able to blog more. I’ve got a million ideas and some of them are decent! Ha!

I want to thank anyone that reads this for their continued support.

love,
melanie

Love Friday: May 11th

May 11, 2012 By in love friday Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Welcome to the May 11th edition of Love Friday! A round-up of wondrous things I discovered from around the web this past week.

10.

4 Whiskey Sour Recipes. One of my all-time favorite drinks!

9. The Weekly Review: How One Hour Can Save You A Week’s Worth of Hassle and Headache. I’m thinking about doing this at end of each week. Does anyone do this? Does it help?

8.

Being Happy is Productive. I love this so much! I’m not sure if I have the original source linked or not. Damn, tumblr. If someone knows who the illustrated this, let me know.

7. 

Book People Unite! An adorable video from Reading is Fundamental. LeVar Burton makes a cameo appearance!

6.  How to start your blog with a bang by Elsie and Kinsey. I don’t really follow any of these guidelines, but que sera, sera.

5. 

Should you quit your day job to blog? Probably not. But the infographic is cute!

4. Freeze coffee in ice cube trays to make coffee ice cubes. I’ve been using coffee ice cubes all week in my iced coffee and it makes such a difference! I don’t know why I’ve never thought of this before…

3.

I’m dying over this Zac Posen dress. Of course, it is sold out. Anyone know where I can find it?

2. 10 Famous Fiction Writers and Their Cocktails. I swear I’m not a lush.

1.

Our president spoke out in favor of same-sex marriage!

I hope ya’ll have a lovely weekend. We are planning a motorcycle ride and a picnic. Are you planning anything fun?

love,
melanie

Why My Wedding Blogging Hobby Didn’t Last

March 27, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Photo courtesy of Sam Fam

I may hold the record as the world’s shortest hobbyist. I get interested in something for maybe 5 minutes (long enough to create this blog, I suppose…) and then I’m over it. But in some ways, I’ve never been that interested in my own wedding. Other people’s weddings? Sure, those are interesting, but I didn’t have to plan those.

I started this blog because I felt like I needed to be excited about my own wedding. But over the short course of this blog, I’ve come to believe it’s ok to not be excited about your wedding. Crazy, huh?

Sure, I’m excited about making George my husband. I love him to pieces. He is my rock, my partner in crime, my soul mate, but I don’t really care that much about a wedding. Sure, I want a nice dress and some (gluten-free) cake, but I don’t want 5 bridesmaids, 100 guests or a boat load of debt.

So, where is this all going? In short, I probably won’t be blogging my wedding much anymore. I just don’t like it very much. Plain and simple. After all, I believe in the sunk-cost fallacy. But I do enjoy this blogging hobby. In the future you can look out for book reviews, style posts, recipes, and whatever the hell else I want to write because… wait for it… THIS IS MY BLOG!

So how did I become so liberated? I read, I researched, I did what good librarians do. Here are some links that have helped me:

love,
melanie

Pre-Wedding Diet

March 24, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Picture by Mr. T in DC on Flickr

The kind of diet I am about to talk about is probably not the kind of diet you were expecting. Instead of going on a nutritional diet before the wedding, I’m going on a social media diet.

I’ve unsubscribed to most of the wedding blogs I follow, unfollowed a great deal of my twitter users and deleted most of the social media apps off my phone. Why have I done this? Because of the simple reason that I believe it is contributing to my unhappiness with planning my own wedding and maybe even contributing to unhappiness in other aspects of my life as well. See: Are Friends’ Happy Pictures Making You Sad?  Or as Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And boy, was he ever right.

I’m not trying to cut myself off completely from the world. After all, I did decided to keep this blog. But I did think long and hard about deleting it.

I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to work on the blog and do a million other things that in the grand scheme of things don’t really matter. I need time in my life to go outside, to play and to do things that aren’t “productive.” I’ve decided to begin blogging for myself. It isn’t fun for me to blog on a schedule. If I don’t feel like writing one day, I won’t. I was approaching this like a job instead of a hobby. I already have one job, I don’t need or want another one.

So you may hear less from me in the future, or you may hear more. Who knows. And that’s the way I like it.

Did you ever have to put yourself on a social media diet?

love,
melanie

A More Scenic Journey

March 19, 2012 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Picture via jcarlosn on Flickr.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the direction this blog is headed. I don’t want to make a complete 180 degree turn, but I do want to begin blogging in a more substantial way. I started this blog in frustration; frustration in the wedding industry, frustration in the bureaucratic constraints of my 9-5, and frustration with modern life. All of the aforementioned frustrations were making me feel less than.

I was feeling less than able to create a beautiful wedding celebration with a less than average budget. I was feeling less than able to achieve even small career success with mountainous challenges. And finally, I was feeling (much) less than enthusiastic about meeting the challenges of every day life.

So I’ve decided to take a more scenic journey. I hope to use this blog as a vessel to explore more— specifically I hope to explore more about myself and about love.

I hope that Love Library can become a place of empowerment, a place of documentation and a place to witness small acts of love. I hope it can be a place where you and I can admit our insecurities but learn to love ourselves regardless. I hope it can be a place where we witness love between strangers and friends. And I hope in some small way Love Library will help to create a more loving world.

love,
melanie

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 322 other followers