10,000 eyes!

Woohoo! Honey and Horseshoes has officially been visited over 10,000 times! If you haven't noticed... there has been some sprucing! The house isn't the only thing we're renovating around here...

A lot of people ask me why I blog... there is a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is that I do this for my family. Although I only live around 100 miles from them, sometimes it can feel like a continent away. Whenever we get together we share stories and pictures and have a great laugh (sometimes at eachothers' expenses). The blog is my way of sharing my life with them, when I can't physically be there.

The long answer? Well, it has something to do with the fact that I have always wanted to blog, and truly love writing. I needed something to keep me going, give me something to work on, and something to look forward to. James encouraged me to finally get started on the blog when I was in a rut - one of those crushing unemployment ruts... so this was a way for me to maintain my communication skills while still looking for a job, and gave me something to do.

The blog started out as a simple way to share the fun we had together around the Commonwealth. We were always doing something and we are always told we have "way too many hobbies". So this was a great way to share all of our learned experiences with others, and encourage every else to go out and explore, too!

So, in celebration of our 10,000th view... here are some super fun and interesting blog stats...

• There have been 146 total blog posts - ranging from trips to bourbon distilleries, farming, beekeeping, home renovation, archery, kayaking, hometown tourism, and out of state adventures.
• My most popular post so far is "Pieces of a Giant House Puzzle" - a summary of the bits and pieces of our renovation falling into place. Following closely behind that is anything that has to do with James... He's a supa-stah!
• My personal favorite post is the Valentine's day quiz... How to tell if you are dating a manly man! It's a post full of anecdotes and reasons why I love James, including things such as, "He spends more money on deer urine than his own cologne" and "You have caught him using your table runner as a napkin because that's what he thought it was there for".
• James' favorite post is... well, he can't really decide. He is torn between his own guest post about saving a dog's life, and all of the rodeo posts (mostly for the fun pictures).
• The top 3 countries that visit my site are: The US, Germany, and Russia! Thank you, Danke, and Pasibki!
• Most of my visits come from facebook click-throughs or pinterest pins. But occasionally people get to me via Google. Someone once even landed on the page after googling "are armadillos aliens". I can't make this up... the answer is no, in case you are wondering. Although technically they are not a native species so, if you like, you could consider them illegal aliens?
• My first post was on December 29, 2012 and was "The Background", it was decidedly vague. I used it as a teaser post to get something out on the site and see what happened.
• All of the photos on the blog have been taken from our phones! The last phone I was using had stored over 3,000 images from the last two years.
• Over the course of the blog we have visited 5 different bourbon distilleries, been stung by 4 of our honeybees, I have lived in 3 different houses, we have survived 2 Kentucky Derbys, and won 1 NCAA National Championship.
  
  

Whether you are a friend wanting to see whats going on, a family member checking in, or a stranger looking for ideas and inspiration, THANK YOU for showing you care, by reading. You have no idea what it means to me to, not only be able to spend my free time doing all kinds of fun things for the sake of "subject matter", but to know that I can share it with everyone I love in a form that I enjoy.

Although you have, by now, seen almost every room of our house, the home renovation posts are far from over. We have a lot of fun trips to catch you up on, and we will, most certainly, never run out of stories!