The big 500.
Here it is. My 500th post on The Elliott Homestead.
500th, people.
That's a lot of recipes, quotes, poems, updated lists, and homemade goodness. It's also a lot of babbling, verbal vomiting, and whining. But let's not focus on that.
A lot has changed since I began blogging in November of 2010. For starters, my sweet G-love used to be much smaller. I was lactating a lot and sleeping very little.
And now, here we are with another one due in just a few months. And our first baby is giant. As is my growing belly. And appetite.
Apparently, pregnancy is also making my feet giant, because I had to buy a new pair of shoes yesterday. I found these at a thrift store and personally, think they're wonderful:
Has anyone elses' feet gotten larger with pregnancy? Or is it just the heat that's making them swell? Have my flats gotten smaller? Please tell me I'm not alone here.
And let's get back to the point of this post. We're celebrating a big milestone here today, after all!
Then and Now:
1. I had seven people read the first post I wrote on The Elliott Homestead the entire first week it was up and running. Now, we have over 1,000 readers each day! That's a lot of readers! Thank you, thank you, thank you! If I still only had seven a week, I would have stopped enjoying this a long time ago.
2. I began shooting my photos here with my point-and-shoot Canon Powershot. I also knew nothing about composition, exposure, etc., which is quite evident in some of my earlier photos:
Now, I am emotionally, spiritually, and practically physically attached to my wonderful Nikon D70. I still have a lot to learn about photography, but the nature of taking photos every single day is that eventually I started to improve:
I can't wait to see how much better they get after another 500 posts!
3. I used to live in the great Pacific Northwest. Where sagebrush, evergreens, and wild mountains abound. Now, I live on the Gulf Coast in the Deep South - where citrus, roaches, and southern magnolias rule.
I still don't have a dairy cow. But let's not dwell on the 'have-nots'.
4. The first bread recipe I posted was a non-soaked whole wheat bread recipe that used cheap vegetable oil and white sugar. Eek. I had a five-year-goal of buying and utilizing a wheat grinder, securing a raw milk source, and buying our grains in bulk.
Almost two years later, we're able to enjoy the ease and simplicity of soaked whole wheat bread (made with vitamin-rich grass-fed butter and flour ground with our very own grinder), we've been exclusively drinking raw milk for almost two years, and we've been able to build up our grain storage (and frankly, learned how to storage and use grains in the first place!).
5. When I first set up my blog, I knew little of technology or how to apply that to creating a virtual, visually-pleasing space.
Ya, I'm still working on that one.
Just now:
I have to share a wonderful story with you that just happened to perfectly line-up with this 500th post celebration. Over the weekend, I had a long-time reader drive down from Tennessee whom I'd never met. Her and her husband treated us to an incredible sushi dinner that we shared down by the Fairhope Pier (I won't mention the amount of bugs we swatted away while we were feasting). After a wonderful dinner, we rode back to our house to enjoy some pumpkin bread & raspberry leaf tea. The four of us sat around the table, getting to know one another and sharing in our stories - and let's be honest, a lot of the conversation revolved around food. It was a wonderful time of building friendship and sharing in fellowship.
Because we stayed up so late chatting, we decided it best for our guests to crash at our house, and then they could resume their journey in the morning.
I awoke to the taste of sweet irony in my mouth though, as here I was, a food-blogger, with a faithful reader as a guest in my home, and I was out of food. I had no eggs. No bread. No milk. No fruit. No potatoes. Girlfriend was unprepared for company.
The best I could whip up was some bowls of cinnamon oatmeal - sans milk - and topped them off with some walnuts & home-canned peaches.
It was a humbling moment.
And it continued to be ironic, as I am also a homemaking-blogger. And my entire house has been covered in a white powder for the last week (literally. more on that later).
So here were guests that came to visit a homemaker-food-blogger, only to find a powdered house un-fit for company whose fridge was so empty she could barely cook them breakfast.
Did I mention I was humbled?
If she quits reading, I'll really be worried.
It seems quite fitting though, in a way - to be continually dying to our self-perceptions of who we are, or who we should be, and instead humbling ourselves before others and before our Maker. Even bloggers, after all, are still human. We will have emotional breakdowns. We still have fleas in our house. We still run out of food. We will have hair in our bathroom sinks.
And, you see, it's not me that makes this blog. Sure, I write it and tend to it every day (I do love it, after all)...but I write for you. I write to share a bit of my life with you, to expose new thoughts of ideas, to have an outlet for my dreams, and to enjoy the friendship that can be built with complete strangers.
Plus, my husband gets tired of listening to me babble, so I've got to find somewhere to do it. Hardy har har.
I'm pretty excited for my little 'ol blog today. And I really do only have you to thank, my dear readers. Thank you for checking in each day, leaving your encouraging comments, sending your wonderful emails, offering prayers and suggestions, cooking up our recipes, and sharing in this wonderful network with me.
Cheers to 500 more!