Blogger Recognition Award

Heartfelt thanks to Roda at GrowingSelf.blog for the Blogger Recognition Award!  If you haven’t seen her blog yet, do yourself a favor and check it out.  She has beautiful photography and a passion for her farm/gardening life that is very engaging.

The Rules

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Select 10 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
• Comment on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

 

My blog story…

About a year and a half ago, our little guy, Reese, was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis.  We had no idea what that meant, but we had to learn pretty quickly.  Basically, it means that his body sees many foods as the enemy, and if he eats those foods, his body mounts a full-scale attack on anything and everything around, including his esophagus.  It’s different than an allergy in that it is not a histamine response.  Practically speaking, though, we approach it as an allergy.  It’s not exactly accurate, but it’s a lot easier to say “he’s allergic” than to explain what EOE is.

There are many blogs about food allergies and restrictions, but I have seen very few by a food allergy dad.  One thing I have noticed while perusing our support groups is that many of the moms in the group feel like their husbands just didn’t get it, were a bit absent in the process, or even outright denied their children’s diagnoses. I was a bit dumbfounded.  So I decided I wanted to show a dad’s perspective: to give thoughts, ideas, recipes, and general support to those who feel like they just don’t know what to do with their kids’ allergies or other food restrictions.

Advice to new bloggers

I’m still pretty new to this so I may be a bit out of my depth with advice to new bloggers, but here are some things that others have told me that I have found to be helpful

• Create a schedule and pace yourself: There are some out there that blog once a day (or more), and if that works for you, that’s awesome.  I don’t work that way.  That would stress me out, and I would have burned all my ideas in the first month. Find something that works for you.  For me, that means a recipe post on Saturdays and a general post (product review, book review, general thoughts, etc) on Tuesdays.  It doesn’t always work out, so you have to be forgiving of yourself, but try to have some consistency.
• Follow other bloggers: Find other bloggers that you enjoy and see what they are doing right.  Find blogs that you want to emulate and follow them (don’t just rip them off, though – make it your own).  Also, don’t just limit yourself to the one type of blog.  Mine is about food, but I follow all kinds.  (Following just the top food ones can be a bit depressing, actually. I can’t make my photos look as good because they have studios and great cameras… I have a home kitchen and an iPhone 5c.)

 

My nominees

I get that not everyone chooses to participate for whatever reason.  If you choose to join in, great!  If not, no worries, just keep doing what you do.  These are some blogs I enjoy and want to recognize.  Check them out!

• http://penpaperandpetals.com/hint-of-fall/ – Lisa makes some beautiful paper products and has gorgeous photography on her blog
• http://streamingthruamerica.com/when-they-go-low-we-go-high-part-2/ – Streaming thru America is my dream!  Traveling the country in 28′ Airstream… love it!
• https://cookandenjoyrecipes.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/who-what-where-and-why/#more-46713 – The Recipe Hunter is a great place to find recipes and food blogs from all over.
• http://birdflight.blog/walking-down-a-path-in-autumn/ – Enlightening posts about mental illness as well as lovely thoughts on life and the change of seasons.
• http://the6millionpman.com/cardiff-streets-16/ – Photographs from around Cardiff and rest of Wales
• http://hopeforeoe.wordpress.com/the-day-that-saved-my-life/ – Another blog in the pursuit of spreading awareness and support for this crazy thing called EOE