Welcome to The Flourishing Abode! I’ve been blogging here for a couple months now so wouldn’t you agree that it is high time for the official grand-opening-kick-off post? Yeah, I agree, a little overdue!

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Ever since deciding to shut down my “FlourishandDebonair” shop and blog (though you’ll still find some older posts from that blog, which I transferred over to here), I’ve been very excited making plans for TheFlourishingAbode, and I wanted to share those plans with you, and let you know what you can expect here on my blog – as well as an illustrated blog planner so you can make exciting plans for your own blog too!

Boring is not on the menu of my life. This blog all about making home a more flourishing place – no more ho-hum, let’s do extraordinary! Let’s turn off the tv, and turn on life. Let’s go exploring, let’s experiment in the kitchen, let’s play, let’s flourish!

I’m April and with my husband Tim, we are journeying through life, growing and learning together, raising a family, and above all trying to serve God. I want to make my home a place full of love and laughter, a haven for our family to learn and grow together. Does this mean we have a big house or that I’m always caught up on laundry? Nope. It means we are imperfect but trying to learn more every day and base our family principles on the Bible. It means that “home” is more than where we live. This is just our temporary abode; we are on a joyful journey together.

This blog is our place to share our adventures along the way. You’ll find tips and ideas for creative projects, cooking, teaching, and fun stuff to do as well as some more serious thoughts about raising a family and perspectives on life in general. Come sit at our table, help yourself to to a plate and join in the laughter and discussion!

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Yesterday afternoon, after we got home from church, Tim got out the grill, and we had a delicious meal together. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and we spent much of the afternoon outside. Tim practiced with a couple new slingshots he recently got, the little one played at the creek that come through the yard by our apartment, and I planned out some upcoming blog posts. We were all working on different things, but we were together, and could talk and visit. I tried my hand at the slingshot too – I was pretty horrible at it, but it was fun to give it a try. Mostly I enjoyed my tea (yes, feel free to laugh at how light my tea is – Tim certainly like to tease me about it!), took photos, and worked on my new blog planner.

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I’m not, by nature, very organized. So with something like this blog, if I want it to actually work out in the end, I need to set aside some time to figure out how I can get organized to actually make it happen. So far, I’ve kept track of my blogging plans on random pieces of paper, scattered drafts in WordPress, nebulous thoughts of “oh-here’s-a-good-thought-I-better-not-forget-it”, and various emails I’ve sent to remind myself of things. Yeah, not very organized.

So I made this weekly blog planner to help myself have one place to keep all my plans together. There’s a section for each day of the week, to write down what posts will be written and/or go up on those days, and also sections to write down notes, list images to make, future post ideas, to-do’s, and where to promote the posts. Basically, all the things I need to figure out when making my blog plans. Because, as it says at the top, I heart my blog, and this is my plan for it! And I’m going to share a printable of this blog planner with you at the end of the post, so that you can make a plan for your own blog, too.

I also want to share with you the general plan of what you will find on this blog. Obviously, plans can change, but Lord willing, I hope to continue blogging here like this…

I plan to post three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Currently I have an adventure-a-week challenge going on, and I plan to post about those on Fridays. I’m really enjoying having a weekly challenge, so after the adventure challenge ends, I hope to start a new challenge, and Fridays will continue be the weekly challenge post day. On Wednesdays I plan to continue a series I started last week called “seek the things above”, which will be more serious minded posts about trying to serve God. Mondays (like today!) will be more flexible with posts about various topics largely from a poll many of you voted in a little while back. A Monday post might be about food, creative projects, family time ideas, my art, just some thoughts, or posts from Tim, as well.

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If you would like to keep up with The Flourishing Abode, there are a couple way to subscribe, and I wanted to explain the differences. One is to subscribe via e-mail … just put your email address there in the box, confirm your subscription, and you’ll receive a handy email in your inbox when a new blog post goes up. The second is to subscribe by RSS … this means that you can add my blog to your reader. For instance, if you use Google Reader (or another type of reader), just click my RSS link, then choose which reader you use, and you’ll see updates from my blog in your reader. These two options are in my sidebar to the right, but I’ve also included them here in this post – just choose whichever option works best for you, so we can keep in touch! :)


 


And if you’re a blogger, too, here is my blog planner printable – I hope you find it helpful in planning out your own blog. I’ve heard it said that dreams without plans are just wishes. So if you’ve been wanting to really get into blogging, make a plan! Just click the image below to access the printable file:

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I’m excited about my blog plans – but one of the things I love most about blogging is YOUR comments! I’m always curious to hear what you think – leave your thoughts in the comments below!