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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! Save 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 … Read more

Why is it that we blog? Why not just write in a journal? The specific answers may vary, but in the end it all comes down to the audience – the readers. 1K+Save Maybe you want to make people laugh, maybe you want to offer people help, maybe you want to share stories, maybe you want to draw traffic to make money. It’s all variations on a theme: finding readers. Because if we didn’t want readers, we would just write in in a private journal. So when people land on your site, if they are your target readership, you want … Read more

Here we go! Thanks to all of you who voted for what would be the next challenge – and this week it begins: The “Hack” Challenge, where each week we come up with a new DIY project, upcycling an item from it’s original purpose into something new, usually some kind of home decor or furniture type project. And so onto week 1… Solar Powered DIY Paper Lamps! Generally when I come up with an idea for something I would like to turn into a lamp or use in lighting, I run into the same problem: it is not an object … Read more

Well, our weekly adventure challenge continues! (If you haven’t seen the challenge post yet, you can see it here.) Last week I shared our pirate nature scavenger hunt, and it was geared more specifically for small children. This time for our second adventure we did an activity which isn’t targeted at any specific age, and can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone. (Although, confession – I cheated a little on the “weekly” this time. I’ve been posting the week after the adventure, but we didn’t go on an adventure last week due to sickness, we are doing two this week instead. Life … Read more

I’ve been wanting to give vlogging a try for a while – so here we go, my very first vlog! WooT! It starts with a stop motion intro, and then the rest of the video is a couple announcements I’m very excited to share with you! (If you’re seeing this in a reader/email and the video isn’t showing up, just click here.) https://web.archive.org/web/20180619091038if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/tvQj6OYHBdU?feature=oembed(Music: Kevin MacLeod, licenced under Creative Commons) So, thinking of ideas yet? Make sure you leave them in the comments below– as many as you want! In the spirit of fun and thinking of ideas, I’ve made a free illustrated brainstorming … Read more

Well, we’re preparing for the big move! And I don’t mean our move to Boston, although we are leaving for that TOMORROW! (WOOHOO!) But actually, in the context of blogging, I’m talking about how to move from Blogger to WordPress. This series is now in week 8 and we’ve been making great progress working on Lori’s blog redesign (and hopefully you’ve been making progress on your blog too!) as we’ve been going through this series. The goal was to use Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life as a demonstration on how to create a new fully branded look, to move … Read more

I guess there are basically two sides to this blog redesign series … the artistic side, and the more tech related side. We’ll be kind of jumping back and forth week to week from one to another – this week it’s the artistic. You know, the fun stuff! I have six blog tips to share plus a worksheet to start making some design choices. So far in this series, we’ve talked about getting a vision for your branding so you can know what you’re aiming for, and then the next week we covered where to blog and how to get set up, and this … Read more

I’m taking a little different approach with this week’s hack challenge … instead of one more-involved project, I wanted to give several different upcycling decor ideas that are so simple, there’s no assembly required! 1 – Repurpose clear glass vases to store layers of colorful scarves: 2 – Use vintage insulators as unique book ends: 3 – Use a whisk to hold recipe cards: 4 – Repurpose an old tv stand as a book shelf: 5 – Use a vintage skirt hanger as a unique method of “framing”: Do you have any no-assembly-required upcycling ideas to share?Post them in the comments below, I … Read more

So, last week I tried to post some clues to see if anyone could guess what the next weekly challenge would be … buuuuut apparently I’m pretty bad at clues, haha! But the hack-challenge ends this week and next week is the start of the new challenge … so instead we’ll just skip to the announcement. It’s one that was suggested by one of you when I asked for challenge ideas a while back – and I’m very excited about it! It’s a DIY blog redesign series! Basically, as a graphic designer I will be demonstrating how to do a complete blog … Read more

Time for week six of the adventure-a-week challenge! This time was a little different because there wasn’t just one set aside time for the adventure, but instead it was spread out over several days. The goal? Find and photograph all the colors of the rainbow in springtime plants for this Spring photography challenge! Right now is a perfect time around here for this – all the flowers are blooming and the weather is just lovely. I actually had been planning on something different for this week, but when I saw all the colors popping up and blooming, I knew we had … Read more