Howdy Hoo Jaderbugs! Happy Friday!!! You know it’s been a hot minute since I featured anyone here in my colorful online home. Hot minute = a few years… Needless to say I had to think long and hard about doing it again and I am not sure why. Shoots I could have people write sponsored posts for me but where is the fun in that! We all know I am all about fun.

I meet so many people in my daily life and I feel like there is a moment, a hot moment where I think to myself “Goodness gracious I wish the world could meet this amazing human” so with that said you will finally get the chance to meet the people who “I” think are amaze-balls.

So the stellar person who I wanted to kick off this new thinga ma jig on the blog is none other than… AUNT PEACHES <—— click her to go directly to her blog because why not! I have been knowing her for a while now but in the last year I can say she has truly become a real friend of mine. Maybe even sorta like my long lost twin sister. Shit, I wish she was my sister cause she is cool as all get out, literally! So let’s give a WARM welcome to PEACHES!


I was starting to do some web design at work and wanted a sandbox to test stuff online – a blog was a great way to stick my toe in the water without messing things up on the job. Then when I was trying to figure out what to blog about, someone asked me, “What kinds of blogs do you like to read?” and my web browser history was VERY clear in telling me how much I loved reading craft/art/creative bloggers. Now I’m one of them! Now I’m trying to put back more than I take away by sharing my ideas and absorbing the same from others. Full circle!


Winters in Chicago are LONG, so I have recently spent an embarrassing amount of time binge watching television series on Netflix. It’s horrible! (And awesome!) In my defense, I’m often making something with my hands (for the blog) while watching. I’m productive in my sloth.


What a question! You’d have to ask my readers, but I like to think that my blog is colorful and interesting without any interest in looking pretty or perfect (sound familiar, AHEM, Jade!). I would much rather be interesting than pretty. I read somewhere, “Perfection be damned, the joy is in the doing” and that’s how I like to approach everything. How I blog, how I work, how I live, how I eat. Even if I’m just making a salad or walking the dog, I want to enjoy the process. There is beauty in everything if you know how to look for it.


Well you know I‘m a Jaderbug (ha!)…and I have a small circle of creative blogging friends. I used to be obsessed, no – I mean OBSESSED, with a Swedish blog called Chez Larson, but she shut it down last year. Heart = Broken.


Since I don’t have kids, and my blog content can include pretty much anything I want, it’s easier than you might think. Sometimes friends will come over and help me make stuff, which is awesome because I get to socialize and develop blog content at the same time. Sometimes I wish quilting bees were still popular – I love it when folks can hang out and create things at the same time. I wish I lived closer to some of my blogging friends so we could start one.

It would be awesome if blogging was my only job. It’s still freelance graphic design, which isn’t bad, but even small jobs soak up a lot of time and creative brain juice that I would go a long way towards boosting the blog. Then again, sometimes I think it’s smart to diversify. Ten years ago I had never heard of blogging as a job, and with technology changing, who is to say what blogging will be ten years from now?

I lucked out. Within my first month, Design*Sponge featured one of my paper flower tutorials. I had only told a handful of friends as readers at that point, and suddenly I was getting hundreds of hits a day. Granted, that first traffic bump didn’t last long, but it provided me with the positive feedback I needed to want to make blogging a regular habit. Since then, blogging has brought me countless opportunities and the most amazing friends. Starting a blog was the best thing I ever did for myself.

It’s got nothing to do with money or accomplishments or even happiness – I call the Ideal Groundhog Day. You know the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray lives the same day over and over again? So, it’s like that. Pretend genie in a bottle granted you a wish to live one ideal day doing anything you want, but the catch is you have to do it everyday over and over. What would you do? Some folks might say they’d sit on the beach in Hawaii and drink daiquiris all day, but I suspect they’d get bored of it pretty fast. What would you do if you had to design a day to live 100 times in a row? What would it look like? What would you do? Who would you talk to? How would you make money? Would you really need to have millions of dollars? Where would you find inspiration? It’s a pretty cool mental exercise. Anyway, a couple years ago I wrote down my Ideal Groundhog Day, and I’m proud to say that I’m pretty much there. It’s not ideal, and my goals change all the time, but yeah. I have it pretty great. This is a long way from where I was just a few years back, so my daily gratitudes are plentiful.

Weird people. I know I’m supposed to say “nature” or “old movies” – and those are great – but, no. Weird people. Weird people have the best stories and, usually, the best attitude. If you can’t draw inspiration from a weird person, something is wrong with you.

This is important and I have never read it anywhere – There are two kinds of blogs; blogs that are written for the audience and blogs that are written for the blogger. Both have perks, neither is wrong. But you need to decide that from the beginning. If you write for yourself because you want to share ideas and show people what you are doing, that is great, but it’s going to read inauthentic (at best) when you switch topics to feature a trend, or start running banner ads, or taking sponsored posts. If you want to write for your audience, you have to identify whom you want to write for and what they want to hear. Because “birds of a feather flock together” there is a good chance your interests and your audience’s interests overlap a good deal – figure out that sweet spot then hit it again and again and again. Whatever you do, don’t try to be someone else. Nothing good will come of it. There is nothing wrong with being aspirational, but the last thing the internet needs is one more person pretending to be what they are not. Nothing is as boring as someone trying to be someone else. Life is too short! Get out and dance!

Follow Aunt Peaches here: Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Pinterest 

I hope you enjoyed meeting my rad friend! Make sure to hop on over to her blog and check her out! Stay tuned because I will be doing this on the first Friday of every month. I wonder who is next… Hmmm ♥