Celebrating my first blogiversary :)

So... it's super unofficial as to when I started my craft blog. Because I had been using my blog for just random stuff for a while. It's a long story ;) BUT I declared it a craft blog on Halloween of 2010. But... I didn't make my first crafty post until February of 2010. So I'm going with December 31st as my official blogiversary. Here's what I posted last year. I've changed so much since then. It's almost funny :D My style has changed, my personality has changed, I've grown a TON, and I've matured a LOT.

for example, here's one of my first tutorials. Compare it to one of my most recent tutorials.

 yeah. crazy right? Back when I started I had an all black background and funky colored font. it was nasty. I didn't even make a header. My pictures were straight from the little point and shoot I had. I had no clue what photo editing was, I thought there was simply Photoshop which was for professionals. I thought this was a good nature picture:

 and now an 'OK' picture to me is like this:

 My writing style has changed too. I used to be just straight to the point, robot-ish. for example click here. Now I'm just myself, whoever that is :p I ramble, i say stupid words, I mess around. It's who I am. This is my blog. If you don't like the way I talk, don't read it. :)

I've changed in looks too... like a ton. And I grew... you know... a few inches. just like half a head ;) But this 'before' picture is actually like late 2009. It's insane. And I am so sorry for making you see these creepy pictures of me haha :)

I still wear that shirt from 2009. it's the most comfortable shirt I own. hands down :) I should do some outfit posts sometimes... even though I'm not the most fashionable girl, it sounds fun :) HAH I'll show you my mad modeling skillz. It will probably make you die of laughter. This is going to be interesting.... apologies in advance ;) Haha if i do outfit posts... this could turn into like a comedy blog. :p

I remember thinking 13 followers was a lot. Dear, innocent, young me. So naive. :) Some day I'm going to look back and be like... "HAH I thought I had a pretty popular blog w/ 224 followers! That is tooo funny ;)" But you know what? Whatever. Blogging isn't about the followers. It's about the connection with others and sharing your essence {for lack of better word haha} with the world.

I've also changed friends a lot over the past year or two. Which is pretty lame. But oh well, I still have some pretty awesome friends ;) like this one {sorry... i just have to add a pic because you're so beautiful ;) who's been my BFF since literally the first day we met {at our brother's boyscout family camp out!}:

this was the most serious one we got out of like 400 pictures.  no joke. :) the other ones make me laugh every time i look through them. so just for the record... i'll show you a few {pretty please don't hate me Sophs!} :P

Haha if you can't tell she's pretty awesome. We make a pretty awesome {slightly insane...} pair. After 16 hours together it gets a little ridiculous. One time I told her my goal by my next birthday was to learn to shuffle. She immediately said she wanted to too, so we watched this one guy teach us how to for like an hour or two. I made her promise not to practice without me {because i wanted us to be at the same level... you know?} yeah next time we saw eachother she starts shuffling. And she's good at it. Haha I still can't shuffle ;)

Uhm... yeah we've done a lot of crazy stuff together. I'll dedicate a whole post to that later ;) but she's an amazing friend, and I'm so glad I have her! And {IDK if you read my comments, but she leaves me a lot of comments and she's just so awesome and she supports me so much!} she makes cards. Like they are so awesome. I'll show you some she's given me later :) I'm trying to get her to start and etsy and a blog...

So yeah. There's a lot that has changed. But in the end, I'm glad it's changed. I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of who I'm friends with. I'm proud of my blog and what I've done with it. I'm proud to say I've made a few great bloggy friends {shout out to Naomi and Kasey!}. I'm proud, but not stuck up. There's a difference between being proud of yourself for an accomplishment, and just being full of pride. I'm proud to say I'm a Catholic. I'm proud to say I'm home schooled. I enjoy it. I'm just really happy with my life. Let's just say that for now ;)

If you have any questions about being Catholic... I'd love to talk to you! Just shoot me an email! :)

Thank you all for reading. It means a TON to me :) I love you all!
~Alyssa