October Recap

September was my first monthly recap post, so feel free to check it out here if you missed it: Remember September.

For me, October was social media month.

After my brief appearance in the LA Times where I divulged the fact that I had 21 Twitter followers, didn’t understand or like Twitter very much, but had hoped to use it as a great tool to connect with readers and other bloggers, I stumbled across Melissa of Serendipity and Spice’s awesome ebook – 30 Days to 1000 Twitter Followers.

And Twitter started to make so. much. more. sense.

After implementing many of her suggestions (I’m not going to give them away here, so visit her blog and download the ebook if you are interested in learning more), dare I say I even *like* Twitter now?

It’s a low pressure, low stress and fun way to interact with all sorts of different people. Like starting up little enjoyable conversations with the people around you in line at the grocery store or movie theater, except on Twitter, they’re holding little signs with interesting topics on them, so you can pick your small talk (and then take it more in depth if you so desire). And while I may be shy in public in person, I’m loving random interactions and chats on Twitter.

I will say this: social media needs to be social. And once that fact sunk in to my sometimes-thick head, I started having a lot more fun 🙂

And October was also blog housekeeping month.

It began with the hours of tweaking HTML and CSS coding necessary to create my stylish tabbed sidebar widget:

Have you given it a spin yet? It’s kind of fun 🙂

You may also have noticed that The Gathered Home is now sporting some advertising (via Google AdSense)! More pennies in my pocket = more capital for awesome projects, so hopefully you guys don’t mind the occasional ad here and there. The ones I’ve seen so far have been pretty and relevant – woohoo!

(If you ever run across a distasteful or offensive ad, please let me know! AdSense selects ads for me based on filters I set, so I don’t personally choose each ad, however I can block or choose not to use certain ads.)

In order to participate in the AdSense program, I was required to place a cookie disclosure page on my blog, so I decided that was as good a reason as any to create a detail Blog Policies & Disclosure Page, located at the bottom of every page on my blog for your convenience. It may not be the most interesting read of your day, but I do encourage you to peruse it if you get the chance, and I did try to include some signature humor to lighten all the legalese 🙂

But that’s not to say I didn’t have time to get some great DIY Projects in this month!

I made some no-sew DIY Malachite Curtains from a set of bed sheets:

I painted the doorway between the living room and dining room a bold black for contrast & interest:

I painted the Master Bedroom gray, and decorated it with things I already had on hand – no new purchases!

I shared the deets on my DIY canvas art – Stalactites & Stalagmites:

I nodded to the season with my lazy fall decorating, and explained why I suck at Halloween.

I continued my Secrets of a Craigslist Addict series with my post on The 1st Rule of Craigslist…

And finally, the crowd favorite of the month – I introduced you all to my husband Bryan via his humorous interview: The Boy Behind The Blog.

So that was October! Plans for November include finally painting the outside of the front door, revamping my About Me page and House Tour page (currently in progress), and making over the pretty darn ugly 1970’s credenza I picked up last week. After that, who knows! Stick around – I promise it’ll be fun!