Spring Break!!!

With the completion of four assignments this morning, I am officially on Spring Break. Yay! Not only do I have time off from school, but I also scheduled some time off work. Other than one emergency visit that I'll need to take care of on Monday morning, I have nearly seven days of freedom. I'm SOOO excited.

But all this freedom doesn't mean I have time to be lazy. I have big plans for this week. There are three primary things that I'll be attacking during my down time.

1. I'll be participating in Bloggiesta and doing some much needed cleaning up around the blog.

Not familiar with Bloggiesta? Bloggiesta is a marathon for bloggers. It occurs a few times a year, sometimes for a few days, sometimes over a weekend. This time it's lasting for the week of spring break (fantastic timing!). The goal of bloggiesta is to work on blogging tasks that are left by the wayside as we work on post after post. Sometimes it's just stuff that we're afraid of trying. Bloggiesta is there to make these scary or otherwise boring things fun through minichallenges and group interactions.

Each participating blogger makes a plan for their Bloggiesta and then checks off items as they go. It's a fun way to improve your blog.

Here's the start of my "to do" list:

1. Update "About Me" page.
2. Update reading challenges.
3. Clean up labels/tags.
4. Clean up sidebar.
5. Create drafts for A-to-Z Challenge posts.
6. Edit photos for A-to-Z Challenge posts.
7. Preschedule week 1 of A-to-Z Challenge posts.
8. Visit at least 5 other Bloggiesta participants daily.
9. Participate in at least one Twitter chat.
10. Update progress at least twice during the week.

I figure ten items should be good and ambitious. Let's see how I do...


2. I'll be getting ready for the 2015 A-to-Z Challenge.

I had so much fun with this last year! I'm ready to get at it all over again. I'll be starting the week with announcing my theme in The Great and Powerful Theme Reveal on Monday. This won't be a huge surprise to those who read over here regularly, but it's still fun.

After the theme reveal, I'll be working on getting all of my posts started. You'll notice that three of my Bloggiesta goals have to do with A to Z. That's because being prepared is going to be extra important this year. With school added to my plate, there's not a lot of free time for me. Editing my photos and writing my posts the night before is not going to be a choice this year. I need to have most things prepared. I'm down to needing about seven projects finished, so I'll be working on getting those done. I'll also be uploading and editing photos for the projects, seeing what holes need to be covered for each post, and then start writing the posts themselves. The ultimate goal is to have at least the first week of posts written and scheduled with photos and rough starts of the other posts waiting in the wings.

I'm really excited for A to Z. I have some really fun posts planned.


3. Participating in Karsyn's Back 2 Books Read-a-Thon.

I have been awful about reading thus far this year. I'm super embarrassed to admit that I have yet to finish one. single. book. Pathetic. Based on my 64 book bracket goal for BOTY, I should already have 13 books finished. GAH!

Luckily, Karsyn is going to be there to give me the kick in the butt I need. Her B2B read-a-thon is a low pressure 3-day read-a-thon designed just to get your nose back in a book. You can participate for only one of the days, but I'm joining in for all three. I won't be reading all day on those three days since I have other things I'm planning, but I will get a good chunk of reading in on each of the days. That's the plan!

The goal here is just to get myself back in a book and maybe finish one or two. I don't expect to get fully caught back up, but I really need to get myself at least on the board for 2015 reading.

Karsyn is planning some a pre-event questionnaire as well as some other challenges during the read-a-thon. Head on over and check her out, sign up, and come read with us for a few days!


Those are the big things. I also have some small tasks I'm planning that I'll probably be updating here on the blog during the week. School has caused me to severely neglect my housework, so there is some clean up needed. I'll be doing two daily 10-minute clean up sessions on specific areas in my house. Depending on how embarrassing they are, I may share my before and afters to show you that a big change is possible in just 10 minutes.

I look forward to hanging out with you guys this week. With any luck, I'll feel accomplished by the time next weekend rolls around.

Happy Spring Break!!