Making a SPLASH into 2020 and the Blog Relaunch

Welcome to 2020 and the relaunch of Family, Food, & Frolic!

Honestly, today is the perfect day for the relaunch. A new year is about new beginnings, new starts, and stepping out of your comfort zone. You would think that putting my fingers to the keyboard for getting back into blogging would be easy. However, as you can see from this late post in the day (whoops- now the 2nd), restarting this blog has me hesitating and hiding. Honest answer-- it is fear. Blogging has changed so much over the years. I am afraid of failing at something that I was once good at doing. Even more so, I am afraid of putting myself out there for the world to see-- which is a lot of what blogging is nowadays.

In 2010, I was a stay-at-home mom that was active in a military community. I found myself in leadership positions where I ended up giving a lot of advice to new military wives. As more and more people sought my advice, I decided to put my English degree to use and start a blog-- Our Army Family. Starting a blog back then was easy. While there were a lot of small blogs, it was not the over saturated market that is currently filled with bloggers, vloggers, and social media influencers. I was also very fortunate to (a) have a natural niche of followers--military families and (b) have a popular article get heavily shared, bringing me in followers around the world.

By the start of 2011, I knew that my days as an Army wife were limited. I decided to rebrand, taking the Army off of the blog and title it with the topics it covered: Family, Food, & Frolic. Thankfully, a lot of my readers followed over to my new blog. Family, Food, & Frolic (version 1) covered lifestyle, food, and travel… heavy in the food. One aspect that my readers liked was that my recipes were more conversational in telling them how to cook a recipe, especially as a lot of my reader demographic was still younger wives or people just starting off cooking for themselves. The blog continued to grow and reached 1.8 million viewers. Nowadays, that number is nothing; however, it is something that felt good for me-- a nobody. Maybe that’s why I am afraid of it being a flop now.

In 2014, I was on to a new phase of my life. After I divorced, I went back to school to get my Masters in Teaching. 2014 was a big year: graduation, a major life event for my older daughter, and a realization that I would not have time to actively keep up my blog while teaching. So, I stupidly gave up my domains-- for both my blog and my photography business. Almost immediately, I regretted it. However, my domains were ransomed and being held for $2000 each.

I kept checking back over the years and, in 2017, I was able to get both domains back. I immediately set them up with placeholder information. I began to blog little bits, as I had time. However, in time, life was busy again and the blog fully drifted away. I tried to toss some bits up on social media, in order for them to not completely die out.

Once I stopped blogging, it was easier to leave the blog dead than to revive it. The biggest reason-- fear. What would people think? What if I posted an article and people looked back to see a stagnant blog? Would it look worse to be starting after a dead spot rather than not blog at all? What if I did blog? I would be putting myself out there for people to see-- what would people think of me now? Fear of letting myself be vulnerable. I then let myself fall under the excuse that I was too busy getting a second masters degree-- that’s a story for a different time.

Now is the time. It’s overdue, but the timing is right. New year-- new beginning-- new start (okay- revival) for the blog. This time, it is not just me. Miss Kreatively Kris is joining this adventure and Just Jay is along for the ride. Last year, Kristin began college and I started a second masters degree. After our yearly Disney trip, we decided to move down here to Florida, do our classes online, and balance it with quality time making memories at Walt Disney World. Our blog will still have the same focus of lifestyle, food, & travel. It will definitely still be heavy in food--we are foodies. Last time, the food side of our blog was heavy in recipes. There will still be recipes, but it will also include our food adventures… especially exploring the festivals at Disney. It will also follow us venturing to see what Central Florida has to offer-- great for locals or tourists. With us having the opportunity this year to experience Disney in a fresh way, it is only natural to take our followers along for the adventure. With that, we are going out on a limb and including videos. That is scary in so many ways-- putting ourselves out there for others to see, me on camera- yikes- definitely more comfortable hiding behind it, and what if nobody actually watches them. The answer to all of that fear-- oh well. We are going to have fun going on our adventures and sharing them. We are not doing this to hope for some sort of fame or gain. We are just sharing our life and stories. It also fits with ways for Kristin and I to both practice and build the skills for our degrees. (Emphasis on build- we are not there yet, but we are building.)

The first few weeks of our blog will be trial and error as we gain content again. Eventually, we will figure out a posting schedule that highlights our areas of lifestyle, food, and travel, as well as days featuring our adventures or life anecdotes. In the meantime:

Our Facebook page is admittedly super bare and out of date, but I will post as each new article goes live. (link)

Our Instagram will continue to have a heavy focus on food pics: @familyfoodfrolic

Follow Miss Kreatively Kris and Just Jay ‘s Instagrams for behind the scenes of our adventures, highlights, and additional fun not always covered in the blog.

Drumroll… our very first YouTube video. No- we are not professional vloggers. It was just requested that this time around we add more of ourselves. So, here you go-- putting ourselves out there for the world to see. This video, very much so in swimsuits. It’s New Year’s Day. We come from the Pacific Northwest, where it is popular to do Polar Bear Plunges making a splash into the new year. It is kind of a bucket list item of mine. Nevermind that it is not icy here, we decided to start our year and blog/vlog off with a splash...our own polar bear swim of sorts.