New and Improved

Welcome to the new and improved website for Saving Time in a Bottle! I’m excited to show you all I’ve been working on in the past week. This site is really a dream-come-true for me, and it’s all by God’s grace that it has made it to this point. A special thank you goes out to my pastor for helping make this happen! Sit back, relax, and enjoy exploring through the pages of this new site.

A little background to how I got started blogging, what I write about, and why I do it:

After years of sporadically posting and going between LiveJournal and Tumblr, I started a free blog hosted on Blogger in October of 2012. I was almost 20, living with my family in Iowa, working for myself as a licensed massage therapist while taking classes online full time, and in a long distance relationship with my best friend. I had kept a journal every day consistently since 5th grade, and wanted another place to write out my thoughts and reflections on life. However, I never told anyone about this blog…I just imagined myself writing to “someone out there who I’ve never met…but needs to hear what I have to say.” Then, I got engaged, and let blogging go on the back burner for most of 2013. (What a shame, it was a very exciting year!)

In November of 2013, however, Curtis (my new husband!) and I were in the midst of one of our many weekend adventures, and we were talking about how we wished we had a way to easily share pictures and stories of our lives with all of our families. We were living 1600 miles away from both of our families, and doing our best to stay connected to them while still establishing who we were as newly married couple. He mentioned blogging, to which I replied “oh yeah! I forgot I set up one of those!”

And so I gave blogging another try. I wasn’t very consistent, but it was better than doing nothing at all. I don’t think I told our families about it right away…this was on a trial basis, so there was no use telling people to read my blog if I was going to forget about it and stop writing again. It was fun though, writing about different events and sharing pictures (even though I’m not that great at taking them!)

Finally, on December 31 of 2013, I wrote and published our “Year in Review” post, and I got the courage to share it on Facebook. It was pretty overwhelming when the post received over 100 views, as opposed to the 5-7 views for every other post! Throughout 2014, I grew to be more and more consistent, and gained a couple loyal followers. (Shoutout to you, faithful friends, that have stuck with me and encouraged me through this!)

The things I enjoy writing about the most are our adventures – whether it’s a big trip somewhere or a short hike nearby, I like to write down the stories both for others to enjoy, and for Curtis and I to remember. Sometimes just knowing that I will be writing about a hike later is enough motivation for me to finish! I also try to think of this when something utterly terrifying is happening, like when we are climbing down a steep canyon wall or if we encounter some dangerous wildlife, that these are the things that make great stories. 😉

Another big reason why I write about these things are to give detailed descriptions or recommendations for others looking to have an adventure. (Check out our “Travel Index” to find some ideas for your next vacation!) While you’ll see our Arizona Travel Index is very thorough and will have plenty of ideas, there is still so much that we haven’t seen… and I’m excited to go to everywhere and be able to add our new adventures whenever they happen!

Other things you’ll see on this blog will include (but are certainly not limited to!) our military life, lessons we’re learning, what I’m making (food, crafts, and otherwise), stories about our puppy, our love story and marriage, and so much more. I write to keep family and friends updated on our ever-changing life, but I still like to think about writing to “someone out there who I’ve never met…but needs to hear what I have to say.” I don’t know where this blog will go next, but I’m excited to find out!

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the NEW and IMPROVED site! If you’re a regular, don’t forget to change your bookmarks from savingtimeinabottle.blogspot.com to savingtimeinabottle.com!