ONE YEAR BLOG-A-VERSARY

Dress: Forever 21 here; Shoes: Tobi c/o here; Headpiece: Forever 21 headband, similar here, with live flowers tucked into it

OH me, oh my. ONE WHOLE YEAR OF BLOGGING. I literally CANNOT believe it. I don’t even know where to start for today’s post. I feel like there’s so much to say, so much goodness and excitement about this celebration and this journey that I don’t know where to begin!

I guess I will start by sharing where the name for my blog came from. If you’ve browsed around my blog a bit, you might already know the answer but if you haven’t, there’s a story behind it. I am all about emotional connections. I didn’t just want to come up with a name that sounded cool but didn’t have a meaning behind it. And all the things I kept coming up with involved words like “blonde” and “California”. Yes, that’s me from the outside, but I wanted something that spoke about me as a person that had an emotional significance to me. One night I was laying in bed thinking and yes, even praying about a good name for my blog, and all of the sudden the word “Moxie” popped into my head. Believe it or not, I had a lip gloss for years by Bare Minerals called that, and I had always thought it was a cool word, and at that moment it popped into my head. The next morning I googled the definition of it, and right when I did I knew that’s what I would call my blog. It means “force of character, determination or nerve”. Other words for it might be courage or gumption. And that is EXACTLY what it took for me to start this blog. I had been mulling over the idea for probably a year before I finally decided to just try it and see what happened. So that night in my bed “Moxie” was born, and I know for a fact it was God who put that on my heart because He has been present every step of the way along this journey. And I love the meaning behind the name because no matter how cute my hair or outfit ever is, I want it to be my character ultimately that shines through and captures people.

This past year has been such an amazing journey. I was so excited to start blogging. And so terrified. For a while honestly, I didn’t even want to tell a lot of my friends I had started it because I was scared of what they would think. So I told my closest friends only and started posting, still feeling a little insecure about my posts. (You can see my first official post here! Please excuse the fact that I took the photos in the backyard on Ben’s phone. :P) But I was also so so so excited about it too, and that’s what made me keep going. I would get all sorts of ideas for hair posts or outfit posts and bug my husband way too much to take my photos. As time went on I did start to feel more comfortable. There were less awkward looking photos in my reel, but don’t be fooled I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing half the time and end up with plenty of photos with terrible faces. Being silly and smiling comes naturally; pretending to be a model does not. 😛 So I’m pretty dang proud of how far I’ve come.

As fun as blogging has been, there have definitely been some very hard days, even hard weeks. There have been times I’ve thought, eh maybe I should just stop. Does anybody even read my blog? As I’m sure you all know (probably because it’s the reason your here), Instagram has been my main avenue for driving traffic to my blog. And as much as I love Instagram, it can be pretty dang frustrating! You look around at people who haven’t been blogging too long, and you think hmmm my page is similar to hers, why does she have soooo many followers and I don’t? It’s very hard and at times frustrating to build a following. It took me almost five months starting from zero to get to a thousand followers. It seemed like FOREVER, and you better bet I danced and celebrated that 1K like nobody’s business. I have had to learn to remind myself why I blog and not compare myself to other bloggers. As long as I’m being me and being genuine and having fun doing what I love, the numbers don’t matter. And I’m SO very thankful for each and every one of you who follow along. My blog wouldn’t be what it is today without you. You’ve pushed me to be better and be creative and supported me all along the way. And to those who have followed since the very very beginning, I see you still there. And I’m so thankful that you believed in me so others could too.

There’s a long list of things I have learned this year, but here’s just a few. I have learned how to edit photos. I have learned how to transfer my blog from Blogspot to WordPress (Wait if you learned something, shouldn’t you remember it? Do not ask me how to do it. No idea. 😛 ). I have learned that some people write what they think on your photos even when it hurts, and I just need to let it go (cue singing 😛 ). I have learned that having your hubby take your blog photos sometimes lead to fights. (Who knew? We’ve mostly got it down now but no joke I have been crying mid shoot before. Tip for all you girls having your man do your photos. Don’t ask him to run out to do photos the second he walks in the door 😛 ) I have learned to prioritize my life, and no, blogging does not come first. I have learned I like to have coffee in my hands in 50% of my photos, probably because that’s how much I’m drinking it in my real life. I have learned to say no to things that don’t reflect my style or who I am, even when it sounds good. I have learned that being me is more important than anything.

And now onto my favorite thing about blogging. The absolute best part of blogging is probably not what you would think it would be. One of the BEST things that has come from blogging has been a friendship that I don’t know how I did without before. With a girl I never ever would have met if it hadn’t been for blogging. I found Alena on Instagram all of two months into blogging, and we probably haven’t gone a day without texting since. Something just clicked. We had our love for fashion and blogging in common but more importantly we both had a relationship with God that made our bond even stronger. Even though she lives in Colorado, we have now met in person twice and have a third trip in the works. Sooo Alena, I love you and am so thankful for you. Thank you for how you love and support me not just in blogging but in my everyday life. And it’s also a huge thank you to her for this cute dress I’m wearing that she sent me so I would have something new to wear for this post. And to all the other amazingly wonderful girls I have met through blogging. You know who you are, and I love you ALL.

The other best thing of blogging has been how wonderfully supportive my hubby has been. He has believed in me from day one. He has put up with taking my photos for over a year while still having a good attitude (minus those few fights I mentioned :P), even when it might not be what he wants to do. He reads every post I write and tells me all the time how great I’m doing and how much he loves to read about me, even though he already knows everything. 😛 I could never have kept going without him. He tells me when I’m stressing too much about numbers or about some mean comment someone left on my photo. Actually more often he just ends up making me laugh about it instead. He always reminds me WHY I’m blogging when I get caught up in the parts that don’t matter and just cause me worry. And oh the poor guy of all the wonderful things he does, HE LISTENS to my stories about all my Insta-friends he doesn’t even know. And I talk a lot because I mean all my Insta-friends are pretty cool. I’m always like oh you know that girl that I told you about before that does such and such. I talk so much about one girl, he totally knows her baby’s name and face. Oops. 😛 I can’t say enough how thankful I am for his encouragement and love and support through the last year. Love you, Baby.

To my friends who really encouraged me to start…Carly, my bestie boo who fueled my love for bloggers even more when she introduced me to my all time fave blogger Amber Fillerup and who believed in my blogger dreams. And Laura, thank you for knowing I could do it. And to my client Katie who, the first time she met me, told me I reminded her of my favorite blogger, and yes, of course, I should start a blog, your encouragement meant more than you know!

WHEW. That was so long. If you read through this all, congrats. And I love you. I promise to not write a post this long again for a while. And if you didn’t I still love you. But you don’t know that because you stopped reading. Bahaha.

Thank you from the very bottom of my heart for all of your love and support and for following me on this blogging journey. You are the reason I continue to do this! Cheers to one year and to more to come!

Besos,

Christine