If you look back at the dates of my posts on the blog, you can see that I took a (very) long blogging hiatus. From late 2008 when I started the blog until the beginning of 2011, I blogged regularly. Then, well, life changed, things got hectic, and I stopped blogging. I made a few abortive attempts here and there to get back in the groove, but it never really happened. I needed some kind of … something to motivate me.

Then I found The 28 Day Blog Challenge and was excited to get started, thinking it would help me become inspired to blog again. What it’s really done, though, is help me realize why I’ve lost my mojo. Time and outside responsibilities were just excuses: The main reason I stopped blogging is because I felt locked into the food blogging concept, even though there were other things I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about my weight loss and fitness journey, about decorating and furnishing my house, about travel, about my business and my photography projects. I even wanted to talk about my cats (because the Internet needs more cats!). In short, I wanted to talk about my life. But because I felt constrained by the blog, I was compartmentalizing too much; cooking here, photography there, and no place to talk about anything else unless I started yet another themed blog.

It’s been a great light-bulb realization for me and makes me excited to get back to blogging, but in a much more inclusive way. Even though the name will remain the same (for now), I want my blog to become more of a lifestyle blog – inclusive of cooking, but not limited to the one topic. I want to feel free to write shorter posts, talk about bits and pieces, post pictures, and have discussions about other things that interest me, as well as posting the longer cooking/process posts that take more time.

As part of the whole revitalization, I spent this past weekend redesigning my categories to fit the new direction of the blog.

• Food is now a master category and has been subdivided to match the food boards I have set up on Pinterest.
• House & Home is a new category to talk about how I’m finally getting my house whipped into shape to reflect me, and my tastes, and desires.
• Health & Fitness is another new category to talk about my renewed commitment to losing that last little bit of weight and becoming more fit and active.
• Gardening is an old category that I’ve broken out into it’s own section now that I finally have my back garden set up.
• Blogging is a new category, but pretty self explanatory – things that don’t fit the other categories and are about this blog will go here. (This one might change over time.)

I might add another category or two as the blog direction develops – we’ll see how that goes. I still plan to talk about cooking and recipes. I still plan to blog about food, because, well, I like food. A lot. But I’ll also allow myself to talk about more than food and cooking and to not feel restricted or uncomfortable for doing so. It’s all just part of my life.

I hope people enjoy it!