10 Fabulous Finds at Bluesky Browsing #20

Welcome to a new year at Bluesky Browsing #20. I’m so excited to start a new year browsing for 10 fabulous finds to share with you every week.

A new year gives everyone a boost for new projects, new ideas, and new inspiration. I’m looking forward to sharing new fabulous finds. I’ll be looking for more ways to help you in your home decor or in your blog business if you are a blogger.

I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and a joyous new year. We certainly did. It was nice to take it a bit slower (at least on the blog front) for a couple of weeks.

My goal is to find articles and resources you can use at 10 Fabulous Finds.

I’m constantly discovering fabulous finds to inspire us. My goal is to help you find ideas for your home decor, your crafting, your home organization, and anything about home. I’ll throw in some good blogging information that I think will be beneficial to you.

Ready to see this week’s fab finds?

10 Fabulous Finds at Bluesky Browsing #20

This post contains affiliate links to products and resources you may love to have. If you should purchase anything from this site, I may be compensated, but you don’t pay a penny more.

In case you missed last week’s 10 Fabulous Finds, here is Bluesky Browsing #19.

ON THE BLOG FRONT

1. My favorite Christmas present ~ other than our trip with family ~ was the new MacBook Air that Santa Sweet Shark gave me for Christmas. It arrived on the 22nd so I had time to copy everything from my iMac to the laptop before we flew to Atlanta on the 24th. I haven’t had a laptop in years. The fact that the MacBook talks to the iMac and my iPhone will increase my productivity. I loved using the MacBook in the mornings before our day started.
2. An update on Cindy Bidar’s 6~Figure Course and Membership that I joined right before Christmas. Thanks to the MacBook, I was able to start browsing through the course while we were out of town. OMG, there is so much valuable information in the course. I’ve listend to two of Cindy’s Q & A Zooms, and I am getting so much out of the group exchange of expereince. If you are a blogger who wants to grow a sustainable business, I encourage you to check out this course and membership. It may be the best money you will ever spend.
3. Usually numbers for December go down for bloggers, starting in mid~month. I actually had my second best month of the year ~yippee! A BIG THANK YOU TO READERS, GOOGLE AND PINTEREST. My ad revenue was the highest yet.
4. This past week, I listened to Ezoic’s Webinar about how to position your website for Q1. It was very informative with several specific action items. If your blog is not monetized, you should definitely look into Ezoic. They have great support and do everything to improve the overall site performance of your blog.
5. Last week at Bluesky at Home was mostly about winter decor: 13 Winter Decor Accessory Ideas, 7 Wonderful Winter Mantel Decorating Ideas, Green and White Rustic Winter Decor. One of my favorite posts was sharing 13 Ways to Declutter Your Digital Devices ~ which really struck a cord with readers.

ON THE HOME FRONT

1. Sweet Shark and I had a fabluous time visiting family in Atlanta. We loved attending Chrismtas Eve service with our older daughter, son~in~law and granddaughters. Afterward, 20 immediate family gathered for a delicious Christmas Eve dinner prepared by our son~in~law’s sister who is a professional chef. On Christmas Day, after watching our granddaughters open presents, we joined 40 other extended family for a casual pot~luck buffet.
2. The day after Chrismtas, Jenn, Bruce, Annabell, Lilah, Sweet Shark and I piled into Jenn’s new Tahoe for the drive to Fairhope, Alabama. Our destination was the Grand Hotel, a resort property on the tip of the eastern side of Mobile Bay. We had heard how beautiful it is and we were not disppointed. There was so much to do, the weather was perfect in the 70’s, and our room had beautiful views of the lagoon and the bay. I could go on and on. Fairhope is a lovely small town with wonderful shopping and dining. Next, we went to the Beau Rivage in Biloxi. It’s been years since I was in Las Vegas and it felt like I was back. We had a fun time, but the Grand was our favorite.
3. We arrived home on the afternoon of the 30th (After an Uber ride from Biloxi to the Gulfport Airport where we picked up our rent car to drive to the New Orleans airport for the flight home.) It was so good to be greeted by Nola. Our son and his lab Hank, who is working as an ICU nurse at a local hospital, had held down the fort.
4. We started taking down all the Christmas decorations, which took 3 full days. Then it was time to give the house a pretty winter look.
5. On New Year’s Day, our temperatures dipped into the 30’s and even the 20’s over the week. I am officially over winter. Spring can’t here fastest enough for me.

10 FABULOUS FINDS FOR THE HOME AND RESOURCES TO SHARE

Here we go with Bluesky Browsing #20.

1. Winter is citrus season. We always keep lemons in the fridge for cooking, seasoning, and cocktails. How to keep them fresh? Southern Living provides the anwser to storing lemons for longevity. FYI: it’s not the TIKTOK suggestion.

2. Mike Futia of Stupid Simple SEO shared this SEO Checklist.

3. I use mostly green and white in our living room winter decor. There are other color combinations that work this time of year. I found six color palettes for winter from Color Palettes that can give your ideas for other winter color combinations. This one is my favorite ~ I use blues in our bedroom.

4. Speaking of lemons, one of my favorite dishes is Chicken Piccata ~ it’s full of fresh lemon flavor and quick and easy to make. Don’t forget the capers! I found this Easy Chicken Piccata Recipe from Becky at Easy Chicken Recipes. Yummy!

5. I received an email from App Sumo about Lumen5. It’s software that allows you to create video from your blog posts. Since all anyone talks about is video, video, video, I decided to check it out. I watched the video and then created an account. There are templates you to choose from, you put in the post URL, and a video is created. It’s pretty cool. You can edit the slides ~ I have lots of questions about that. I created an account. put in a URL to see how it works. I submitted questions about the platform. It looks very promising. Has anyone used Lumen5? I’d love to hear about your experience.

6. I mentioned that I shared a post ~ 13 Ways to Declutter your Digital Devices, which readers loved. I also shared a checklist with tips that you can use to help you in your own digital decluttering. Here’s access to the checklist for you.

7. Have you heard of MUM? No, it’s not what the Brits call their mothers. It’s a new language model that Google is developing. Yoast SEO shared this article about MUM, what it is, what it does, and how. If you are a blogger, you will be hearing more about MUM. I read, really skimmed through the article, and it’s a little over my head. I would recommend scrolling through the article ~ I found the best info toward the end of the article. At some point, Google will roll this out and we will know something about it.

8. With cold weather in most areas, keeping warm is on everyone’s mind. I love throws for staying warm and cozy. I have them on our bed, our sofa, the chairs and on our vintage ladder. If you need throws to cuddle up with, here are some pretty ideas.

9. I have another very useful product for you. As we started packing away our Christmas decorations, I realized I did not have a safe way to store my DIY ornament wreath. It’s about 3 inches deep and somewhat fragile. ( I made it last year and had just put it in a large plastic bag under a guest bed which also wasn’t optimal storage.) The pumpkin wreath I made last year had been sitting in the garage since after Thanksgiving.

I really needed a better wreath storge option. We thought that hanging the wreaths in the attic would be best. I searched and found this wreath storge bag. The package of two ( I ordered the 24~inch size) arrived yesterday and I promptly put the two wreaths inside.

This was a great solution. The wreath storage bags were very affordable, have a see~through cover, two velcro straps inside to secure the wreath, and two handles.

10. BOOK OF THE WEEK: I read two books over the holidays. I really liked both of them. My choice to share is a very special little story.

I picked this book up last summer at the going~out~business sale at Barnes & Noble. It’s a little book in size, but big in story and characters. I’ve read two books by Jane Smiley, including one of my favorites, Horse Heaven.

Perestroika in Paris has an ethereal, whimsical, fantastical feeling. It’s the story of Perestroika, called Paras, a thoroughbred racehorse living at a racecourse outside Paris. One day, after winning a race, she pushes against the door of her stall to find it open. Being a curious filly, she steps out and ends up in a Paris park. There she meets Frieda, a short~haired pointer whose derelict owner recently passed away. Horse and dog become cohorts in surviving the streets and people of Paris.

Along the way, a raven, two ducks, and a rat become part of the story. As Paras learns to navigate her new world, she makes friends with a baker and Frieda with a shop owner. Eventually, Paras comes to live inside the mansion of a young boy who lives with his blind great~grandmother.

The entire story is told from the point~of~view all the animals and the few humans who come to care about them.

This isn’t a young children’s story. It’s a sweet, poignant, lovingly~told story of kindness and caring for those different from you. You will be pulled into the feelings of the animals and how they relate to each other and to the humans they interact with. I loved it and shed a few tears at the end.

That wraps up Bluesky Browsing #20. What were your favorites from this collection of 10 Fabulous Finds?

What are your favorite topics? I’d love to know what topics you are curious about. Let me know in the comments and I’ll search browse for them. Be sure to PIN to keep these ideas handy.

In between decorating for Christmas, writing posts, listening to podcasts, reading, and doing various blogging tasks, walking Nola, and playing tennis, I’ll be browsing away.