Hasta la Vista Bloggiesta

Here we are on Saturday night, and I think I will be hanging up my urban sombrero. I want to first start by thanking Natasha at Maw Books Blog again for coming up with this idea. I have only been at this a short time, and aside from getting some valuable advice and suggestions to help me build this blog, I think this Bloggiesta really connected a lot of people and sites together.

So, how did I do on my goals? Not bad. I really didn’t write as much as I had hoped, but I think through suggestions and mini-challenges I was able to do some important administrative and set-up work here. Some things I did complete:

• Developed topics to write about in the future (currently have seven ideas that I will develop into posts)
• Cleaned up Google reader so I can follow my fellow bloggers better
• Added categories for my blog posts
• Added new blogs to my Blog Roll (not on here, let me know and I will check out your site.)
• Added a few more buttons to my blog (still challenged a bit and see a conversion to my own blog URL hosted by WordPress in my future to incorporate additional ideas I have)
• Contacted some of the sites on my Blog Roll to note the link, and invited those to continue to check me out and if they like my content consider adding a reciprocal link
• Developed three future challenges to post on the site
• Drafted two future posts, and this one here

I want to send another round of thanks to all who hosted a mini-challenge. Even if I didn’t complete it during this challenge time, I learned so much from each of your posts and will be integrating these ideas in the future. Now, as far as the mini-challenges go, I:

• Completed GalleySmith’s Anchors Aweigh challenge (as also seen here in anchoring to her challenge, rather than saying see the challenge “here.”
• Completed Emily’s Reading Room Alerts challenge to add Google Alerts for my site.
• Completed Hey Lady’s Favicons and Gravatars challenge and now have my little sock monkey for both.
• Completed Bookish Ruth’s site grading challenge and see I still have more work to do for this new little blog.
• Completed The Book Lady’s Blog reader cleaner challenge  to clean subscribe and clean-up reader
• Completed Infant Bibliophile’s site register challenge and submitted blog to BBAW, Blog Catalog, Blogged, Book Blog Directory and updated information on Book Blogs Ning

I want to send a final thank you to all who posted comments of encouragement, welcoming, etc on my site. I truly appreciate all your feedback. I am so happy to meet you all and be introduced to your content. I now have so many more people in my Google Reader and on my Following list on Twitter. Hope you are enjoying this new little blog and will subscribe to me and follow me as well.

Cheers!!