I feel like Albus Dumbledore...

I never realized how much effort, time, planning, & know-how it took to start a website, but this is alot! Thankfully its very rewarding.
I feel like Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter, when he was able to pull a memory out of his mind and store it in a jar on the shelf so as to not forget it, and make more room. I think blogging is alot like that. We all have so many thoughts, ideas, brainstorms, light bulb moments, questions, etc swimming around in our heads. And then the one moment comes up when we need to remember one of those things, and we can't remember them! Or remember them clearly.
Thankfully blogging helps with the storage and organization of those thoughts and ideas.

The Blogging world -- Going Ahead Anyway

Okay, so maybe there's another website out there that's JUST like the one we envisioned, but you know what? We're going ahead w/ ours too! There's enough room out there in the internet for two parent/teacher websites.

So tonight we figured out the little things about wordpress that we needed to know. We uploaded our tip of the week, our recipe of the week and have most of the "guts" for our week of content.

Only one little hiccup...the contributor for the very first post...being an Advocate for your child....isn't responding w/ her quotable quote or info. Small little hiccup. Thankfully one that we can get through.

Now to work on next week's "B" week. Hopefully some teacher's out there will begin following us at the schoolhouse and want to contribute their words of wisdom. :)

Until tomorrow!

The Blogging World ---- Oh. Crap.

Oh crap. We just stumbled onto a site that is almost EXACTLY like what we envisioned our site to be. Crap. And once again....crap.

So now what to do? Do we continue and still go for it? Do we go back to the drawing board of ideas and content concepts? Do we scratch the project altogether?

Don't know. We have only discovered this and convo-d about this via email. We're going to need a good hour or two convo over the phone to sort this one out. Thank goodness we both have Verizon...

The Blogging World--Content, here we come!

Checklist real quick...

name of blog...check!

name of website...check!

domain bought...check!

content concept...check!

actual content....ummm need to work on that!



So everyone always says that the key to a successful blog is -- content, content, content... So its time to build that up. We divided up the work load (as sisters we tend to divide and conquer well). So Margie took a couple of the words and Audrey took the a couple. Margie is the organizing queen so she is going to write one tip per week and it will be at the top of the page (we found out this is called a stickie). Audrey loves to cook so she will give one recipe per week that starts w/ the magic letter. :)

Neither one of us are professional therapists or have master's degrees in school counseling, education, etc. so we are enlisting the brains of those around us that do have the expensive parchment hanging on their walls. Thankfully our mom is a math department head of a private school in Atlanta, so we are going to ask her for some info on the addition/algebra piece. We are trying to be as diverse around the country as possible w/ our professionals, so we're looking for a school psychologist or guidance counselor to write up something on "starting school w/ a new attitude" for both parents and students.

Hopefully we'll be able to pull this together in a week. We are hoping to launch schoolhouseabcs.com next Sunday...here's hoping!

The Blogging World--Title and Website

We are sisters and we are both external processors. Do you know what that means? Lots of long phone conversations. :)

So last night, we brainstormed in search of a content-appropriate blog title and website domain name.



Since our content will be organized via the ABC's, we thought it would be appropriate to have ABC's or alphabet in the title. But what else? The branch of motherhood that we want to tap into is regarding the kids education and what a parent's role could be with it. So we started looking for ABCseducation, educationabcs, abcsforparents, etc. Nothing available.



Then we had a light bulb moment....what about something with the word "schoolhouse" in it? The word schoolhouse sounds quaint, old-fashioned (which goes w/ our morals), it implies a more intimate setting for school than an institutional setting, positive attitude, and on and on. So when we searched for schoolhouseabcs , sure enough--it was available!! So wahoo-we have a blog title and a website/domain name!

http://www.schoolhouseabcs.com/



Now the real work starts! Content, content, content...

The next job is to nail down the 5 "A" words that we will explore on our first week. So far some of our ideas are, being an ADVOCATE for your child at their school, having a successful year with your AUTISTIC child, school options for ASPERGER'S, and a couple more are still floating around in our heads....

See you tomorrow!

The Blogging World--What's our point of view?

Now we sisters have decided upon what we have in common--motherhood! But what aspect of motherhood should be our point of view? Toddlerhood? Parenting tips? Entertaining children? Meal-making? Coupon saving? Crafting? What?

There seems to be many different sites that cover those aspects very well. One thing we kept going back to was schooling. Our kind of schooling. Even though we are both Christians and raising Christian kids, and have multiple kids each, we are both choosing at this point to send our kids to public school. The trend seems to be to home-school, so there are many sites on that topic. But that's not what we feel led to do with our families (at least not at this point). So since, we are choosing to send our kids to public school, we want to be as prepared as possible, build strong relationships with the staff and faculty at the school and be advocates for our children in any way that they need. We also want to help other parents join us in creating successful school years for their children.

So how will we organize these thoughts?

We are toying with the idea of going through the alphabet--one letter per week and explore words/concepts that begin w/ that letter during the week. But we've got to get busy because school starts...soon!!!



So tonight's homework....brainstorm blog titles and website/domain name ideas! We need to find one that is catchy, content appropriate and most importantly, available!

The Blogging World -- Wordpress design

Oh my goodness. Blogger is soooo much easier to maneuver than a wordpress layout. Yikes! For a non-techy, Audrey is in over her head. Thankfully, big sis Margie, and her hub Walt, come to the rescue! They navigate it w/ ease.

We were trying to choose a layout. We found some educational layouts, but they were either too young, too weird, to modern or too blah. Finally we found one that has a red schoolhouse on it, to go w/ our name: http://www.schoolhouseabcs.com/ !

Now to figure out where to put everything. We would really like for it to look and feel professional, but approachable. Parent friendly, but also parent-respected. That's a difficult balance!

While that is being set up, we are trying to think of ways to market this new endeavor. How do we get the word out? An unfamiliar shyness creeps in and all of a sudden we both feel like--what if people think its dumb? Honestly, how old are we? And we're still worried about what our friends (or more poignantly, our Facebook "friends") will think about our new pet project. I guess no one wants to fail, and even worse, to fail in front of your friends.

But if they don't still love you after you fail, were they really your friend to begin w/????