Goal Lists and Blog Critiques: Do Both!

So January is generally when goals are made, dreams are dreamed in technicolour, and hope for the future is at an all time high.  I usually make a personal goal list every December/January for the new year.  I don't always accomplish everything on my list and some make it onto the following year's list.  

A sample from last year's list:

Accomplished: Read 100 books

Not Accomplished: Ahem, those last 15 preggy pounds

This year, my blog made my goal list: I would like to see growth as well as an improvement in content and display.  I found a couple of blog checklists that gave me a few ideas and I have implemented a couple of them.  (The LinkWithin gadget is one - I had seen the suggestions pop up under posts on other blogs and wanted one so badly for my own blog!  Checked off the list now.) 

But, then I found a fabulous blog critique party and joined!  It was GREAT!  Two lovely bloggers, Alyx and Stephany, were kind enough to send me wonderfully constructive advice and a great review of my blog.  All the participants used this blog critique checklist.  It is awesome to get honest advice from another blogger!  I could ask my hubby but he would tell me it looks great no matter what (and I am sure that, to him, it does), so getting input from others doing the same thing is so helpful.

For example: I have a widescreen monitor at home.  And at work, I have a double monitor setup and both monitors are widescreen.  So when I widened my blog a couple of weeks ago to enable the words in my top ten posts to show up as actual English words (like Millennium Falcon) instead of 

Mi

lle

nn

iu

m

Fa

lc

on

Well, because I am never on a regular sized monitor, it never occurred to me that making my blog fit my widescreen monitor may be a problem on other monitors.  Lesson learned!  (Fix coming soon!)

I give this blog critique party two thumbs up, and I would definitely do it again!

Aaaaand, because I can't leave without a picture, my sweet lil dancer had her first ballet lesson last night.  Here she is!

Unfortunately, joyous pirouettes and excitement didn't happen.  We left early in tears...   Oh well, next week's class cometh.  Fingers crossed!