Housekeeping

 A quick watercolor painting I did a couple years back. I took this with my camera, which is why it's sort of off-kilter.  Scanning would probably do a better job. But one step at a time, right?

This is more of an interlude than a post. I have a few updates, all of which are fun, but none of which had enough wheat-meat to warrant a separate post.

VeganBlogs

The first is that SSW is now listed on VeganBlogs. This gives the site much more coverage online.

The purpose of starting this blog over a year ago was to help family and friends better understand why I suddenly eschewed all animal products, what that looked like, what the health and environmental benefits were, and what animal agriculture business looked like to individual animals. I think too that often when one makes an overnight change like that, it can look a little cultish (and cultish ain't my bag). But the truth is, I just don't want to hurt animals. It's as simple as that. And the animal agriculture industries hurt them, no matter how many pretty humane/cage-free/organic/grass-fed labels you slap on the neatly packaged meat/eggs/dairy. 

Along the way, though, I found that readership was increasing to people I had not met (yet) and that as my circle widened, I was learning from them and joining a community of enthusiastic and creative people.

Since joining veganblogs, I've seen hits on SSW increase substantially, which is exciting! If you want to help out, you can go to this link and hit the "Boost" button. There's also a link on the right side of this page. The more boosts SSW gets, the greater its visibility online. You can even boost once every twenty-four hours, should your little heart desire to do so! But simpler would be to just press "boost" after you've read a new post. And if you're up for it, any comments you can add in that link's comment section would be immensely helpful. Thank you in advance!

Vegbooks

I've recently become a contributing writer to Vegbooks, which describes itself as "a resource for parents and teachers who want to support the vegan and vegetarian kids in their lives." To learn more about how Vegbooks started, read here. This site is a great place to learn about new (and old) books and movies for kids. (I first heard about it from the lovely gals from the Our Hen House podcast.) Here is my first post on the Lorax. I'm currently working on my second which should come out soon. I'm excited to be writing for such a fantastic website!

Vida Vegan Con (Say it three times fast.)

"See? I told you she joined a cult. I just knew it."

It does sound funny, doesn't it? Almost like a Star Trek convention or something. (Nothing against Star Trek, of course.)

In fact, it's a three-day conference of vegan bloggers in Portland, Oregon in May 2013, and yours truly will be there! (I'm bummed I can't stay longer, as my brother and his gorgeous family live in Bend, but I'm going to be taking red eyes to and from the conference so that I don't miss work. Being a teacher doesn't allow you to take long trips outside of our scheduled breaks. I'm not complaining, mind you -- that's just how it is.) I cannot express how excited I am to be meeting so many cool bloggers in person and to be attending workshops run by the superstars I've come to admire so much.

Legality, paintings, and photographs

As I mentioned before, this blog was started as an easy way to share with friends and family. I didn't anticipate it going anywhere beyond the borders of those I knew. But I did want to entertain, because good writing should do that. I'd often copy cool photos or videos I found online onto the site, never thinking about copyrights or such, since I wasn't making a dime off of it. I recently came to the realization -- particularly since the readership increased -- that I needed to be more mindful of what I was putting on here in order to be respectful to the owners of said photos and videos. To be frank, I feel like a schmuck for not having given it more thought before. (insert chagrined face) Thus, I've gone back and taken off a lot of images, and I'm starting to work on the videos. So you might notice some changes to past posts.

What you will see added shortly are sketches and watercolor paintings I've done to flesh out posts and add some personal zest.  I'm looking forward to it! In the past, I put a great deal of effort into each piece I've done.  It will be refreshing to do more whimsical drawings and paintings. (see above painting to get a glimpse.)

As well, I'm learning how to use our camera so I can include more photographs with posts.

One Lovely Award

Recently, SSW was awarded the One Lovely Blog Award from the equally lovely Epicurean Vegan, so I'll soon be doing a post on that to pass on the love to the many blogs I frequent and admire.

Oh, praise be, she's almost finished this endless drone of babble

And finally, I'm starting to think about creating an actual independent SSW website. I've barely scratched the surface, so any advice from more experienced bloggers would be very welcome!

That's the news for today. Thanks for reading!