Birthday - Chimp Status

This post is going to be the most important one of all if you have a blog of your own, and I know a lot of you do so I hope I can help you out with this: Email Subscriptions.

Aside from that, I wanted to show you what I got for my birthday (the picture on the left). And I wanted to talk about that for a bit as well for those of you not interested in the blogging aspect of this post.

I also wanted to mention a few ideas I have for the blog that are up and coming... So let's get started! :)

I'm going to start with the birthday present. It was a really nice and very shocking gesture from my boyfriend's mom. Alvaro (my boyfriend) wasn't even expecting that to happen, but I just absolutely love the bracelet! I usually just get a card or something my mom likes or something I asked for beforehand, so this surprise gift really means a lot to me. It makes me feel like she's taken the time to get to know me, whether in person or through facebook, and she picked something out on her own that I actually really, really liked!

I know my family definitely learned their lesson in buying me clothes and accessories for my birthday or christmas. Those types of gifts from them usually end up in the back corner of the closet, or three years later in the spring cleaning bag being sent to goodwill. I don't think they ever learned what style I like, and even if they did, they probably never liked my style at all. Especially during my middle school years, I was always wearing dark clothes... Like my closet was literally black, grey or red.

For one of my birthdays during that time, I got a $100 shopping spree from my parents (mom & step-dad), with one condition: THEY will take me shopping and THEY will pick out what I wear. I said absolutely not because I figured they'd dress me in ugly pink frou-frou clothes, like my dad who had bought me an extra-EXTRA-small Hot Pink Hollister Tank Top... Which I wasn't even near fitting into, I was more like a large in Hollister size back then! I was into Hot Topic only and there was no changing that. I remember having this huge argument with my mom about wearing black nail polish. "It comes off in a week and everyoneee has black nail polish, I need to paint my nails black!" Same thing with eyeliner. I would cake that thing on my face like I was a three year old with a jumbo sharpie and a nice white wall in front of me.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is basically... I don't know... I guess I feel like I'm getting close to my boyfriend's family and it scares me a bit. It's hard to admit, but I gotta let it out. I feel like if I get too attached, something will happen and I'll lose another set of awesome parents. And I'm starting to get scary close, like I've almost called her "mom" a couple of times because I have her like that on my phone, which actually used to be my boyfriend's little brother's phone. Even the phone! My boyfriend's dad pays for my phone! He gave it to me when Jose (little brother) got an iPhone and he's been paying for it... And he wants to give me an iPhone too! Like I really don't know how to handle this. They're very generous, kind, and loving people. I wish I knew a better way to show how much I appreciate them. I wish I could spend more time with them too, but I'm drop dead scared. I'm scared of getting too attached. I got attached to the neice and nephew of my ex-boyfriend of three years, and that was the hardest good bye I have ever had to go through. And even better, my boyfriend has a one year old brother that I'm starting to get attached to also. But I think I'm dealing with this better than before, for sure. I used to avoid the whole "getting close" thing, but it just changed at some point. I became more comfortable in my own skin and I started to realize that the people that stay are meant to stay, and same thing with the people who leave. It's their loss anyways, I'm an amazing person to get to know and be with (affirmations are so hard for me haha i'm trying!).

Let's change the subject now before I make this post any longer.

I have a few ideas for my blog that I wanted to try, which definitely includes guest posts. I want my boyfriend to write once in a while. He's been getting better and better in writing for college and such, but he just needs that confidence boost! So I'll see if I can convince him. I also have three people in line for guest posting about Music Therapy, Dreams & Success, and my friend and her 30 Day Challenge! I'm really excited about those posts, so I'll let you know when those come :)

Also, if you have your own blog, pay attention to this paragraph. Especially if you use blogger, you probably installed the default FeedBurner "Subscribe By Email" widget onto your blog. I know a few of us have been having problems with emails going out and such, and I think I found the solution: MailChimp. If you're subscribed to my blog, you may have gotten a notification of the change, and the updated email feed, finally. My FeedBurner email service has been behind by a day for a while now, or hasn't even sent out the emails at all... And if it does send it out, it wouldn't be sent in my preferred time frame. It was so frustrating, and I had heard of similar frustrations. So I Google'd for a while, and found out that FeedBurner is not being worked on or managed at all. What? Definitely not worth it, even if it's free. I want something that is constantly being improved and updated, just like my blog. I've used MailChimp before, and I'm going back to it because it's the best free service I've found so far. If any of you know of a better service, please let me know! But for now, I'm recommending all of you bloggers to check out MailChimp. You can import all of your FeedBurner subscribers, or any other service, with a CVS / Excel file. You can make a campaign to notify them of the change and a campaign for your RSS feeds to be emailed out. Everything is customizable: Email templates, subscription sign up, social media linking, analyzing clicks and emails opened, etc. It's been a good experience for me so far, so I hope this can help you guys out if you've had a hard time with FeedBurner or are looking for a free alternative. Love you all.

Kat <3