Happy Blogaversary To Us!

Hi everyone! We know last week was Christmas, and tomorrow is New Years Eve... but today is a very special day for us. Its our first Blogaversary! 
One year ago today, we weren't sure what to do. Mama and Lily had just moved back in with Gramma and Grampa and the rest of us, after their living situation got too lousy to continue. Mama was sad, bored and lonely. After she read us a blog she stumbled upon, written by a dog, we had a great idea. Why not start our own blog? Mama could help us with it, and it would give her something to focus on and be excited about. And so, on December 30, 2010,  Sammy-Joe wrote our first post introducing us to Blogville. Before long, our first twelve bloggy friends... Twinkie, Derby and Ducky, Zazou and Calypso, Harry Spotter, Honeybuzz, Madi, Maggie Mae, Jazzi, Wyatt, Mayzie, Oskar, and the Monkeys... had send us welcoming comments! 


The next night was New Years Eve, and Trixie took her turn writing in the blog. She wrote about how Mama struggles with Aspergers, ADHD and depression, which made her not want to go to any big New Years parties, but instead was home alone with us pets. We told you how we had the job of being Emotional Support Animals, to keep Mama's spirits up and keep her from being sad and lonely too much. Again, ten bloggy friends commented, this time including Mr. Pip, Priscilla and Eva, Shibasenji, Aksharaa, Daisy, Brian,  and Tom, Tama-Chan, Sei-Chan and Bibi-Chan! We knew we'd found a home in Blogville.


As  2011 came, we did so much! We got involved in doing pet product reviews, took our first Pet Blogger Challenge, joined Pet Blogs United, pawticipated in Blog The Change, raised money for a sick doggie friend, played an April Fools joke on you, celebrated our birthdays, and pawticipated in a real-life Walk-athon. 


One of our favorite memories of you all is when Gramma and Grampa went out of town and Mama became very sad and lonely. We had to be at the top of our game to help Mama! When we told you all about it, so many of you responded right away, sending Mama your love and support! It really helped us all get through a rough spot. Thanks!


You were also there for us when Lily got spayed and when Trixie had her seizure. Whenever we had something to share, good or bad, you were there for us! 


And so, as 2011 comes to an end, we wanted to give you all our love. We want to let you know that we'll be continuing to blog... hopefully even more often, and better, than we did in 2011, We look forward to making more friends, and definitely to keeping in touch with the friends we've known for a year! 


Thanks everyone! We love you all so much! 

Strange Posts Lately!

Hi friends! Are you a little curious as to why, in the midst of Apollo's Blogathon, we've started adding posts about weird things like headboards and bar stools? We think we'd better explain ourselves!

You know we've been involved in sponsored posts, right? Well, we've signed up for Blog Distributor, which has been giving us a ton of sponsored post opportunities. The only thing is, you're not allowed to mention that they are sponsored posts... or give them a title like "Commercial Break"... or label them or tag them as sponsored posts. 


Also, they don't let you add in the links to the products until they approve your posts.


Weird, right? But, if all goes well, we've made $72 from them in the past few days! 


We're still waiting to see if they actually approve and pay for all of these posts. If they do, we'll let you know, because some of you might want to get in on that. Supposedly it takes them 72 hours to approve posts, not including weekends, so we should be able to tell you something by the end of this week.


Until then... please don't quit visiting our blog! We will post our sponsored posts in the evenings, after our regular posts. If you don't want to read them, just scroll past them. (However, we've noticed some of our friends have managed to come up with thoughtful and interesting comments on our sponsored posts! Thanks for making us look good!)


As for the money we're earning... We're saving it up for BlogPaws or BarkWorld. If Mama is able to save up enough money and go to it, we will be so happy! If not, we will donate half of our earnings to Almost Home Foundation or other worthy causes. (The other half we will keep so we can keep on surviving, since Mama doesn't have a job right now!)

Is everyone okay with this? Can we get some Barks and Meows here? 

We won an award!

 Hi everyone! This blogging business is getting more and more exciting! We've now won an award! Lavi and Aschiuta from Pawprints, Ears and A Tennis Ball have given us the Stylish Blogger Award! We've never really thought of ourselves as stylish. We're usually nekked! But we are cute, so maybe that counts.

There are 4 duties to perform to receive this award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

Okay, so we'll share the 7 things about ourselves first. Since there are three of us, we'll take turns! We'll let Mama take one turn, and we'll each take two. That makes it kinda fair. Ready?

1. Trixie - loves carrots but will spit out bananas.

2. Lily - thinks she's the alphadog of the house, even though she's the tiniest!

3. Sammy-Joe = used to love to hide in the refrigerator on hot days.. until one day Mama forgot he was there, and he had to MEOW as loud as he could! After that Mama wouldn't let him go into the fridge anymore. :(

4. Mama - used to like to hitchhike when she was younger, and once got her foot run over by an SUV! (It didn't hurt. It just felt heavy.)

5. Trixie - when given a new bone, will walk around the house crying pitifully until she finds a place to hide it.

6. Lily - is great at catching... and throwing... her little tennis ball!

7. Sammy-Joe - once climbed onto Grampa's work bench, got into the catnip, ate too much, and then tipped over and fell off the work bench!

An now for the seven bloggers we want to nominate.

This is going to be really hard! We've made so many great new friends here, and we'd love to honor them all. We're trying to find people who might not have gotten it yet. If we give you the award and you already had it once, or you don't feel like doing it, feel free to ignore it! Here are the winners, in no particular order...

1. Those Elgin Pugs

2. Pauley-James- Foster Baby

3.The Honeybuzz

4. Cuda, the Deformed PitBull

5. Holly Wags

6. Jazzi's World

7. Spot - Fiona - Daisie

8.It's Me, Buddy!

9. Madi And Mom

10. Levi Mac

11. Daisy The Curly Cat

12. The Shenanigans Of Shawnee The Shepherd

13. Tucker Tells All

14. Max The Quilt Cat

15. Mayzie's Dog Blog

Wow, that was really hard! If we didn't choose you, it doesn't mean we don't love you, okay? We love you all! 

Remember, we have two giveaways going on this week... a cat toy here, and a dog toy here. 

See ya later, everyone!

5

We're Taking The Pet Blogger Challenge!

Hi everyone! We heard about the Pet Blogger Challenge, and we wanted to join in. Our job for the day is to answer these questions about our blog! Here it goes...

1. When did you begin your blog?

We just started it, at the very, very end of 2010. It was the night before New Year's Eve!

2. What was your original purpose for starting a blog?

Our Mama used to take care of her friends' kids during the day, and she had a blog about all the different activities she did with them. She had to stop watching the kids because she's going to start school this semester. Then the kids' parents got angry with her, and she may never even see the kids again. She was just sitting around playing Farmville every day, because she hasn't found a new part-time job yet and has a lot of spare time on her hands. We noticed she was starting to sink into depression and anxiety. As psychiatric support pets, it is our job to try to keep our Mama healthy! So, we suggested, maybe she could start a new blog! It would give her something to do, help her make new friends, and bring purpose to her days. She said, "But I'm not watching the kids anymore, and I don't really do anything. What would I blog about?" And we said, "How about we start a blog of our own, about life as your pets. You can be our manager." Mama said she'd give it a try, and she helped us set up a blog. The rest... is history!

3. Is your current purpose the same?

Yeah. Well, its only been a few weeks, so we haven't had much time to change our purpose. But we've also been trying to find ways of using this blog so Mama can make some extra money. It would be wonderful for Mama to turn blogging into some sort of part-time job, wouldn't it?

If so, how do you feel you’ve met your goals?

Our Mama really looks forward to checking our email every day now, and reading all the comments. She's spent a lot of time reading all of the different pet blogs, helping us think of new things to blog about, designing our blog, signing us up for social networks, etc. This blog has made her happy. So, we've done our job!

4. Do you blog on a schedule or as the spirit moves you?

Kinda both. Our Mama kinda has a schedule for us, because we all need to take turns writing, and we look forward to our turn. If it is Wordless Wednesday, or a post like this, or our Almost Home Dog interview day, then we all work together. We also try to have one day off a week where we can just catch up with blog reading.

5. Are you generating income from your blog?

A tiny little bit, so far. We wrote one sponsored post, and if it is approved, we will have $20.00! The older this blog  gets, and the more readers it has, the more opportunities we will get. 

 

If so, how (e.g. sponsor ads, affiliate relationships, spokesperson opportunities)?

We signed up with sites that pay you to blog. Blogsvertise is the one we recently wrote a post for 

6. What do you like most about blogging in general and your blog in particular (bragging is good!)?

     We love making new friends. We love reading about  people's lives and their pets. We love when people comment on our blog because it is fun to think that we wrote something, and people all across the world read it. Because its a lot of the same people blogging, and commenting, we feel like we're part of a community.

7. What do you like least?

So far we like everything! 

8. How do you see your blog changing/growing in 2011?

We want to have some giveaways. We want to participate in the Blogathon and raise money for Almost Home Foundation. We want to maybe go to the blogging conference. We just want to fully participate in the blogging world!

Thats all the questions. If you want to play along, go here! You can grab the badge and sign the Mr. Linky thing.

We also wanted to tell you that you can follow us on Twitter now. Look for the bird coming out of the egg in our sidebar. 

Talk to you later!

Cool Things You Should Click On

Hi everyone! Its me, Trixie, here for my bloggy turn!

There is not much new happening around the house right now. I've been spending lots of time just gazing out the window. You can see from the picture that I like to lay on top of the radiator! I got this idea from Sammy-Joe, who also likes to lay there a lot. In fact, Gramma originally put the chair cushion on the radiator to keep Samy-Joe from burning his little gray paws when he jumped up there in the winter. Its a little too small for me, but still pretty comfy!

Today is Gramma's work-at-home, which means that Mama spends a lot of the day cleaning her room so Gramma won't holler at her for spending all day on the computer, and Gramma spends a lot of the day vacuuming while she's supposed to be doing her work at the computer, and Lily spends a lot of the day barking at the vacuum cleaner! Lily hates the vacuum cleaner. I used to when I was a puppy, but I'm okay with it now.

We wanted to point out a few cool new things on our blog today. First, if you go all the way down to the bottom of this page, underneath the post, you'll see a visitor map! This is so we can see where all our visitors live. Don't worry... it doesn't tell us exactly where you live. We won't come ring your doorbell tomorrow or anything like that! It just tells us the area, so we can see if we get visitors from ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!

Next, in the sidebar, right underneath the labels, you'll see three pictures. You should click on these pictures every single day. They take you to sites where, just by clicking on a link, you'll help make donations to animals who don't have families. You won't have to pay any money. Businesses will donate the money! Animals will get food, and care. The "Free Kibble" links ask you to answer a trivia question about animals, in order to donate the kibble. Even if you get the trivia question wrong, they still donate. So, you help animals, and learn something new! There is one for cats and one for dogs. We think you should do both.

Finally, in our sidebar, right under our virtual pet lion Lucy, there is a box called Formspring. You can type any question into the box, and push "Send." We will answer your question! Then you will get an email telling you that we answered your question, so you can see what we said. It is just for fun! So, ask us anything!

Do you think we are doing a good job on our blog? We love it! Mama thinks our life is a little boring sometimes though, because we don't go places and do things like some of you do. But maybe we will, when it gets warmer!

Alright, I think I will go see if there is any food left in my bowl, or if Lily ate it all! Thanks for reading!

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