We left town for our first ever Blog Retreat late summer 2012. Three days of brainstorming, eating, and drinking resulted in the creation of our blog “Friendship, Life and Style” (FLS). We spent most of the time on sofas in the living room surrounded by books and magazines, each armed with a laptop and an iPad.
We began our brainstorming process by answering a list of questions such as how are we alike and what are our differences? What interests do we share? And so on. This led us to refine the list of topics we wanted to blog about, and how we could share our responsibilities. We all agreed we should “go big or go home” in terms of commitment to a daily blog with quality content.
Why, you might ask, would three women who already have seemingly enough to do commit to taking on yet another fairly time consuming project? The answer is simple. We are transitioning (kids grown, retirement looming, etc.) and want to do something to keep our minds actively learning, share our likes and interests, and most importantly to give us a good excuse to get together and continue to do fun things as friends. It is also important to note that a goal we share in this endeavor is to not embarrass ourselves too badly!
It took us the better part of the first day to come up with our blog name (FLS). A break to go out to dinner, and the rest of the evening was spent on the deck outside looking at the stars and feeling fortunate to have such good friends.
Day two we were so energized by our progress that we went through three pots of coffee and stayed in our pajamas until noon. After much debate, we hashed out our five topics and decided who would be primarily responsible for each: Fashion (Heather), Food (Ann), Frugality (Sheila), Furnishings, and Fun. The last two topics will rotate between us. After that we wrote our profile. Difficult to wax poetic about yourself, but wonderful to hear your best buddies say nice things about you! Out to a late lunch (do you see a common theme here?) and back to the sofas to peruse books and magazines on our intended blogging topics.
On our last day, you guessed it, we went out for breakfast. A comment from a guest as we entered the coffee shop was “Girls’ night out for breakfast?” and another pleasant customer said, “You ladies look lovely!” Was this a sign, or had we overdone the eyeliner for that venue? Back to the sofas and our laptops. Our goal for the day was to get into some of the technical logistics of the blog…….easier said than done. After some frustrating attempts, we decided to put the process on hold, and focus our energies to thinking of topics for posts and agreed to do independent research about the complexities of blogging.
Here we are several months later, actually starting our blog. We hope that you will follow along as we contemplate what it takes to be stylish, eat well, and get the most from life!
