PASSION......AND MY BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT!

What's your passion?

People aside (that's a given!), what is it that..........

Gets your juices flowing?

Puts a spring in your step? 

Makes your heart beat faster?

Has you doing a little tap dance?

It's no surprise to many of you that my passion is.......
 Travel.

Even when I'm not physically traveling, it's always on my mind.

My picture frames are filled with places we've been.
I'm always thinking about where to go next.
My bookshelves are loaded with travel books.
I'm reading about intriguing destinations in the newspaper.
Souvenirs I've collected are all over the house. 

My travel bucket list is longer than a CVS receipt.

When I first started Ms. Toody Goo Shoes five years ago, 
I barely knew what a blog was.

I was eager to start writing, and so I focused on a number of things that interested me........

Baking, home decor, gardening, travel, and a bunch of other random things.  

I always felt like my blog was a hodge-podge........

not that there's anything wrong with that;

it just didn't feel right for me.

If I am completely honest with you,

I never felt I was 100% in my zone.

I never pretended to be an expert in anything.

I simply wrote about things I liked,
 with an "if I can do this, it can't be all that hard" attitude.

For the first few years of blogging, I enjoyed staging photos.

Finally, all that stuff I had collected for no apparent reason found its way into my posts.

Somewhere along the line, I grew tired of the time and effort it takes to do a blog shoot.

 I wondered whether I should give up blogging altogether.

Becoming an Instagram blogger wasn't the answer,

because it's not the way I want to tell my stories.  

After a bunch of soul searching, 

I realized that I still want to blog.

I love writing, taking pictures, and telling stories. 

I want to use my photos and my words in a way that comes naturally to me. 

I don't want to say, "Wait! Don't eat till I take some pictures!"
(unless it's while we're traveling, wink wink!)

And, mostly, I don't want to clean up my house in order to take pictures for my blog. 😀

An idea had been percolating for awhile.

When the answer came to me, it was.......

As clear as the sky in Santorini.......

As clear as the turquoise water in the Caribbean........

As clear as the church bells in Europe. 

I want to write about travel.

Simply put, I want to take pictures of places,
and use them to tell stories.

And so, friends, I'm officially switching gears. 

You may now refer to me as a travel blogger, thank you very much!

True, I don't travel constantly like other travel bloggers do.

SO...........
I'll just have to be a little creative. 😀

When I do go somewhere, I'll write about it, of course, 
but not all of my posts will be
"Here's where I went, and this is what it was like."
Frankly, I'd get bored doing only that. 

I plan to do themed Travel Collages like this or this,
 using pictures from places around the world.

I live close to New York City,
and I'm going to focus on that more intensely.
Heck, it may not be a travel destination for me,
but it is for 99% of my readers! 

Travel doesn't have to be a plane ride away...........
It can be a cute little town nearby, can't it?

Who knows...........I might even do a recipe here and there 
if it is something inspired by my travels.

And..........I do plan to continue my monthly Photo Diary,
as an excuse to use pictures of my dog and flowers and such! 😜

For now, I'm keeping the name Ms. Toody Goo Shoes,
but I have changed a few things.
I've modified "About Me" on my sidebar;
made some changes to the tabs at the top of my header,
(new tabs include Travel Collages and New York City),
and revised my tagline.

So there you have it. 
 
Grab a seat in your favorite armchair,
and let me be your virtual travel guide! 
Oh, the places we'll go! 

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