Happy New Year + First Blog Giveaway!

HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS!

I can just already feel that God is going to bless us with a great 2014! How did y'all spend your New Year's Eve? Hopefully it was surrounded by those that you love. Any one make it up to New York City to see the ball drop in person? I have to say, being in Times Square to celebrate a new year is on my life bucket list!

The family and I hung out at our home like we do every year and I was thankful that Josh was able to join us once again. Originally, Josh and I were going to attempt to spend NYE in Charleston, SC but my work schedule has me going back out this weekend for the next 5 months so I'm trying to soak up all the time I can with my family. Instead we played games, ate lots of my mom's yummy food, and counted down the last few moments of 2013. No matter how you brought in the new year, I hope you loved every second!

Now on to my BIG and EXCITING news! If you read my post yesterday, you learned that today I was making an announcement that I could not wait to tell you all. Well, here it is: I'm hosting my first giveaway! A few days ago I finished reading the wonderful book by Joy Cho titled "Blog, INC." and knew right away I had to give a copy to one of my wonderful readers. The book description goes as follows:

via

"With roughly 95,000 blogs launched worldwide every 24 hours (BlogPulse), making a fledgling site stand out isn't easy. This authoritative handbook gives creative hopefuls a leg up. Joy Cho, of the award-winning Oh Joy!, offers expert advice on starting and growing a blog, from design and finance to overcoming blogger's block, attracting readers, and more. With a foreword from Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge plus expert interviews, this book will fine-tune what the next generation of bloggers shares with the world.

Learn how to: - Design your site
- Choose the right platform
- Attract a fan base
- Finance your blog
- Maintain work/life balance
- Manage comments
- Find content inspiration
- Overcome blogger's block
- Choose the right ads
- Develop a voice
- Protect your work
- Create a media kit
- Leverage your social network
- Take better photographs
- Set up an affiliate program
- Partner with sponsors
- Build community
- Go full-time with your blog
- And more!"

I could not put this book down and took so many notes which have made me all the more excited about Southern Abundance and the direction it will go in 2014! So here's the time frame, the giveaway is open now and will run through 11:59pm on Wednesday, January 15...aka you have 2 weeks to enter! Note that tweeting daily about the giveaway will allow you to enter you name in it even more so feel free to do so! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I'll leave you all with a few not-so-high-quality pictures that I found via New Year's Eve family video circa 1999. You know the year right before Y2K came and the entire world was supposed to crash? Well, I guess my 9 year old self wanted the fam to wear hats that year! And from the second picture I guess we survived into the year 2000! HaHa Enjoy :-)