This blog has gone through a few transformations – in fact, I just did the rebranding of it and combined it with four other blogs I had going. On day 2 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge, the topic is to write about the backstory, so here’s this blog’s backstory.
Not Quite Ally McBeal
When I first started this blog, I started it as a way to write about current events and pop culture. I’d been planning to go to law school – until I decided to scrap that plan. I started by listing my “theme song” of the day before writing my commentary. I was a single mom of one when I started the blog, but met my now-husband and felt that the blog no longer reflected who I was.
Wining Wife®
I got married, and my husband and I were going to a lot of wine tastings. I also was thinking a lot about how to organize my life and decided to divide things up and compartmentalize a lot more. So, I transitioned the blog into a lifestyle blog focusing on wine, food, and life and I moved my current events/activism commentary to Activism My Way. We were living in Northern California at the time, and it was easy to find new wineries to tour and new wines to review. We had a lot of fun. Then, I got pregnant with my second child, who is now 8. Then, after I got started reviewing wines again, I got pregnant with baby 3, now 6. Shortly after he was born, I started Just a Secular Homeschooler and Ronda B. Handmade. I’d just launched the latter when I found out I was pregnant with baby 4, now 4 1/2. Somewhere in there, I also started my website, Ronda Bowen focusing on all the different things I was doing professionally – and I had that as separate from my professional services site, Writing, Research, and Editing.
The Move to Consolidate
Last year, was… a lot. Well, actually 2020 – last year is now 2021! My oldest, now 23, had COVID (he’s since gotten a LOT better, but that was a really traumatic journey), and then I found out I was pregnant with baby 5 – now 8 months old. So, when the year ticked over to 2021, I had to start letting go of various balls I’d been juggling. I decided that my word of the year would be “simplify,” and that I would merge all my social media. As you can imagine, having multiple social media profiles got quite overwhelming quite fast.
While I was consolidating those profiles, I was also trying to figure out what to do with my blogs. In November, I decided that Wining Wife® wasn’t really who I was anymore. After all, I’m now a mom of five kids. After a lot of thought, I decided that I would recombine my blogs in the spirit of simplification. (I’m also planning on consolidating my business pages). I needed something that would encapsulate all the things I want to write about. Here, I write about food, coffee, wine, homeschooling, parenting, volunteering & activism, home decorating, and my hobbies.
The Well-Caffeinated Mom
Anyone who knows me knows that these days, I run on coffee. Lots and lots and lots of coffee. I really ought to cut back, but that’s not happening anytime soon. Homeschooling 4 kids and running a business from home in a pandemic is rough. I do a lot of things and wear a lot of hats. Thus, The Well-Caffeinated Mom was born because, well, I’m definitely well-caffeinated. It also was a name that would allow me to consolidate all my blogs.
A Chronicle of My Life Since 2011
As I’ve been going through old posts on here, making sure that the branding is consistent throughout, I’m really moved about the fact that this whole blog chronicles where I was in 2011 when I met my husband, our dating journey, the early years of our marriage, and our evolution as a family. It means a lot to me that you’re here for the ride and that I have a platform to share all the things I’m passionate about.
