Once again I am in awe over the level of participation in ThanksBlogging!  Especially considering the upcoming holiday and the sort-of short notice we gave you regarding the challenge.  We appreciate all of you who were able to participate and appreciate those of you who weren’t yet still took time out of your day to read posts and leave comments.  We hope these challenges have led you to new blogs and to find new online friends through social media.

We will not be having a blogging challenge in December.  The holidays are important family time and we want you to be able to focus on that.  We will return with another blogging challenge in mid-January that will be geared towards helping you kick-start your blog for 2013.    You will see more challenges similar to this months PicMonkey challenge where you are called to do something or learn something that could help you improve your blog.  As always we want AWB to be an open community so if you have ideas for future challenges or suggestions to make them run smoother, work better, or whatever – please don’t hesitate to send us your ideas.

For now lets take a moment to review what we did for ThanksBlogging and take a look at a few of the highlights of the week.

 

ThanksBlogging Day 1 – Outside the Walls – PicMonkey Challenge

A few weeks ago Gina wrote a really great intro/tutorial for PicMonkey.  In our first challenge of ThanksBlogging we asked you to take pictures of some thing you were thankful for and experiment with PicMonkey to edit and/or alter your photo.

Some of you discovered that you LOVED PicMonkey.  Leslie over at Nobody Gave me the Instruction Booklet wondered where PicMonkey has been all her life.  She took a super sweet photo of her kids and transformed it into something really special.

Some of you were willing to give it a whirl and found that it just wasn’t your kind of thing.  Jodi of Everything and a Race Horse was bothered by the way PicMokey automatically cropped her photos when she was creating a collage. Jodi has vowed to stick with her own brand of editing in the future!  (And that’s TOTALLY okay!)

ThanksBlogging Day 2 – Thanksgiving Memories

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that seems to evoke a wide range of feelings, memories and traditions.  For a few of you the holiday was a difficult time as you dealt with the loss of loved ones, split families or just hard times.  For some of you Thanksgiving was really just another day and for some of you it’s a big deal that you look forward to every year.

Heather Davis of Minivan Momma (our honorary Arkansan!) wrote about fancy dress-up dinners and drunken showings of Top Gun.  Seriously.  I can’t make this stuff up!

Erin at Bideawee always enjoys a BIG family Thanksgiving and looks forward to listening to Perry Como each year.  You can see the video in her post.

ThanksBlogging Day 3 – I am thankful for…

Today we asked you to express some of the things you are thankful for this year.  And BOY is there a lot to be thankful for.  Even if this year was a tough one for you, I can bet that when you really think about it you have quite a bit to be thankful for.

Stephanie, founder of AWB and also known as The Park Wife, wrote a heartfelt letter of thanks to the many members of Arkansas Women Bloggers who reach out beyond their computer screens to get to know each other in REAL life as well as online.  I think we can all agree with her sentiment.

Kelly Jo from Delta Moxie put off making her grocery list to write a list of things she was thankful for including something she describes as “Bomb-diggidity”!

Kris (Moody Mom over at Little Rock Mamas) is thankful for a flat tire! I’m serious y’all. Check out her post to see how she put a positive spin on “the day from hell”.

ThanksBlogging Day 4 – 10 Reasons you Need a Facebook Fan Page – Facebook Linkup

If you guys haven’t liked Gina’s Facebook page yet, you really need to! She is so desperate for followers that she thought she could trick you all by linking up her Facebook page SIX times!  I have evidence:

 

Just messing with you,Gina! We love you!

If you haven’t had the chance to follow these wonderful ladies yet, please do! They share some amazing stuff on their Facebook pages and it will give you another way to connect.

Angie (A Growing Season) reminds us in the comments that you can like pages from your personal Facebook page as well as you blog/business Facebook page! Great advice, Angie.

ThanksBlogging Day 5 – Ham and Turkey Leftover {Foodie Friday}

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the food!  I look forward to the meal all year and for a few days I just EAT and don’t even give second thought to calories. (Not that I really do on normal occasions but I digress.)  The problem always lies in the leftovers.  Sure a reheated plate of the main event is good later that night and maybe even the next day but then we all long for something just a little different.  So today we challenged you to share with us your favorite recipe for all that leftover turkey and ham.

Peggy over at Pork Chop Tuesday shared a yummy recipe for a  Turkey Cranberry Wreath and a few other party food recipes.

Brittney from Ramblings of a Little Wife cooked up a delicious looking ham and potato soup with her ham leftovers.

And Jessica from Life with the Bauer Boys didn’t share a recipe but they do have mashed potatoes on their heads!

ThanksBlogging Day 6 – Twitter Linkup

We ended the week by giving you a chance to link up your twitter feeds.  If you haven’t given everyone a follow, please do so!

Whew! What a week!  Thanks for playing along and now for the winners! Congratulations to….

Jodi B.  of Everything and a Racehorse and Kelly Jo M. of Delta Moxie!

You will each receive an AWB T-shirt, a copy of Lela Davidson’s book Blacklisted from the PTA and a handmade Christmas ornament from Julie of Eggs and Herbs!