Method to my Madness

Yesterday I posted my update on the 365 day Photography Challenge I entered in 2021. I posted a photo everyday, 365 days! Most of my photos were either Lia, gardening, cooking or nature related. Those are everything Lia loves to do! I did the photo challenge because I love taking photos but there was also a method to my madness in my photographs and blogs.

Okay I’m going to back up a bit for anyone who doesn’t know or hasn’t met Lia. Lia is our 5th great grandchild and her mommy is our 5th grandchild. She was born on August 23, 2018 and has been the center of attention to so many from day one. I always say Lia was born with a smile and continues to share her love, compassion and smiles to everyone.

My Facebook and blogger friend, Brenda who writes beautiful poems nicknamed Lia “little Ms. Sunshine” because Lia is always so happy and smiling. I think that name is so fitting for Lia. One of the poems Brenda wrote is “Earth Angel” and she dedicated it to Lia!

Lis is a princess in pop’s and my eyes and loves to cook, bake, and do crafts. She is so creative in many ways and has a flower garden plus vegetable garden. She enjoys taking care of both and when the vegetables are ready, she helps prepare them for the freezer so we can have “fresh” yellow squash, peppers, zuchinni and eggplant throughout the non-growing season.

We had a spot in the back yard that was just weeds so pop and Lia turned it into Lia’s Reflection Garden. After finding an old rusty shovel buried, we had a fun day turning it into a golden shovel! Lia painted her feet pink for the shovel and with a little paint, Alex turned it into a butterful! This is a poem I wrote about the Old Rusty Shovel.

Painting is one of her passions and yellow is her favorite color. We never know what her paintings will turn into but they always have a touch of yellow in them. She enjoys giving them to her friends just like she does with her baking.

Since COVID started over 2 years ago, she has always been a mask advocate and making sure people wear them. Lia was only about 1 1/2 years old when masks were mandated and to teach her about wearing a mask, we had her puppies mask up too!

Lia has also been our official Minky quality control inspector since she gas been 4 months old! I started our Minky blanket business right after she was born after making Lia our first Minky blanket for her baby shower! http://themarthareview.com/process-for-creating-a-minky/

One other thing about COVID, it has restricted Lia from visiting her little friend Carlos who she met when she was 6 months old and Carlos was a year old. It’s hard to tell little ones they can’t visit their friends and can only wave to them from across the street. Lia and Carlos are best friends, sometimes Lia is like a little mother to him, shouting out orders!

Same with the elderly neighbor across the street, no more visiting her with yummy cookies that Lia made and no more sitting and chatting with her. One day we saw Ruth sitting outside so Lia and mommy made big signs with hearts on them and another saying, “Hi Ruth.” Lia stood at the end of the driveway filled with chalk hearts so Ruth could see the signs. She stood at the end of the driveway waving to everyone that went by and they would wave and even stop by to yell hi back! Lia is full of compassion and love to everyone.

I do product reviews and thought that’s something Lia can do! Lia started “blogging” and doing product reviews when she was about 6 months old! I made her a blog category on The Martha Review for her blogs, Lia the Baby Blogger! When she got a product, she would check it out and I wrote a blog on it. From there her and I started writing weekly stories and I come up with the Friday Story Time by Lia caption. Most of her stories are about things she has done, places she has gone or silly photos. Just before Lia turned 3 years old last August, I realized she’s not a baby anymore! Another Facebook friend wrote and told me Lia needed her own hashtag of #ADayInLiasShoes so I thought that would be perfect for her “big girl” blog category. So just before her birthday we unveiled the big announcement of Lia’s new category to the world! I like tinkering around with my photos and came up with these for Lia. The first one is BookBrush and the other three are done on Canva.

At the time I started coming up with blog ideas, I didn’t think of doing it for any reason other than having her followers keep up with Lia’s escapades of sharing cute stories and smiles. But as the time went by I came up with another idea. I want to take all the blogs we have written together and turn them into a book! It will be a big undertaking and I should have thought of this earlier so I could keep up with it but those that know me, know I love a challenge! So my challenge is to but Lia’s blogs into book form and present the book to her when she turns 18 years old. I’m sure she won’t remember all the fun she had helping pop with the yard work and gardening, baking with me plus so much more but by giving her a book of memories she will either have a good laugh or an UGGGG! I’m hoping she will enjoy reading what she did in her younger years with pop and me as she turns into a young adult.

So there you have it, a method to my madness with the escapades of Lia turned into a book! Definitely a Day in Lia’s Shoes fits the Princess’s blog category!