Time for an installment of Weekend Things

This week’s installment has lots of tips, tricks, and food-for-thought for food bloggers, authors, or anyone in this space, or thinking about entering this space.

I didn’t plan it, but kept coming across great articles and posts that I think are spot on. And that made me chuckle and nod in agreement.

1. But first, Tori Spelling featured my Peanut Butter and Nutella Snack Mix on her site here. That was pretty cool!

2. She also pinned my Healthy Fudgy Brownie Bites (no-bake, vegan, GF, grain-free/Paleo, soy-free, no added sugar or salt) the day after I posted them. I was so flattered!

3. Lindsay’s 5 Time-Saving Tips for Food Photography – I found myself nodding in agreement to all, including her rant where she said props don’t make food photography, skills do:

{Soap box side note: I love props, but can I just say this? Don’t overdo it with collecting food prop stuff unless you are the White on Rice couple. When your photography is your livelihood and you are just generally that cool, you’re allowed. But for most of us, we simply do not need 29 styles of cake stands. In the Philippines I had a total of about 10 dishes, I swear, TEN, to work with all year. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. Props don’t make food photography – skills do. End rant.}

 4. I guess I didn’t get the message about collecting props.

This is just a little of what I’ve accumulated after nearly 5 years of blogging and a shooting a couple cookbooks.

And there’s plenty more where that came from.

We haven’t even talked wood boards, linens and fabric, stemware, silver, platters, vintage pieces, vintage bakeware, it just goes on and on. I love dishes and hunting them down, the thrill of the hunt, is so much fun.

5. Russell is at it again, hitting the nail on the head with Kitchen Loiterers, part 3 to his Day in the Life of a Food Blogger series. Honest and hilarious, and spot on.

As much as I love my family, the minute I start a photo shoot, why does everyone suddenly need to be in the kitchen, open the fridge, get water, make a sandwich, or want a bite of something I just made when we have 17 dozen different flavors of cookies in the freezer that I could give them.

As food bloggers, our kitchens are our offices. Glad that I’m not the only one a little protective of my office as Russell pointed out.

6. How Food Stylists Make Food Look Delicious – A look inside their toolkits from Bounty Select-A-Size paper towels to tweezers for moving an errant sesame seed.

 

7. The Food Network UK featured 4 of my recipes in their Things to Make with Boxed Cake Mix story

8. Think you want to write a cookbook? Read this first. I was nodding in agreement to most of it. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows and fluffy Peanut Butter all the time.

It’s worth it in the end, but if you’ve ever wanted to write one, just make sure you go in eyes wide open.  Like parenting, you can’t possibly know what you’ve really said yes to and what’s all involved until you’re there and in the thick of it, but the author compares birthing a baby to being easier than birthing a cookbook. I concur.

Here she details taking photos for the cookbook shoot. If your photography skills aren’t good enough shoot your own cookbook, the rate for 32 recipe shots was $16,000, payable by the cookbook author from their advance, to a photographer.

9. Jen’s post on 8 Things They Don’t Tell You When You Start a Food Blog – Everything from spending half your life on social media to needing to be able to understand the technical stuff, it’s all spot on. Like Jen, I thought that if you were a reasonably decent cook, and had recipes to share, that was enough. Wrong.

You better become a photographer overnight as well as learn computer programing if you want to make your blog something more than just a ‘hobby’ and be taken seriously.

10. We’re in the process of moving this weekend and my life has been insane. I have been living out of boxes for a couple weeks and am so ready for it to be done. I spent Thursday carting stuff over to the new place and Friday movers came for the big stuff. We moved all of 1.5 miles away, but whether you’re going one mile or 500, it doesn’t matter. It all has to get from Point A to Point B.

I will not sleep until everything is unpacked. I hope by Monday. Or Tuesday. And I love my new place already!

My posts are pre-cooked and pre-written so stay tuned for your regularly scheduled sugar fix while I unpack in the 90F heatwave. You won’t miss a beat while I sweat it out over here.

Thanks for entering the two giveaways going on: $25 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway and the Crock-Pot Hook Up Connectable Entertaining System Giveaway ($140 value)

What are your Weekend Things?

If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.

If you’re a blogger, author, photographer, or wanna-be, feel free to share your tips, tricks, thoughts on anything you’ve learned along the way, things you wish you’d known, things that have really helped you, things you wish you didn’t ever come to know (like what HTML code is) or things you could do without, leave your wisdom below.

If you have thought about doing any of the said things but never have, what’s stopped you?

Enjoy your weekend!