Pieces of Anna

The lovely Amanda, of Poppies and Ice-cream , asked me to contribute to her breakfast club series, and so I happily sent along a recipe that includes some of my favorite foods: tomatoes, bacon, and eggs. :) Check it out here .

The lovely Amanda at Poppies and Ice-cream nominated me for a little blog award a week and a half ago, and I am embarrassed to say that it's taken me this long to finally post about it. Shame on me. I do have a couple of possibly legitimate reasons for my blog radio silence lately. One is that I started a new job after being unemployed for half a year, and it is taking a lot of my time and energy. The other reason is a secret project that I cannot reveal to you just yet, but will hopefully be able to tell you about it in about a month or so. Stay tuned! Anyway, as a nominee of the award, you have to mention the blogger who nominated you, tell 11 random things about yourself, answer the 11 questions by the blogger who nominated you, pass on the award to 11 other bloggers, and ask them your own 11 questions. So, here are some random things about myself: - I really, really, really want a cat. I've been wanting a cat for years, but the landlords in our area te...

I am currently taking a web design class (thank you, unemployment , for the gift of free time), and it has inspired me to make some changes around the blog. After learning a little bit about the concept of user experience, and then observing how I interact with some of my favorite blogs, I came to the realization that the design of my blog made it difficult to navigate it. Readers were finding the blog through links or searches, but it appeared that they were not finding other content that was relevant to what they were looking for, even though it does exist somewhere on the blog. So, with the goal of streamlining the blog layout and making it easier to navigate, I thought about the changes that I wanted to make to the design, and I've since started implementing them. One of the first things I did was install Google Analytics to figure out where my readers were coming from and what they were reading once they got to the blog. I highly recommend doing this because the vast amount...

Can you believe that I've been blogging at Pieces of Anna for an entire year now? In honor of this momentous occasion, let's recap what happened in the past year. I started this blog to figure out what it is that I like to do in my spare time, after I realized that most of my hobbies had slowly disappeared from my life. Well, I'm happy to report that some hobbies have made a (re)appearance! But more than that, the blog has slowly evolved beyond this singular purpose into an outlet that allows me to record fragments of my life in writing. My life, in a nutshell. So what have I been up to lately? Let's see. Despite my aspirations for a career change , science will always be my first love. Chemistry never ceases to fascinate me, and if I could choose to stay in any scientific career, I would definitely become a chemist. For an amazing marriage of photography and chemistry, check out The Elements by Theodore Gray. Trust me, you will not be disappointed. And ...

Just a short post to let you know about some minor updates that have been happening over here on the blog. First of all, I finally got around to updating the header. Yay for pretty pictures! When I started this blog, I was hesitant to share it with people because it was so "un-designed". But at the time, it was more important for me to start writing than to spend time on prettifying the blog, so that's what I did. I also noticed that other people's blogs evolve and change over time, both in appearances and functionalities. So, I figured it was ok. But the blog finally feels more personalized, now that it has a brand new header. In the side bar, I've now included an option to follow the blog by email, for those of you who prefer that option. I also added a search bar that allows you to search the contents of this blog. Finally, I've updated the Link Love page to include some more awesome people whose blogs I've recently started following. So go check...