I am so happy to be participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge for July 2013!  I did this once before, but it was with my old blog, and it was not all that successful.  But this month is the perfect time to do it!  My blog is about a month and a half old, and the story of how this blog came about is pretty interesting.  Many of you probably know the story if you followed my old blog, but let me tell you a bit here.

Back in late June 2010, I decided it was time to truly begin blogging.  I had a personal blog, My Devotional Thoughts, but it was just that–personal and really only for me.  I was on the old blogger platform, and the link was http://mydevotionalthoughts.blogspot.com.  Actually, that link still works.  But it is sorely neglected.  I quickly paid the money and I dropped the blogspot part of my address.  And so began a lot of work on my part.  I knew very little, but I followed loads of blogs, and I tried to learn all that I could.  I dreamed of the day when I would be a “big time” blogger, and within a couple short years, I truly had arrived.  Companies, authors, and more were contacting me right and left!

After nearly three years of working my tail off on this blog, my site’s rating was just about to make a dramatic turn for the good.  I went to bed the evening of May 7, 2013, and when I went to sign into my blog in the morning, it wasn’t there!  I had read the horror stories of bloggers who had their blog deleted by google, but I figured that would never happen to me!  After all, I never spammed anyone, but google said I had.  And so began the next few days of horror as I created a temporary blog and eventually started a brand new blog–that you see here.  I had saved a lot of things from my blog, but I didn’t understand how to back up my entire blog like I thought I had.  I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.  I will never make that mistake again.

Twelve days later, after I had contacted so many people and google over and over again in many ways, my blog was miraculously restored!  But I was happy with my new wordpress site.  I just spent the time transferring my posts, and then made sure not to renew my google address.

The most annoying thing about making the switch is that I am still waiting on my google ranking to be updated.  Most of my followers have come back, and my Alexa rating is doing really well.  (If you don’t understand those terms, don’t worry–they’re blogger terms that just talk about how popular your site is.)  I have been denied for some promotions, but then my reputation is pretty solid within the blogging community that the domain change did not make a real difference.

Now, why would you want to follow someone like me?  Well, because you can be assured that there will be a lot of reviews, giveaways, and the ever-popular “This Day in History” posts.  I never dreamed how much people would like those posts when I began them.   But I believe that my love for history and the daily postings of these has become something so many of my readers enjoy.

There are many ways to follow me, and you can find them on the sidebar.  I have a lot of work to do to get this blog looking like I really want it, but until that time, I am pretty satisfied.

Do you wonder about the name of my blog?  Well, my wonderful readers, I am a Christian, and everything I do on this blog and in my life is for His glory.  I’m not saying that everything in this blog is overly religious nor preachy.  But I review everything from a Christian perspective.

Do you wonder about this lovely blog design.  I’ll be honest.  It is carried over from my blogspot days.  I won a giveaway, and I got a blog makeover.  I tried to find the maker later on, and every time I do, I can’t.  Evidently the designer has moved on.  As to the picture, I downloaded it for free from the web, and I have since made sure that I did not steal it.  All the things I have learned about copyright issues do make me wary.

Thank you for reading, and I am looking forward to keeping this blog challenge going!

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