okay all — it’s time! we’re starting the ‘blog it forward‘ mashup this week, on wednesday, february 10th! and this first theme is “what inspires you personally?” to view the complete schedule at any time going forward, click on the ‘blog it forward’ badge in the left-hand column of my blog.

basically, here’s what will happen:

• if you looked at this list over the weekend, please double-check your post date, as i messed up and left a few bloggers out in error. sorry, kids, this was a lot to take on.

• fyi — this was on first-come-first-serve basis, so there was no criteria for joining except that you write a personal blog and you emailed me to join in. so please, no one feel excluded. i did not choose any blog over another, and i just wanted you all to know that, so no one feels hurt. the spirit of this is to share some new and maybe not as well-known blogs, so i hope everyone finds some new inspiration!

• this was also not an exact science, and i had to keep track of over 300 emails, so in an effort to be consistent, i have made every effort to list the blogs alphabetically, by the name on your banner (as url’s are not always current), so please look for your name alphabetically by the name of your blog.

• ten different starter bloggers will start the posts simultaneously on wednesday 2/10, posting about what inspires them. and then each one of these blog posts will then link to and introduce the next blogs that post on thursday 2/11. see this page for the full blogger links, and schedule, and it should make sense. we are doing this simultaneously because there are just so many of us, and otherwise we’d be at this for an eternity!

• those scheduled for thursday 2/11 will then post about what inspires them personally.

• those blogs will link back to the post before theirs on 2/10 and then introduce the next blogger up after them, on 2/12. that way, we create a chain of posts, or our virtual ‘blog it forward‘ mashup!

• those scheduled for friday 2/12, will then post about what inspires them, and link back & forth as described above.

• we are skipping weekends, so the next group of bloggers scheduled for monday 2/15 will post and link back & forth, and so on and so forth.

• if you want to, you can add the ‘blog it forward’ badge to your site – you can download different badge sizes here.  a zip file will automatically start downloading onto your desktop (or wherever you set up your downloads to go) and inside the zip file there are six different badges you can use (if it doesn’t unzip automatically, you should double-click the zip file to open).

• you can link the badge to the ‘blog it forward’ page, so readers can see the full list of bloggers participating and the schedule at any time. this is not required, but the spirit of this thing is to share all our creativity, and get new blogs seen, so it would be wonderful if you could. or, link back to your own post — whatever you choose. feel free to cut and paste the schedule & links to your site as well.

• it’s really important to keep the chain going, and not skip, or miss your date. if you think you are going to miss your date for any reason as we go along, please alert me, and the blog before and after you. i’m not going to be monitoring or reminding you, as i am a bit too busy, and i know we are all responsible bloggers, so please keep the spirit of this alive, as is only fair, so that blogs after you don’t miss the chain. i’m sure you understand how much work went into figuring this out (and my brain hurts really bad!), so please keep a sense of community in mind.

i hope this all makes sense. thanks again so much to everyone involved, and all the readers! if you missed it this time, and if all this works well, we’ll hopefully do this again soon!

xo, victoria

[* thanks to ez of creature comforts for creating our badges, and to hijiri of heart fish for helping me create our 'blog it forward' page!]