So if you care to find me ...

... look to the western sky The Everygirl and the San Jose Public Library blog! :)

photo via Instagram

Hello, readers! I just wanted to pop in and update you on my long absence from Semi-Charmed Kind of Life. I don't have plans to return to regular blogging in this space anytime soon, but I am keeping the blog open to continue my seasonal reading challenges (the summer list will be posted on May 15, with the challenge running June 1 - August 31!) and to make a transition back to blogging easier if and when and I decide to pick it up again.

In the meantime, you can find my posts about travel (and possibly other subjects quite soon) over at The Everygirl, and you can read my bookish posts on the San Jose Public Library blog. As always, feel free to keep up and interact with me on Instagram and Twitter!

P.S. — If you understood my title/intro of this post, I hope we're best friends. ;)

Discovering new blogs: A giveaway!

Good morning all! I hope your Saturday is filled with watching football, sipping coffee, reading, hanging out with friends, soaking up the last rays of summer, and/or whatever else makes you happy. AND, I hope this chance to win $100 makes your Saturday a little better! ;)

Allie from Call Me Sassafras contacted me this past month to pitch an idea: A giveaway where participants not only needed to mindlessly click through social media links to join, but actually had to get to know us a little better in the process. Doesn't that sound fun? Plus, it's a great way to find new blogs! I've been reading Call Me Sassafras for as long as I can remember, and Allie is always funny and honest and writes about neat topics that I can't find anywhere else in my Bloglovin' feed (e.g. useful science!). In fact, you should definitely check out her giveaway post today, which includes four easy and effective ways to discover new blogs.

And now, for the main dish, here is the blog scavenger hunt to help you discover and love some new blogs!

Let's Discuss: Book Reviews & Ratings

photo via Instagram

This might come as a shock to you, but ... I always skip book reviews in my blog feed. (But I will skim your monthly recaps and check out your ratings! Just not your reviews.) That might seem weird, considering I love reading and blogging about books, but I don't particularly love book reviews for a few reasons:

1. I'm terrified of spoilers.
2. Lately, I've been picking up books that look interesting or have gotten a lot of buzz without necessarily knowing what the story is about. A book review would give me more information than I want to know.
3. If I want to read reviews, I just go to Goodreads. (Are we friends yet?? Check out my reading history here!)

Reader Survey Results & What to Expect in 2015!

photo via Death to the Stock Photo, design by Megan

First, thanks to each and every one of you who participated in my reader survey last month! I've finally gone over the results, so today I wanted to share the highlights and also how I'll be using this information to improve Semi-Charmed Kind of Life this year.

By the Numbers: 2014

Sunset at Railay Beach, Krabi, Thailand

This past year was certainly not as travel-heavy as 2013, but Jonathan and I were still able to visit a few states and travel abroad once for our honeymoon. We also traveled quite a bit within the state of California throughout the year, including weekend trips to San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, and multiple trips to the Central Valley for wedding-planning shenanigans.

The Best of 2014: Written

I'll most likely be absent from this blog until after the New Year as I celebrate the holidays (except for the second Semi-Charmed Winter 2014 Book Challenge check-in on January 1 of course; I promise I won't be late this time!), but I wanted to publish one last post of 2014 to share some of my favorites from the year. These are not necessarily the most popular posts of the year (I'll share those in my annual By the Numbers recap), but instead these are the posts I personally enjoyed writing the most. I hope you enjoy reading them as well!

Do you have five minutes?

Then pretty please, take my reader survey! :) It's super short (only 11 questions, and most are multiple choice or yes/no; all questions optional) and will help me improve Semi-Charmed Kind of Life even more in 2015! I've embedded the survey here to make it easy peasy for you to participate. All feedback is appreciated! :)

Powered by Typeform

The survey will be open until the end of the month, so if you don't have five minutes today, please come back again in the next 31 days and share your thoughts!

If you are a blogger, have you ever done a reader survey? What was most (and least) helpful about the results?

P.S. — It has come to my attention that several people were unable to take the survey because the formatting was wonky. I sincerely apologize! This appears to be a browser issue (i.e. it looks fine in Firefox, but is tiny and impossible to take in Safari). If the survey box above is not working for you, please feel free to visit the survey at this link. I really appreciate all your feedback!

Best of October: A Month in Review

I was going to wait until next month and wrap October and November up together, but with me getting married and all in October, I thought it deserved its own post. ;)

Most Popular on Instagram & Notable Events

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

I have a new foolproof way to get more than 100 likes on an Instagram picture! It used to be simply "include Jonathan in the photo," but now I think "include wedding dress" would work as well. ;) I've calmed down on posting wedding photos a bit recently, but that's just because I'm waiting for our professional photos to come back. Be sure to follow me on Instagram at @mcstroup if you want to see those babies when they're available! (I'm also known to post photos of books, coffee cups, and vacation destinations near and far.)

Best of Summer: Four Months in Review

Wow, has it really been five months since I posted a monthly review? Although, to be fair, I've posted less than 15 times total since then, so I guess there hasn't been much to review on the blog. ;) As far as life goes, though, oh boy! Lots has been happening around my real life lately, as you may already know. Currently, that includes lots of homework, writing wedding thank you notes, and taking care of some last-minute preparations for our honeymoon next week (eek!). I know I have a lot of wedding sharing to do here, and after I get back from our honeymoon, I know I'm going to want to post a million pictures, so I thought I should catch up on the summer (June through September) quickly before moving on to the very exciting months of October and November. Without further ado ... this summer in review!

Most Popular on Instagram & Notable Events

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Considering my obsession with Instagram, there was no way I could boil four months of photos down into just four picks! :) So today, you get to see the nine most popular photos from my summer feed! (To be fair, this photo was tied for 9th place, but the triathlon bib got more comments.) As you can see, my summer mostly consisted of wedding planning (including my bachelorette party in Vegas—woohoo!) and drinking coffee, but I managed to throw a triathlon in there, as well, and a trip to Seattle for my grad school orientation. By the way, I noticed that once again any photos with my fiance husband in them automatically get more likes. ;)

Weekly Wishes: Back-to-Blogging Edition

photo & design by Megan

As I am sure most of you have also discovered, sharing personal goals in a public forum helps keep us accountable and motivates us to complete our goals on-time. Therefore, what better way is there to celebrate my return to (regular) blogging than by participating in Melyssa's Weekly Wishes link-up? I'll keep it short and sweet this week (I don't want to overcommit myself too early and get frustrated), but I do plan to check back in at least monthly and continuing setting new goals for myself and Semi-Charmed Kind of Life. Here is what I want to focus on for this week (and the rest of September):

1. Draft an editorial calendar. I don't plan on posting more than 3-4 times a week, but even so I think it will be very helpful to plan out my posts so I have a good balance of content (link-ups vs. original topics, books vs. travel, photo-heavy vs. text-heavy, etc.).
2. Organize my Bloglovin' feed. One of my favorite parts of blogging is reading all your blogs. That being said, I have gotten dreadfully behind on my feed. It's time to rearrange my folders, remove those blogs that are no longer active and maybe even add some new reads if I'm feeling adventurous. :)
3. Develop a social media strategy for my Facebook page. My Facebook page for Semi-Charmed Kind of Life is grossly underutilized. Sometimes I consider deleting it altogether because I think it's worse to have an inactive social media account than not have one at all. Do any of you with Facebook pages have any "best practices" you could share with me??

Of course there are plenty more projects/improvements I want to work on, but this seems like a good start for this week. What goals are you currently working on?

P.S. — If you're stopping by from the link-up, be sure to check out my photo challenge to celebrate Banned Books Week, going on now!

Linking up with Melyssa for Weekly Wishes.

Change on the horizon ...

This picture doesn't have anything to do with this post; I just like it. :)

I have big news! But, like any good blogger, I can't just come out and say it. I have to keep you coming back for more. :) Plus, I thought it would be fun to hear what you think my big news is.

New Book on the Shelf! (Summer Book Swap)

Hosting reading challenges attracts a lot of book-loving bloggers to my little corner of the Internet. One of these bloggers is Carly from Carly Blogs Here, and when I heard she was co-hosting a summer book swap with Tiffany, Emily and Lauren, I knew I had to participate. What's better than getting a book in the mail?? (Getting a book paw-delivered to you by a corgi, of course. Sorry, I've just been on a huge corgi kick lately....)

Anyway, I was so excited to be paired with Sara from Life & Leopard—she's a fellow Literary Junkie, so it was fun to have a familiar name to swap with. And when she emailed me her favorite authors, I just knew I'd found my reading soulmate. So of course I was confident I would receive an awesome book from her, but I didn't expect her to know me quite so well.

Best of April & May: Two Months in Review

Once again, I completely missed a monthly check-in, so I'm going to fill you in on two months of happenings in my life and on my blog today. I have to say, it was kind of weird thinking back to April and what I did that month. I fluctuated between "That was really two months ago? It feels like yesterday!" and "Oh my goodness, that was only two months ago? I barely remember that." Is anyone else feeling like 2014 shouldn't be almost halfway over already???

Most Popular on Instagram & Notable Events

1 // 2 // 3 // 4

So basically, y'all are telling me the only thing you like better than photos of books are photos of my fiance? I can't say I blame you. ;) But really, April and May were relatively tame compared to some of our busier months this year. We celebrated our one-year engagement anniversary on May 18 by registering for wedding gifts, treating ourselves to In-N-Out and opening a bottle of wine my sister and her boyfriend got us from the vineyard where we got engaged. I also started my third annual summer reading challenge (it's not too late to join!) and have been reading some great books (details below).

June is shaping up to be another crazy month; we had family visiting this weekend and we'll be out of town the next three weekends, but we were able to take some time this afternoon to nap and for me to catch up on some blog reading. Oh—and did I mention we're training for a triathlon? We're on week five of the training plan now to plan for the big race on July 19! (That reminds me: I guess we'll also be out of town at least the first three weekends of July as well! Yikes!) Looks like my next two monthly recaps will be chock-full of fun stuff. :) For now, continue reading after the jump to see what you (and I!) liked the past two months.

Go Green! (Mental Health Awareness Swap Reveal)

A few weeks ago, I found a green-themed accessories swap opportunity on A Cute Angle. As if I wasn't already sold on the idea of getting a fun new green accessory, I then discovered Ashley was hosting the swap in honor of National Mental Health Awareness Month (May). I was partnered with the fabulous Maddie over at The Whimsy One. It was so fun learning about Maddie through her blog (right off the bat, I discovered we are both huge bookworms) and shopping for some green goodies to send her way. As with any swap, though, the best part was opening my package and seeing what Maddie had picked for me!

Maddie said she wanted me to "pamper myself" with this package, and I will definitely take her up on that invitation! Plus, I love fuzzy socks. I wear them around my apartment all the time when we're too cheap to turn the heat on. ;) And I painted my toenails within about five minutes of opening my package and seeing that glorious mint polish:

Blogger Revealed: All Things Considered

For my birthday earlier this year, I invited all my readers to ask me anything about my blog and/or life. I got a lot of questions about Semi-Charmed Kind of Life's two most popular topics (books and travel), so I answered those questions in their own post already. Today, I'll be sharing my answers for all your other random yet awesome questions! Here goes....

Travel Tuesday: Top Travel Blogs

Welcome back to Travel Tuesday, a weekly travel link-up for you to share any and all travel stories, tips and/or tricks! Today I'm sharing a handful of my favorite travel blogs to read. If you want to share your favorite travel blogs as well, be my guest, but don't feel obligated to write about the suggested topic.

Exceptional (Former) Expat Blogs

As I was listing my two selections for this category, I realized they aren't actually expats anymore! Melyssa and Chelsea* were both expats when I first started reading their posts last year, but they've each moved back to the States in recent months. (That doesn't mean they don't still have great travel content, though!)

By the Numbers: 2013

I could pretend I waited until now to post this so it wouldn't get lost in all the other 2013 recaps in your blog feed, but let's face it: I just hadn't gotten around to compiling everything until now. :) My numerical summations of 2011 and 2012 were so fun, I thought I would do another one for 2013! Enjoy....

Pay It Forward: Blogger Style

Early last month, I got an email from one of those big, inspiring, has-more-followers-than-I-get-page-views-in-a-month bloggers, Rachel. She wanted to offer me a free ad space on her blog! I was so honored, especially because Rachel is primarily a travel blogger, and that's why I originally started this blog: to record and share my travels. This all came about because of a little project called Pay It Forward started by Stephanie at Be So Happy.

Weekly Wishes #1

I may be getting my wisdom teeth extracted today and I may or may not spend the rest of the week crying through my gauze and watching Criminal Minds reruns while eating nothing but pudding (banana split and chocolate/vanilla swirl, to be precise), but that doesn't mean I can't have goals to accomplish this week!