A little look back

I just realised that last week, the 12th to be exact, was my seventh blog anniversary. (Wow, seven, I cannot believe it's been that long). This is the first time in seven years that I am mentioning my blog anniversary. It's not a big deal, really, but there it is - proof that I can start something and keep going at it, even when I want to give up. My first post was without photos, frills or flounces and was simply called About Me - no prizes for guessing what I was talking about. Seven years ago I was clueless buy I've learnt a few things along the way. Taking better photos was one of them.

Today I would like to take a look back at my ten most popular posts (according to Blogger stats) during these seven years. I thought it would be fun for my newer readers to re-visit some of them.

10. Down the garden path and into mystery

This is the only entry from 2015 that made it to this list. It is a whimsical look at one of my favourite public gardens. A garden with a wonderful view and one which, in my imagination, I have made mine. That's the beauty of having an imagination - everything is possible.

9. The words of my life

It was Jeanne, from Collage of Life, who came up with the idea to write down a list of meaningful words. The list of words that I came up with summarised my life - up until that point. It would be interesting to repeat the exercise every few years to see which words change and which remain the same. In reality, I don't think that there are many words that will change. The list will just get longer.

8. Fabulous Fridays - Friends

I usually stay away from the computer during the weekends but sometimes, on Fridays, I will choose a theme and try to write something really light and fun. Just something to make you smile before the weekend madness. After family, friends are the most precious people in our lives. And when they are friends that we have known since childhood, they are even more precious. This is what this post was all about.

7. Discoveries

This is probably one of my favourite entries. I remember that when I was writing it, the words just seemed to flow out of my fingertips and I was really happy with the end result. It was just one of those perfect winter days, when spring is in the air and anything seems possible. Add a little discovery to the mix and it just makes for a wonderful little adventure.

6. Four things

This was a meme I was tagged in where I had to share with my readers things like: Four things on my wish list; Four things I'm looking forward to; Four places I'd like to go. You get the picture. It was an easy way of sharing some information about myself and letting my readers get to know me a bit better.

5. Adele, Amadeus, and Aerosmith … with some Apocalyptica thrown into the mix

A rather long title for a post in which I wrote about my favourite music.  Reading it again I've realised that I had over-simplified things quite a bit. Maybe  it's time to write another post about this subject.

4. Fabulous Fridays - Love

Love, the feeling that best defines our humanity. This was my take on the most talked-about sentiment of them all.

3. Fabulous Fridays - Tangerine Tango

Tangerine Tango was Pantone's Colour of the Year for 2012. I am not the type of person who follows the dictates of Pantone. I use the colours that I love when it comes to our home and to my clothes. Sometimes Pantone's colour of the year happens to be one of my favourite colours. But, more often than not, Pantone can say what they  like. I will stick to the colours that I love best. I mean, seriously, who really goes and changes all their home decor because the colour of the year is Tangerine Tango one year and Emerald the next?

Image via Pantone

2. Ruby Tuesday - All aboard

Ruby Tuesday was a photo meme in which each person had to share a photo with something red in it. All the participants would then link up and  visit each others' blogs. It was a fun and easy way of getting comments  and making new friends. It also kept me on the look-out for red things to spot, which isn't difficult because red is one of those colours that really stands out. In this particular entry I had shared some photos of the little sight-seeing train that goes around the town of Rabat and which my son, then aged three, absolutely loved to ride.

1. Ruby Tuesday - Vintage sign

Another Ruby Tuesday post; I am not sure why this is the most popular entry in all my years of blogging. It is really short and the photo is not particularly  nice. My guess is that it became popular because of the word 'vintage' in the title. I know that a lot of people search for all sorts of vintage items on the internet. Ths sign was an advert for Campari and I came across it while on holiday in Tuscany in the autumn of 2009.

We were visiting the beautiful, walled-city of Lucca and they happened to be having an antiques fair. I absolutely adored it and there were probably about thirty things that I wished I could have brought home with me. Alas, I listened to the voice of common sense and left them all behind. But should any of you wish to take a peek at some of them, you may go here. I just wish that I had posted larger  versions of the photos.

So there you have it. I am disappointed that none of the pieces in which I wrote about my travels have made it to the list. It seems that Fabulous Fridays are quite popular - maybe because they are usually light-hearted little pieces that don't take too long to read. If any of you are visiting some of these posts and finding missing photos that I had linked to from Pinterest, I apologise. For some reason, the links are broken and I learnt a valuable lesson.  These days, I only use my own photos (except when talking about Pantone, I suppose). Your encouraging comments have helped me improve and, nowadays, I rarely need to rely on someone else's photo - even though I have always given full credit when linking to photos from Pinterest.

I hope you had fun visiting some of the pieces that I wrote when this blog was still fairly young.  Let me know what you think.