Celebrating Ten Years of Blogging

Celebrating TEN Years of Blogging!

6/14/2020

On June 14, 2010 I started blogging! That was ten years ago and it feels like another lifetime, on one hand.

Back then I was 24, working in downtown Honolulu, and sharing an apartment with my boyfriend. I watched the movie Julie & Julia and acted on a wave of inspiration to start a blog and challenge myself in the kitchen much like Julie did.

One the other hand there are so many things that remain the same after a decade.

I'm 34 and living in Seattle now. I'm still taking photos of my food, trying new things in the kitchen, and sharing my adventures via blog. That boyfriend upgraded himself to husband and cemented his role as in-house dishwasher.

Let's take a little journey over the last ten years, shall we? I'm watching Julie & Julia now for a proper journey down memory lane!

The very first post was lasagna. I remember it taking so very long to make and tasting delicious. The website was colorful and cute while the photography wasn't great.

A Tale of Two Blogs

I've had two different blogs over the years.

First there was Aloha Yinz Mangia, pictured above, was the original. That blog was all about food, cooking, and restaurants. The odd title covered my location in Hawaii (aloha), my hometown of Pittsburgh (yinz), and my Italian heritage (mangia). I used blogger to host and a point and shoot camera to photograph my food. When the flash wouldn't automatically work I'd turn off the overhead lights in my kitchen to force the flash!

Aloha Yinz Mangia is near and dear to my heart. Stand out posts include:

Making our family cannoli for the first time
Announcing our engagement
The forever favorite recipe for broccoli, chicken, cheddar braids
Celebrating the one year anniversary of blogging (no others have been celebrated since)

Figs and Flights launched in 2016 after we moved to Seattle. I turned 30 and felt that a fresh start and new blog name was necessary. I wanted to incorporate travel into the content and had quit eating meat and wanted to anew with relevant foods.

My favorites on Figs and Flights include:

The first Fav 5 Travel Guide - Las Vegas
Paris {The Food} - a culinary dream
The recap of the first Figs and Flights {event}

An honorable mention was one of the first projects, where I blogged every day during Advent leading up to Christmas one year.

Challenge & Reward

I am so proud of both blogs!

I began blogging to challenge myself in the kitchen to become a better cook. My cooking skills have grown a ton with every post and my photography, food styling, and writing have all improved as well.

Every time one of you shares a culinary success or travel tip with me I know this is the way to connect with my people who love food and travel the way I do.

Last year I expanded the Figs and Flights brand into events. I've worked in events for years so doing them on my own terms was so rewarding!

This year we started making YouTube videos. Vlogging is a totally different from blogging and creating and editing videos is a nice little challenge and I love having our stories and memories captured in video.

I'm not quite sure where we're going overall, or even next, but I have had SO MUCH FUN along the way. Thank you for reading, watching, cooking with and supporting me over the years.

Life fueled by food and travel