Life as Mom – 15 Years Later

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It’s a little surreal to be writing this post. This weekend 15 years ago, I was having coffee with a friend who happened to be a “mega blogger”. She encouraged me to start a blog for moms, sharing some of the things I had learned and was continuing to learn. So that weekend, I did, with the focus of helping others…

do what needs to be done as a mom and homemaker without going broke or freaking out.

family around birthday boy with Indiana jones cake.
The Indiana Jones Birthday Cake was my first “viral” post.

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It was 2008. Blogs were the new, hip thing. As a freelance writer looking to supplement my family’s income, I started a blog not really knowing what I was doing or how it could contribute to our finances.

(Spoiler: turns out it was advertising, cookbook writing, and self-publishing.)

Twitter and Facebook weren’t very popular then. Pinterest, Instagram, and Tiktok didn’t even exist. The world was very different then.

I was very different then, as was my family.

At the time, I was pregnant with our sixth baby, we were deep in debt, and trying to get right side up so we could move back home to California. I was basically trying to do what became the overall mission of Life as Mom:

Do what needs to be done as a mom and homemaker without going broke or freaking out.

the mission of life as mom
kids at beach with the one in the front flexing his muscles.

Our kids were little. At the time I hit publish on the first post here, we had four little boys, ages 10, 7, 5, and 3. Our baby girl was a little more than a year old, and I was pregnant with the caboose who turned out to be another girl.

I myself was about to turn 36 and thought I knew so much. Whew. How much more have I learned in that time! Basically, that I don’t know a lot, but I’m still learning.

The internet and Life as Mom readers in particular helped me navigate the days of raising my kids and figuring out what it was to be a healthy woman. So much of that is recorded here in the archives of the site:

I’m so thankful for my fellow moms who took the time to comment and offer input. I didn’t have the “real life” community that I had anticipated, but you all stepped in like rock stars.

Where we are today

Fifteen years later, and we can say a lot has changed, both on the internet and in my real life:

  • We moved back to California, though are not sure we’ll always be here.
  • We paid off our debts, sold a money pit rental house, and have maintained a 6-month emergency fund, while renting and saving for the future.
  • We’ve taken our kids on extensive trips to France, the UK, and Hawaii.
  • Our kids have grown! FishMan26 has graduated college, established his career, and gotten married. FishMan22 has also graduated college debt-free and is in the early days of his tech career. FishMan20 and FishMan18 live at home and commute to a state university. FishChicks16 and 14 are in home high school, but it’s nice to see that we successfully prepared our homeschoolers for college.
  • That blogging friend and I have since parted ways, but I deeply appreciate all that she offered in advice and encouragement and have sweet memories of those early days as bloggers together.
  • While Life as Mom (the blog) was once my focus, as my kids grew I realized that I needed to protect their privacy more. Instead of blogging regularly in this space, I put more of my attention on writing cookbooks and crafting Good Cheap Eats. I’m excited to be able to write a little more regularly here, while still respecting my teens’ and adult children’s privacy.
family wedding picture.
We didn’t plan to look like a mafia family; no one told us that our eyeglasses had turned into sunglasses for the photos.

Where we’re going

The internet continues to change, with new advancements in AI, a recent flood of publishers in the blogging space, and more and more social media platforms, there’s no lack of information out there.

My goal is to provide information that is helpful to moms who don’t want to go broke or freak out.

Many Life as Mom readers have grown right alongside me. You, too, are watching kids graduate from high school and college and get married.

Others are still in the throes of it, raising littles and trying to figure out the whole woman/mom thing.

Trust me, I’m still figuring it out, too!

My hope is that this can still be a place for moms to find inspiration and actionable ideas, as well as to know that they aren’t alone in the daze.

Look for a fresh post each week here in this space, focused on topics such as budget living, family travel, and home organization. Scroll down for my most recent posts.

And please don’t hesitate to write me (jessica at lifeasmom dot com) and let me know what topics you’d like addressed. We’re in this together, my friends, just as we have been for the last 15 years.

Thanks for reading!

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2 Comments

  1. Hi Jessica! I’m a long-time lurker, rare-commenter who’s been following since the beginning – 2008! I was a 20 year old newly wed then and now I’ve got an almost-8th grader and almost-6th grader. It’s been so fun to follow along over these years! Your cookbooks always make the cut when I purge my collection. And multiple recipes of yours are family favorites. The raspberry cream cheese coffee cake especially! Thanks for all you do and I always look forward to reading your new posts (especially the pantry challenges… love those the most!)!
    Emily

    1. Emily! Thanks so much for saying HI. I recognize your name for sure so not so much of a lurker, but I had no idea you were a newlywed. Wow!