Blue-Eyed Bride charms us with her family stories
Erin Akin Carroll is the Blue-Eyed Bride. Her blog started as a place to share her wedding ideas, and as her family grew her blog has transformed into a place where she chronicles her ideas, random thoughts, projects, kitchen experiments and family stories. One of our favorite things about Erin is that her family loves to have dance parties in the kitchen! Meet Erin …
Where I’m based: Columbia, S.C.
How long I’ve been blogging: I started blogging in September of 2007, so I’m approaching my sixth anniversary — I can’t believe that!
Blog/business basics: Blue-Eyed Bride began as a way for me to keep friends and family in the loop while we planned our wedding. After we were married, I wanted the blog to continue. Now it focuses on life as a wife, motherhood, my faith, my family and all of my fun finds and recipes.
What do you enjoy most about blogging? I love the community. It’s a wonderful outlet, and the best part is that it connects you with people you otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to know. Connecting with other moms and wives has been so much fun.
Other blogs I love: Chatting at the Sky, Holley Gerth, Big Mama, Marriage Confessions, According to Nina, Kelly’s Korner and Naptime Diaries
Guilty pleasure: TV. Lots and lots of TV. Especially on Netflix when I stay up until 3:00 a.m. because I can’t stop watching. I love Scandal, Parenthood, House of Cards, Pretty Little Liars, Homeland. You name it? We probably watch it.
Last thing I bought: An adorable plaid popover shirt from J. Crew.
Fav Stores: J. Crew, Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Lilly Pulitzer, Piperlime. I love to shop online!
What’s the best party you’ve ever planned? They’ve all been special for different reasons, but I planned my older son’s first birthday party before Pinterest, and that was the most fun. All of my ideas were original ideas, and there wasn’t the “Pinterest pressure” and my mind wasn’t cluttered with other people’s ideas. It’s more fun to plan a party that way!
How has the transition from being an event planner to a stay-at-home mom? In the beginning, I felt like I had so much down time. And that was a hard transition. But, as my kids grew, and became more active, I realized that I actually had no down time at all. To get my “party planning fix,” I help plan baby showers and birthday parties, and volunteer to help with events at church and with the Junior League.
How do you balance life as a mom, wife and blogger? I realize that there has to be margin in my life. I can’t do it all every single day. Some days my kids are more needy than others. Some days I am more needy than others or my husband is really busy with work. No two days are exactly alike. So, blogging has to be put on the back burner on those days. Or maybe I don’t need to volunteer. Or we get take out. Or we decide to just stay home that day. I have to leave room for margin and I have to stay flexible. Blogging, in many ways, is a business. But I try not to take it too seriously because some days it’s just not that important in the grand scheme of things.
