General Info | Blogging | Photography | Products, Giveaways & Sponsored Posts
Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions! I love to hear from readers.
General Info
Q: What are some basic stats about you?
I am 25 years old and live in Arlington, VA–just within walking distance of Washington, DC–with Connor, my boyfriend of more than 7 (!) years and my incredbily lazy rescue cat, Max. I have two older sisters (one of them blogs too!) and am a dual citizen of the US & the UK.
Q: When did you start Blogging Over Thyme?
I started Blogging Over Thyme more than three years ago (August 2010), pretty much right after I graduated from college. I had just discovered the wonderful world of food blogs and immediately became intrigued and thought “Hey, this looks like fun. I wanna do this too!”
It started as a creative outlet for sharing recipes, life stories, and my recent love for photography. Can’t wait to see where it takes me in the future!
Q: What do you do?
I recently graduated from the professional culinary arts program at L’Academie de Cuisine. After spending six months in the classroom, I embarking on a six-month externship working at a restaurant located right here in DC. Technically, I was a line cook–you can read a bit more about what I was doing here. Read more about my experience in culinary school here (I wrote a post almost every day!).
Q: Why did you decide to go to culinary school?
That is a long story! Initially, I was planning on attending nursing school after graduating from college (I told you it was a long story…). I first started to think about culinary school after I got a job as a baker/decorator for a DC food truck. After about 8 months of going back and forth, I decided to take the plunge and go for it!
I have not regretted the decision once. However, it wasn’t an easy decision making process. To read more about it, check out these posts (Part I, Part II)…
Blogging
Q: Who designed your blog header?
Caitlin, the lovely and extremely talented blogger behind Roost, designed by header, when she ran a freelance graphic design business. Unfortunately, she no longer does freelance work, but there are tons of great and affordable options out there if you look for them!
Q: What host and blogging platform do you currently use?
Up until December 2011, I used WordPress for my blogging platform and had a self-hosted domain through GoDaddy.
Then I made the switch to SquareSpace, which is an all-in-one service provider. It allowed significantly more flexibility with designing the site (with my limited CSS knowledge) and I’ve been incredibly happy with it.
Photography
Q: What type of camera and lens do you use? Do you edit your photographs?
Most of the photographs you see on the blog were taken with my Canon Rebel T1i DSLR camera, as well as stock 18-55 mm lens. All of my culinary school photographs were taken with a simple Canon point ‘n shoot–unfortunately, the DSLR ddin’t fit in my chef pants! :)
For the most part, I shoot in manual & RAW and edit my photographs (lightly) using Lightroom 3. As of August 2012, I bought a 50mm/f1.8 lens and have been using that almost exclusively. It provides a great blurry background (known as a bokeh effect), which is great for food photography.
Q: Can I use your photography/content on my blog or website?
All of the content and photography on this website is my own (unless otherwise specified) and is subjected to copyright.
If you would like to use a photograph or recipe, please link back and provide full attribution. Feel free to contact me if you any questions!
Products/Giveaways/Sponsored Posts:
Q: Do you accept products to review, or do giveaways?
I tend to avoid lots of giveaways and product reviews–simply because I feel that they take away from the purpose of my site, which is really to focus on cooking, sharing recipes, and my writing.
However, I occasionally will accept products for reviews or giveaways, especially if I feel that it will benefit my readers or I am genuinely interested in the product. Feel free to contact me if you have an idea in mind!
Q: Do you publish guest posts?
I’m always open to new ideas, but generally I steer away from doing guest posts, simply because I like to do the majority of the writing for the site and keep it as consistent as possible for readers.