Aussie YA Bloggers Secret Santa Blog Hop #AusYASecretSanta

After blogging for the last four years, this year is really the first year I have really started to get to know my fellow Aussie Bloggers and get involved in the australian Ya blogging community.  So it is already the first year I have been lucky enough to participate in #AusYASecretSanta.  One of the requirements is to answer the below 5 questions as well as leave some clues so that our Santee might be able to guess who their Secret Santa is and I have had a lot of fun answering the below questions.

You can check out the other hoppees here

1. What are your top 5 favourite books this year?

• Queen of Shadows
• Ten Thousand Skies Above You
• Vision in Silver
• Shadow Study
• The Ruby Circle

2. How did you go with your Goodreads challenge?

I did exceedingly well this year.  My original goal was 106 but i hit that in november so i extended it out to 120 and I am currently 5 books away :-)

2015 Reading Challenge

Nikk has

read 115 books toward her goal of 120 books.

hide

115 of 120 (95%)

view books

3. How many times did you post a week on average? Do you think you’ll post more/less in the future?

I posted 1-2 time per week on average which was mainly done in big blocks of weeks where I was posting multiple times per week then post nothing at all for another few weeks .  My main goal for 2016 is to post with more consistency.  Ideally at least  1-2 review per week, twice weekly post some memes and a couple of blog tours and giveaways each month

4. What is your favourite blogging moment/achievement of 2015?

My favourite blogging moment achievement this year was finally starting to build a relationship with some Australian publishers and to start getting some print books from here in Australia as well as the e-books i was getting through Netgalley and Edelweiss.  Some of the biggest books I was looking forward to this year I was lucky enough to receive early to review which made reading them all that more exciting. I just hope my reviews are justifying the faith of those sending me these awesome titles to read (and reminds me i have two more reviews I need to write tonight...)

5. Did you read mostly review or non-review books this year?

I think i read mostly review books this year but the spread was reasonably even and i still was able to read other books that were purely for pleasure and not to review.  And of course there those that were both

6. What are your blogging goals for 2016?

As mentioned above, i would like to get some more consistency in my blog in 2016.  My job has recently changed so my time and energy levels outside of work hhave also changed which has affected my ability to post regularly so i am hoping to sort that out earlier rather than later in 2016.

I am also looking to start a second blog review children's picture books. I am loving reading to my three year old and there are some great books out there.  So I would really ove to start highlighting them a little more 

7. What books are you looking forward to in 2016?

just off the top of my head, these are the first few that come to mind

• Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop
• Night Study By Maria V Snyder
• The Storyteller's Muse by Traci Harding
• Throne of Glass #5 by Sarah J Maas
• Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine.

Based on the answers above, have you been a good or naughty blogger this year?

I was originally going to say that i was somewhere in between but looking at my goals I set at the beginning of the year, I actually think I have been quite good ( or at least better than last year).  I am still posting posts literally by the skin of my teeth time wise and have had a few relapses to the no post weeks/months but i think over all my blog has improved for the better this year so i am going to go on a limb and say i have been a reasonably good blogger this year

Leave 3 clues to help your santee guess who you are!

1. Your blog header has one of my favourite books in it and I may have mentioned another book by the same author in this post...
2. I really liked your review of What We Left behind
3.  You are a relatively new blogger

Examples of clues you can leave:

• Your santee’s latest blog post
• Describe your santee’s theme
• A recent comment you left your santee

Bloggiesta 2015 - Sign Up Post and To Do List

It's been a couple years since I last participated in Bloggiesta  as I have a really bad habit of finding out about it usually after it has already started.  So this year it was great to find out about it early so I could participate from the beginning.  I have just been a bit disorganised about organising my sign up post. This is part of the reason why I need to participate in Bloggiesta in the first place :-P

So in August I decided its time to take my blog to the next level which means committing to more reading and reviews, more blog posts and getting more involved in the blogging community.  So in September I have been attempting to become more organised with my reading/reviewing /posting schedule.  Which makes it the perfect time for Bloggiesta.

Below I have put together just a few of the things I would like to accomplish during this years Bloggiesta

1. Write 3 - 5 reviews - Wrote 2
2. Post 3 reviews
   - Posted 2
   
3. Post 2 blitz posts - completed
4. Schedule 2-3 weeks of meme posts
5. Organise my reading schedule for the October and November - completed
6. Prepare blogging schedule outline for October and November
7. Participate in 2-3 mini challenges
   - half completed
   
8. Participate in 1 twitter chat - managed 2!! :-)
9. Post a give away hop post - completed
10. Visit 10-20 blogs and comment on them
11. Follow at least 5-10 more blogs and 5-10 more bloggers on twitter, instagram and Goodreads

The scary part is I could probably add more to that list but I will hold off for now and see how I go. 

Are you participating in Bloggiesta 2015?



Day 10: Email Signatures - 31 Days of better Blogging Challenge from Parajunkee.com

Your Task Today:

Your task today is to revamp your email signature.

So given I work in an administration role in real life where I am constantly on email and it is important to have a professional looking signature, this is one particular task that wasn't too hard. That being said, while I know to have a professional looking signature when I send an email, I have always just adjusted it as I sent the email depending on who I was emailing.

So today's task has given me good reason to finally make an actual saved default signature in Gmail that will now automatically be put on all emails I send. Unfortunately however I have not quite worked out how to save multiple signatures so I may still have to adjust every now and then depending on who I am sending to.

I would welcome any suiggestions or tips on how I can set up multiple signatures in Gmail

Do you have a default signature on your emails and for your blog emails?

Want to join the challenge? Check out Parajunkee's View for all 31 days of this challenge :-)