This Full House: Parent Bloggers Network Newsletter: Featured Blog

Behind the Blogger - This Full House

Liz writes at This Full House (her personal blog), This Full House Reviews (her review blog), and This Full House Kids (her family blog). She's also a columnist at The Imperfect Parent, and a contributor to Green Mom Finds and New Jersey Moms Blog. She has four children, ages 14, 12, 9, and 7.

You're a veteran blogger, coming up on your fifth anniversary. What got you started, and what keeps you going?

I started blogging in September of 2003 for several reasons, mostly due to raising four of the two-legged kind. I can escape to my blog anytime I want, wearing whatever the heck I feel like, and write my heart out. I love meeting moms (and dads) from all over the blogosphere and enjoy hearing from my readers - especially when something I've written resonates really strongly with a fellow blogger.

You certainly do have a full house! What an apt name for your blog.

Coming up with a catchy-sort of bloggy-type name - something that I (and my readers) could identify with - was a challenge. I often blogged about feeling as if I would be stuck in this "old house" full of dirty laundry, FOREVER. That's how This Full House was born.

Your kids are older than the kids of other parenting bloggers. How does that affect your writing?

I don't use their "real" names, because with six people living in a seven-room house, and ALL three girls sharing one bedroom, I would like them to feel as if they had some sense of privacy.

But inviting other bloggers into what is essentially "my home" has been a healthy outlet for me. The stories I share on my blog really aren't any different from what I would share with someone sitting next to me on my couch. The downside is that our house - in all its glory and imperfections - is visible to a much larger audience.

So, of course, the subject matter changes as my kids get older. I don't have to deal with explosive diapers or trying to figure out which preschool my family is going to be able to afford or worrying if my kid's going to be potty-trained in time. Now I'm worried about my two oldest daughters and their body image, going to the movies with their friends, and deciding whether they should be allowed to shave their legs or not.

However, they can read now. So I'm not going to blog about something that is going to cause them extreme embarrassement, or anything. Like, in real life. Not on purpose, anyway.

You've started a summer writing project for your family - This Full House Kids. Tell us about it!

This Full House is a work in progress - sort of like raising children, really - and I thought that perhaps helping my blog evolve into a family project would allow us to spend even MORE time together and encourage my children to write; something we ALL love to do.

Hopefully, This Full House Kids will provide them with the opportunity to start (or continue) conversations in our house. Ideally, we'd love to find other "kid bloggers" and hope to encourage other families to start blogging together.

With all of your writing projects, not to mention keeping track of four kids, we feel honored to have you on board at PBN.

I love working with Kristen and Julie - they are both very busy moms who respect the time and effort that it takes to be a parent (and a blogger), and they know how to navigate the Internet (ed. note: High praise! Thanks Liz.). Their campaigns really resonate with families (like mine), and the Friday Blog Blasts are always very informative and fun and have inspired me to be creative when writing reviews.

Speaking of reviews, yours are always outstanding! Which post and which campaign were your favorites?

I loved writing my post on the Venus Fly Trap from the Discovery Channel Store because I got to pimp some of my favorite shows on the Discovery Channel (my husband calls me a Discovery Whore), and I'm holding out hope that Mike Rowe (a.k.a. Dirty Jobs) will consider delurking and leave a comment.

But my favorite campaign has to be attending Sesame Place during their Media Day at the beginning of June, because our whole family got a chance to participate and all four of my kids had a really great time. That doesn't happen often.

Read more from Liz at This Full House, in addition to her other writing gigs listed above!

6/18/08