Man, it’s been a whirlwind of fun since we started this blog two months ago. We went from a free, WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted blog. We made a Dames in Debt , and . We’ve been writing a lot! AND…we got nominated for our first blogging award!

 

The Liebster Award

We were nominated for The Liebster Award from Kumiko over at The Budget Mom, and we couldn’t be more excited and honored. The award is a way to be discovered but also to connect and support the blogging community. Originally it was given out to blogs with less than 2000 readers, but this has slowly lowered as the reward has gained popularity. It is now only 200 readers or less. Liebster, in German, means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome, and that is essentially what this award is all about: welcoming new bloggers to the community & sharing the love.

The Award does come with a few rules, laid out above, so that’s what we’ll be doing next to officially accept our Liebster Award. Thanks again to The Budget Mom for supporting and nominating us! Check out her blog for lots of fun, thrifty ideas, especially recipes!

Next up, our questions from The Budget Mom (since there’s two of us, we took turns answering the questions!):

1. Tell me a little about yourself. (We didn’t split this one :-P)
   1. We’re sisters! Jess is the older sister and lives in California, and the baby sister Katie is in Virginia.
2. What made you decide to start a blog?
   1. We’re always chatting about our finances and keeping up with each other via Gchat, and we decided, “Heck, why not start a blog?!” It’s a great way for us to keep in touch, have a fun project to work on together, and it’s excellent  for keeping us motivated to reach our financial goals.
3. What is the BEST free tool you have found that you use as a blogger?
   1. This is kind of a cop-out, but the internet. Any time we have a question about how to do something, we just search for it on Google…or check out what other bloggers have done in the same situation. Free, easy, and almost always gets you an answer.
4. Share with me your most embarrassing moment since you started blogging.
   1. Probably that time we couldn’t figure out how to schedule posts and accidentally published two of our posts at weird and unexpected times. It was a pretty easy fix that hopefully no one noticed at 1am!
5. Tell me about one of your favorite childhood memories.
   1. This comes from Jess the oldest. I remember for my fourth birthday party (which was awesomely batman themed btw) that I was just having the greatest time until I noticed a rattling sound behind me. It followed me around the house and I was starting to get a little concerned so I turned a corner real quick and turned around to face my enemy. What I saw changed me forever. The horrible monster turned out to be…my sister in one of those baby walker things just having the time of her life bouncing around and following me with the hugest smile on her face. I think that’s the moment I realized she was a person instead of a baby blob and we’ve been friends ever since! That’s why it’s one of my favorites 🙂
6. At this moment, what is the biggest goal you have for your blog?
   1. Right now because we are so new, our main goal is just to deliver great content at regularly scheduled intervals. It’s fun and is motivating us to get out of debt, and if we can help others to do the same or at least provide some support to all those other people in the same position, then I think we will have succeeded.
7. Who is your #1 supporter?
   1. Each other! It’s been great to work with my sister. She keeps me motivated to publish posts on time because I don’t want to let her down. And a lot of our posts have elements of both of us in it, regardless of who wrote it. We always try to read each others drafts and add additional ideas and support in our work.
8. How do you manage time to run your blog efficiently?
   1. Working as partners is really helpful here too – we can split the time needed to run our blog. Each of us has our own strengths that we bring to the team. Both of us write posts obviously, but Katie is more of the mastermind behind the big picture and social media accounts, and Jessica creates most of the pictures you see around the blog and on instagram. We are able to tag team on various aspects of producing Dames in Debt. For example, we split these questions between the two of us!
9. Tell me about your proudest achievement.
   1. I think just starting the blog itself was our proudest moment. We’ve talked a big game in the past about things we wanted to do, so actually taking the step to create a self-hosted site was a pretty big deal for us. Now, we’ve managed to get this Award after only two months of blogging, which just shows us a) how great this community is, and b) the benefits of being bloggers. Why did we wait so long to do this?
10. Who takes the majority of your photos? Or do you use free/paid sources?
    1. That would be Jess aka West Coast Dame. I use a combination of pictures I take myself, and free stock photos from around the internet. A lot of our content works really well with images paired with text, and for that I either draw the words on myself by hand using my tablet, or lately I’ve been really into using canva.com since it’s so quick and easy. More rarely I’ll use photoshop or indesign.
11. What was the most challenging moment in your blogging journey so far?
    1. Hmm that’s a tough one. There was definitely a learning curve on which programs to use and how to start. Once we got that sorted out the hard part was to keep up with posts when major life happenings occur. I had to move rather abruptly and needed to take 2 weeks away from the blog. That was hard but luckily my sister was able to pick up the slack for me. We got each other’s backs!

 

Now, meet our nominees:

• Grace from The CFO Mom Blog
• Jen from The Healthful Saver
• Tenley from This Is My Last Dollar
• Katie from The Art of Wealth
• Amanda from Centsibly Rich

*Sorry, we didn’t quite hit 11 here. Apparently all of you are just too popular. 😉

& here are their questions:

1. What made you take the leap to start a blog?
2. What is your favorite part about blogging?
3. Do your friends & family know you have a blog, or is it your own little secret?
4. Are you more of a write on the couch with a cup of tea blogger, or a sit at the desk with coffee blogger?
5. Where do you get your blog post inspiration from?
6. What is your favorite book, and why?
7. How do you use images and text to get your message across?
8. What do you wish you’d known before you started your bloggie?
9. What are your goals for your blog?
10. How do you remain productive?
11. What’s your favorite away-from-the-blog activity?

 

Thanks again to The Budget Mom for nominating us, and congratulations to our nominees! We can’t wait to see your answers to our questions. It’s been an enchanting first two months, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for the Dames!