I’ve got winners for my contest!

Random.org picked the 5 lucky folks, who I’ve all emailed.

Thanks so much for everyone who played along. I had a lot of fun reading all your comments, your blogs and the blogs you sent my way. I can promise it won’t be the last contest I do!

P.S. To those who were interested in buying the Christmas cards, they’re up on N.C.’s Etsy page. He’s frantically working on a new one too, so there will also be one more Santa card listed by the end of this week.

I’m loving your comments on my contest post! If you haven’t entered yet, you have until Monday…go there! Enter! Win stuff! (after you read this post though).

One of the things that your comments are bringing up is how we end up at different blogs. Everyone seems to take a somewhat circuitous route to any given destination, myself included. The process is fascinating. I know that I will read other people’s blog rolls, click through from witty comments on blogs I follow, follow links within a post, not to mention the various groups and forums I’m a part of, twitter, and of course clicking through to the sites of my commenters. And it seems like I’m always looking for new groups and forums to join…although I worry about overextending myself, I can’t seem to help it!

I think quite a few of you have ended up here because I commented on your blogs (and vice versa), or on someone’s blog you read. My husband is impressed with the traffic growth I’ve had on this blog in such a short time–it’s not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but it does grow every month–and I tell him it’s because of all the commenting I do. I’m bound to have people try and figure out who the new commenter on their site is. I’m strangely comfortable inserting myself almost instantly onto a new blog now, even though I used to have a problem commenting until I had read for a while. If I click through and the very first post I read interests me, I’ll add my two cents. I still have a little anxiety about the whole inserting yourself into an already established group thing, but it doesn’t seem to hold me back so much anymore.

How do you find new blogs? Do you actively search out new ones (going through blog rolls, blog catalogs, etc), or do you just click through organically (from a bloggers posts, or from comments and the like?) And when it comes to comments, are you a timid commenter? Do you wait until you’ve read “long enough”, whatever your personal description of long enough is? Do you jump right in? I love hearing this stuff, it’s just interesting how we move around the web and make ourselves part of groups and communities.

P.S. a few of you have mentioned interest in buying the Christmas cards, should you not be lucky enough to win them…well, you’re in luck because my husband and I will sell just about anything with his artwork on it! There are already plans in place for a Saturday spent updating his Etsy shop, and the Christmas card (plus a new one!) will have places of prominence.

So, this week at Ramble Ramble has been all about blogging. How much I like it, how much I like the community, how fun it is that we all share this space. It’s been a perfect week to revel in this little “hobby” I got myself into.

I started blogging for the reals about 3 months ago. Prior to that, I wrote a little on my Myspace blog, but that account was set to private, so I think something like 6 people ever read me over there. I made the decision to start a blog to give myself a voice and a place, and I’m so grateful that I did because for the first time in a really long time I feel like I have…something. Something creative, and something just for me, and something that can be an an outlet.

I said when I started that even if no one ever read it, I wanted to try this blog thing. But frankly, it’s so much more FUN with you guys. With your comments and your blogs and your ideas and your input. I probably would keep this up even if no one ever read, but it wouldn’t be even half as enjoyable, entertaining and engrossing.

So to thank you for joining me, and making every day a little more fun, I’ve got a surprise…contest!

There are 3 ways to get entered to win. Do one of the following between now and Monday, November 24th @ 6pm (pst):

1. Leave me a comment on this post. You can tell me your blogging story, you can just say hi, you can give me a link to one of your favorite blogs. Tell me what you do or don’t like about my blog, or your blog. Tell me what you had for dinner. Heck, leave me a comment that just rambles…it is the name of the place after all! If you’ve been lurking, this is the perfect time to come on out.
2. Send me an email with any of the above. You can either email me at ginger (at) rambleramble (dot) com, or you can go to the About page and fill in the little form.
3. For an extra entry, blog about this contest, or tweet it (you’ll need to come back here and leave the link in an additional comment, or email it to me).

That’s it, that’s all you have to do. On Monday night, I’ll choose 5 winners (but I totally reserve my right to up that number if I feel like it).

Oh, you probably want to know what you can win, right? Well each of the winners will have a choice between:

• A 5 x 7 print of any photo I’ve posted on this blog (I suggest scrolling through the Learning Photography tab up there at the top), or on my flickr page, or
• A set of 5 of these Christmas cards (created by my fabulous husband), with envelopes:

It’s not much, but it’s my little way of thanking you guys for joining me the last few months!

Edit: Just a quick note…if you leave more than I think 2 links in a comment, WordPress holds it for me to moderate. I’m LOVING the links you guys are giving me, so don’t let this stop you, but it does mean that your comment won’t show up immediately after you hit submit.