It’s been two years since I started Kirbie’s Cravings. I completely missed the one year mark, so I made sure to calendar this second year. To help celebrate the occasion, I did some redesign of the banner and added a couple of items to the page tabs of the blog.

It’s hard to look back at my original posts and photos without cringing. I get the same feeling I get when I read my old high school year book. The blog has evolved a long way since I first started (hopefully for the better).

I wanted to use this day as a sort of reflection into this little hobby of mine that has taken over so much of my free time. I often get asked why I blog or how I got started.

My goal in the beginning was simple: I wanted to add to the San Diego food blog community. There are many wonderful bloggers in San Diego, but the community is quite small, so I wanted to add my little contribution.

Things started quite innocently. I’ve always loved food and eating out. I was reading restaurant reviews one day when I stumbled upon a little blog you might have heard of called “mmm-yoso“. Mmm-yoso was the first food blog I had ever read. Ever. I had heard of personal blogs before, but didn’t pay much attention to them. When I came across mmm-yoso, I was stunned by the amount of posts, knowledge and details about restaurants in San Diego. Reading mmm-yoso was a million times better than reading yelp reviews.

For the next few days, I tried to read through all of the posts on mmm-yoso. It was no small feat as there were about 8 years of posts to read through. When I finally finished, I had a list of restaurants a mile long that I wanted to try.

After mmm-yoso, I searched for other food blogs. I found many great ones that I soon began to follow. As I tried new restaurants, I began writing about them on yelp. But the yelp reviews weren’t very satisfying. A seed of thought began to creep into my mind, toying with the idea of joining in the San Diego food blogging community.

While I loved the food blogs I found, I also noticed that the San Diego community of food bloggers is quite small. So I wanted to add to that community, with the idea of providing other San Diego food lovers another source for reviews of restaurants. So that was the goal when I started my food blog.

From there…things just sort of kept evolving more than I had ever imagined. I began adding a cooking/baking section when I realized I enjoyed posting daily but didn’t dine out enough to post daily. This gave me a whole new set of readers that I wanted to give frequent posts to. As I got more involved in the food blogging world, my list of restaurants and foods I wanted to try grew exponentially and I found myself baking and eating a lot more to check off items on my list.

I also began noticing gorgeous photographs on other blogs, and I soon found myself buying a new camera, and then eventually getting a dslr camera so I also try to take pretty photos.

So now two years have passed. I’ve reviewed hundreds of restaurants and baked hundreds of desserts. I’ve gained weight, emptied my wallet, but I’ve enjoyed the ride and hope to continue. I have met some great people through food blogging and it’s so nice to meet others who share the same passion for food. I’ve gotten great tips and advice on places to dine at whether in San Diego, or when I’m roadtripping to LA or vacationing outside of CA. On the cooking side of my blog, whenever I post a problem I have or a recipe that didn’t turn out, tips and advice are quickly provided by readers solving my dilemmas. I’ve even gotten a few free meals and products, a perk I didn’t know existed when I started, but have definitely enjoyed.

And best of all, through this blog, I’ve been able to reach out and communicate with people that I would never have been able to do without this food blog. Whenever I get a comment that one of my recipes was a huge hit with their family, or they are happy they discovered something through reading my post, it really makes my day.

For those of you who follow my blog, I hope you continue to do so. I wanted to say a few mentions to people who have made this blog possible. Maybe because I just finished watching the Oscar’s. To the readers, thanks for reading and commenting. I love getting comments and I encourage you to keep commenting and reading. I also want to mention Kirk, because his blog is really what inspired me to begin blogging and if I never stumbled on his blog, I probably never would have started blogging. I was lucky enough to meet him in person a few months ago, and he is as knowledgeable, funny and kind in person as he appears on his blog. I want to mention Dennis of A Radiused Corner and Roger of The Fifth Deadly Sin.  Kirk, Dennis and Roger were the first to welcome me to the San Diego food blog community, immediately putting me on their blogrolls and giving me a warm welcome to the community during the blog’s infant days, giving me the courage to continue. Their initial warm welcoming is something I always remember, and I’ve tried to follow their example when I encounter new bloggers.

Of course I have to mention my family, who come along on these eating adventures, help polish off the baked goods and read all my posts. And finally, I have to mention the boyfriend, who provides the biggest support for this blog. He is my constant dining companion, my driver on LA trips, my photo assistant when I’m photographing, my tech support when my site goes down, and my graphic designer for the blog.