This blog has grown with me from marriage, through nesting, pregnancy, birth, and now mommy-hood. I love to write so this blog has been the perfect outlet for me to share my thoughts and experiences. I started blogging shortly after I was married in July 2007 and mainly used it to share recipes and cooking experiences with my other newlywed friends. As time went by I got a bit bored of writing about cooking (and I could never manage to take pictures of the food before I ate it!), but I found that writing was very therapeutic. I started another blog where I could blog about other life experiences but eventually combined the two blogs into this one.
Why "The Vanilla Bean"? I LOVE vanilla. I was always the weird kid who preferred the plain vanilla ice cream cone while everyone else screamed for the chocolate. If a product is advertised as being vanilla flavored, I just HAVE to buy it. When I discovered how fun and easy and tasty it was to cook with fresh vanilla beans, I was hooked. I'm also an orchid lover, and the fact that vanilla beans come from orchids totally sealed the deal for me. And once I found out I was pregnant? That little bean in my belly was affectionately known as my little vanilla bean.
So, who am I? First and foremost, I'm a 30-something wife and mother. I absolutely adore my husband and our beautiful daughter - I never imagined that it was possible to feel so much love! I consider myself to be a semi-crunchy mama. I'm all about breastfeeding, babywearing, cosleeping, and cloth diapering, but I do love to eat meat, and I am a huge fan of shaved legs. I love reading, writing, bookbinding, sewing, cooking, baking, wine, spending time with my friends, and of course, blogging!
Where did I come from? I grew up in Colorado and was home-schooled all the way from 2nd grade - 12th grade. After graduating, I joined the United States Marine Corps and was stationed in beautiful San Diego for my entire tour. After my time in the military I went to college here in San Diego and earned both an Associates and Bachelor's degree with Honors in Fine Art & Multimedia. Since then I've been working as an administrator in a few different creative businesses around San Diego. Now that I'm home with my daughter I'm devoting my time to blogging and writing.
I'm very glad that you stopped by my blog. If you like what you see so far, please feel free to follow me. I do my best to update often! I love meeting other bloggers, so if you follow, please comment and say hi! I love reading your comments - advice from other moms and bloggers is very important to me. I also like to review helpful products that are relevant to my readers and share my experiences so that hopefully I can help others out as well!
To contact me for reviews, questions, comments, or anything at all, please send me an email at alannavanilla at gmail dot com.
(Replace the "at" with an "@" and the "dot" with a "." and take out the spaces!)
