Inspired by...Elise Blaha Cripe

I spend lots of my spare time immersing myself in my hobbies and have a number of blogs and people that I follow online that really inspire me. One of those inspirational people is Elise Blaha Cripe.

I've been reading Elise's blog, enJOYit, for well over a year and absolutely love it. Elise blogs everyday about her life. She writes about running her small business, her project Make 29, gardening, home projects, scrapbooking, goal setting, her family and making. I first came across Elise through the online scrapbooking community and e-courses that I took at Big Picture Classes. Elise has now pared back her scrapbooking but still uses Project Life to document her life.

I love Elise's style, her photography, friendliness in her writing, her raw creativity and dedication to posting a blog post everyday is amazing. Elise's blog is truely authentic, there are pictures of her home and family, she writes from the heart, and she has so much enthusiasm and drive it's infectious. Many of her hobbies and interests resonate with me and perhaps this is why I really love her blog and what she does.

As a lifestyle blogger Elise has so much to say on a variety of topics and this year she started a new format of communicating her thoughts, rather than through words and photos Elise has started a weekly podcast, Elise Gets Crafty. I've been listening to it since it started in February. I love it when Wednesday arrives and there is a new podcast to download and listen to on my walk to and from work, it gives me a spring in my step!

On my holiday in July I listened back through all of Elise's podcasts again to see if I could pick up anything new that I hadn't heard the first time round and I did. I think it was at this point in time that it really struck me how much Elise inspires me with what she does and I felt that I wanted to share with you my thoughts.

A few of my favourite and most inspiring podcasts I've listened to have been - Episode 3 - Developing an editorial calendar for your blog, Episode 4 - Creative field trips, Episode 11 - Growing your creativity and Episode 23 - On focus and what to do when you have too many ideas. The topics that Elise covers are really interesting and many discussions have resonated with me.

If you have a bit of spare time today and want to find out more about Elise please go and take a look at Elise's blog enJOY it and download a few of her podcasts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.