The 11th Anniversary of The 21st Century Housewife and a Giveaway

This month marks the 11th Anniversary of The 21st Century Housewife website and I couldn’t be more excited! I had no idea when I started the website with a few carefully written essays back in 2002 that it would evolve into the lifestyle website it has become. I’m so excited, I’m having a giveaway to celebrate! More about that in a minute…

You can read more about the history of The 21st Century Housewife here but in a nutshell, back in the late nineties, I was experiencing a lot of negativity about my decision to be a housewife and stay at home mom so I began writing down my feelings and beliefs about this issue in short essays designed to encourage myself and others who had made similar choices. A couple of years later, at my husband’s suggestion, I decided to use the essays to start a website. The 21st Century Housewife had its online launch in late October 2002.

It was definitely a family affair, with my then eight year old son drawing the first logo and my husband converting his vision into an online logo. That’s me sitting on the ‘y’ in Century! Back then, I published with an FTP package called Terrapin and I remember waiting endlessly for the smallest of posts to publish. Publishing anything with a photograph took what seemed like eons. Later, I upgraded to iWeb and finally early this year I made the move to WordPress and a professionally designed website (A huge thank you to Neil and Jessica at Kohler Created!).

Over the years The 21st Century Housewife has changed almost beyond recognition, evolving from a social commentary into a lifestyle website featuring inspiration, tips and trends for anyone who loves food, cooking, entertaining, fashion, travel and the finer things in life. The 21st Century Housewife and I have grown up together and as my life has changed, so has the website. As we began to travel more as a family, I started to write more about travel. As our style, homes and gardens changed, I wrote about that too. And when I began to enjoy not only cooking from other people’s recipes, but also developing my own, I began to write about food and cooking. Now that our family is evolving yet again as our son begins to start a life of his own, I’ve begun to write about the challenges and joys of an empty nest.

I want to thank everyone who has supported and encouraged me, from my very first email commenters way back when to all of you lovely folks who visit and support The 21st Century Housewife now. My blogging career has given me some amazing experiences – from a champagne reception at St James’ Palace to cooking with celebrity chefs to being addressed by President Obama at BlogHer ’12. I’ve met some wonderful people and I have learned so much. I am looking forward to seeing what the next few years hold!

In celebration of the 11th Anniversary of The 21st Century Housewife and to say a huge Thank You to you all, I’m having a giveaway. All you have to do is comment on this post and you will be entered to win a £50 or $50 Amazon Gift Certificate*. You can submit a second entry by subscribing to my weekly email newsletter. Please mention in your comment that you have subscribed by email.

Thank you all so much again for your support!

*Comments will be numbered in order of receipt. (My replies will not be included in the numbering.) Entries by subscription to my weekly email newsletter mentioned in a comment will be numbered sequentially after the comment. On November 15th 2013 a winner will be selected using a random number generator. Prize denomination will be determined by winner’s location. Winner will be announced at 1pm GMT on November 15th. This is not a sponsored giveaway & the gift certificate is being supplied by The 21st Century Housewife. 

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. 

AND THE WINNER IS….

Michelle of Ms. enPlace

Thank you so much to everyone who entered!