What are you still doing here?!

The other day I was doing a little childhood favorite movie watching & the film of choice was Hook.

Shortly before the Banning family flies over to England ("They're double layered, you can't break 'em" / "I am a child" / "You're afraid you're going to be sucked. out." - I love Jack) for a Grannie Wendy visit, Peter is getting all annoyed because his childrenn are being loud and childlike. Moira (the wife, for those of you who can't recite the entire movie from memory as I can) gives him a lecture about how Jack and Maggie are growing up so fast & won't be children forever. She finishes up her childhood ends speech to him by declaring in a very dramatic way "you are missing it".

That's what I want to tell you guys! I have a new blog (GEMS!) full of attractive posts AND YOU ARE MISSING IT!

(I can only hope that at least some of you have seen Hook as many times as I have and are reading those words in the tone of voice I wish to convey them in).

Obviously missing my silly blog posts isn't as important as missing spending time with your children while they're still, you know, children.... but it's close! Reading / staring at my blog is almost as worthwhile as being a truly present parent. Almost.

So, get OUT of here! Leave Where the Lovely Things Are and go to Gems and see all this -

AND MORE. More I tell you!

(That collage is pretty crap quality, but I can only spend so much time making a post for a blog I no longer wish to use)

Now - go. Subscribe. And please - if you're someone who loves my blog enough to put it in your link list / blog roll / whatever - update your links! You will become a hero in my eyes. A real human being and a real hero. (I also watched Drive again recently).

The End of Where the Lovely Things Are (that sounds super dramatic but it isn't really)

So I'm ending Where the Lovely Things Are. I'm not ending blogging, I'm just ending this particular blog.

Why? Because I am SO SICK OF THE NAME.

Uh. I think I once read an interview with Grace of Design*Sponge mentioning how if she could go back in time she'd think longer before she named her blog. Or something. I could be making that up. But you get the point.

I think about people who have been in the same band for decades: they must be so sick of being called _______. I've only had this blog for 4 years or so! And I've grown to literally loathe the lovely title.

I started the blog in late 2008. I'd recently graduated from college and I was in the midst of thinking I was going to go to grad school for children's literature (this is before I realized that I definitely couldn't afford to go to grad school at all for a while - and still). I was all wrapped up in children's literature (still am, but in a more intense way then). I was reading all these essays by Maurice Sendak and at the same time just getting into the world of blogs. I started thinking about what I'd name my blog, so I decided to combine my love for a particular children's book and the word lovely.

Now I know it's super nitpicky and borderline, um, ?idiotic? to say that I use the word lovely in a different way than other people do, but I think it's true.

In college I was kind of known for using the word "lovely". When one of my friends imitated me, he'd always go - "I'm Mallory. Loooovely. Who ARE you?" (I also talk like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, fyi).

The word can get a bad rap as just a go-to word to say when you don't have a better adjective to use, particularly in the blog world. I've read people bemoaning how everyone is always calling everything "lovely". Lovely, lovely, lovely.

My childhood is steeped in entertainment that originated in Britain. Or at least taking place there. I think I started using the word lovely at a very young age because of that: no one was really using it as an adjective in my world unless they were a character in a book or film. I was copying Mary Poppins because the people I actually spoke to in my everyday life weren't saying "lovely" very frequently. I started to, but it was always in a deadpan sort of way (once again - like Mary Poppins) - "How lovely". Not - "Ooooooh! Look at these LOVELY doilies!". Or something of that kin.

My senior year of college I actually wrote & directed a play called (you guessed it) "Lovely". So it was only natural that I'd work that word into my title.

But spending a ton of time in the blog world over the next few years made me regret that. Because, to me, my blog doesn't reflect the typical sort of blogs that insert that word into their title. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THOSE BLOGS. I don't want to sound like an asshole (too late?). It's just that my content doesn't really fit with what I now equate the word lovely with. Yeah, everything I post is lovely.... but. I could try to explain this for paragraphs. I'm just going to go ahead and say that you guys get it.

So, while I first had feelings of "Uh, why did I name my blog this" in the midst of the release of Where the Wild Things Are the film, they just proceeded to get stronger and stronger. But I didn't do anything because it's a pain in the ass to switch to a new blog.

I decided that I was actually going to when my laptop broke this fall.

As I sat around rolling pennies to go towards the buy-a-new-laptop fund, I started thinking that I was a total idiot for paying for my blog hosting service. Yes, I LOVE Squarespace, but I'm poor! I shouldn't be paying for something I can get for free! Especially because (for what I do with my blog) I don't need anything fancy. I thought about how much extra money I'd have if I hadn't been paying for my blog every month. And hated myself.

So that sucked, but also gave me reason number two to end Where the Lovely Things Are: I hated the name AND it was costing me money I didn't really have.

So now I'm going to be blogging here. My new blog. Gems (I'll probably do another post over there about how I chose that title later). Content-wise, nothing's really going to change. Except I'll be blogging more again because 1/2 of the reason I haven't been posting as much here is because I was just so sick of WTLTA.

I transferred over many of the posts from Where the Lovely Things Are, so you can still see them. And I'll be leaving up this blog for a couple of months until I see all the traffic drop off.

To all you AMAZING HUMAN BEINGS who have Where the Lovely Things Are in your blog rolls... if you could change over the link to the new blog (once again - Gems) I will love you forever & ever & ever.

Subscribe to Gems then unsubscribe from this blog because I will be updating it a little bit, but every post will say things like - "WHY HAVEN'T YOU SWITCHED TO THE NEW BLOG?" And that's annoying. So don't see those posts! Just swap over to Gems asap.

Thank you so much for reading Where the Lovely Things Are. I love the blog itself, if not the name. Now go read Gems!