Hi there, this is tierneycreates Beastie and I am the guest blogger for today’s post. Below is a shocking photo of me, but I will explain in a moment:

First a little background if you are new to this blog: Yes, I am a Monster, but the good kind of Monster. You can read my story and see some of my adventures so far in the series of posts – Beastie Adventures. I was born in Dublin, Ireland and moved (well was shipped) to Central Oregon to join Tierney of tierneycreates in June 2018.

So normally I look like this:

Or like this in warmer weather:

And often I am accompanied by my dog Mikelet:

But the reason why I am currently in a plastic bag is that Tierney of tierneycreates is letting me go to my first Quilt Retreat today. She is headed to a 4 day retreat with her quilting friends from Oregon, California and Washington state – and I get to go with her!

We decided not to bring Mikelet, we are going to let him stay at home with Terry the Quilting Husband (TTQH) and Big Mike the Miniature Schnauzer (well to Mikelet who is a couple inches tall, Mike is pretty big!).

I agreed that it would be safest to have me travel securely so that I do not lose my glasses or any of my other accessories (if you check out the post Beastie Adventures: Sisters, Oregon, you will see how once nearly lost my little boots when I was wandering around in a yarn paradise!) in route.

What I think is cool is I get to travel in Tierney’s messenger bag where she also keeps her laptop. Well I have a messenger bag too and a laptop (as well as a library card just like Tierney):

I am actually in this bag right now (and you might be wondering how I am managing to write this post. Well, you’ll just have to trust me that I am making it work…):

Okay, now what was this post originally about?

Oh yes, the tierneycreates Blog Fifth Anniversary Celebration!

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The tierneycreates Blog Fifth Anniversary Celebration and Giveaway

Tierney’s first post was on October 27, 2013 and in two days the tierneycreates blog will be officially 5 years old!

Originally she started her blog as a vehicle for her now closed tierneycreates Etsy shop. Then she discovered she enjoyed blogging much more than she enjoyed running her Etsy shop and trying to sell handmade items online.

Tierney appreciates all her blog followers/readers and she asked me to recognize her longest, still active followers:

Bloggers

Claire @ knitnkwilt – nearly 5 years

Cindy @ A Quilter’s Corner with Cindy Anderson – nearly 4 years

Non Bloggers

Rianna (Tierney’s sister)

Michele (Tierney’s longtime friend)

Pat T. (dedicated follower)

Terry the Quilting Husband (aka TTQH)

What does Tierney love most about blogging? Connecting with creative people all over the world! Tierney and I took a look at her WordPress stats and her blog has been visited by readers in everyone continent except Antartica.

Here is a screenshot from the tierneycreates blog stats page to show all the countries around the world from which people have visited her blog:

As you can see, besides Antarctica (which is not even tracked by WordPress) no one in Greenland cares for her blog!

For 2018, the top 10 countries for visitors to the tierneycreates blog are:

On behalf of Tierney, thank you so much to those creative people in these countries and to all people in all countries who spent the time to visit the tierneycreates blog during the past 5 years!

Tierney is very surprised that she made it to 25 days so far of daily blogging posts in honor of the 5th anniversary without pulling any posts from her archives. That is a lot of new ramblings! Over the next 5 days she will announce FIVE GIVEAWAYS in honor of her 5th Anniversary. Tomorrow’s post announced the first giveaway.

Here are the general guidelines and overall plan for the upcoming five days of giveaways:

1. Each day will feature a different giveaway and all items will relate to a tierneycreates blog post over the past 5 years.
2. One winner will be selected for each giveaway.
3. In addition to each of the giveaways a handmade little wallet will be included (see post Little Wallet Madness.) will be sent to the winner (so there will be two gifts).
4. Special instructions will be provided each day on how to enter the drawing (no worries, nothing complicated but there will be an activity related to commenting on the post).
5. Readers in any country are eligible, and like last year’s 4th anniversary celebration, Tierney will mail items to the winners at her cost in any country (note – you will have to use the Questions/Comments form to privately send Tierney your mailing address so she can get the item to you!).
6. There will be one special 6th giveaway announced at the end of the month.

Tierney and TTQH will use the same process as last year to randomly select names (see post Announcing the Winners of the tierneycreates Blog’s 4th Anniversary Giveaway), except unfortunately Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer passed away in December 2017 so it will be only Mike the Miniature Schnauzer officiating from the firm Schnauzer Associates, Inc.

Well I am off on the “road to retreat” and I am so excited about my first quilt retreat with Tierney and her quilting friends (and you know there will eventually be a blog post or two about it). Hopefully they won’t accidentally sew me into any of their projects.

And honestly, I cannot wait to get out of the plastic bag

– tierneycreates Beastie.

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Thanks everyone for 5 years of reading these ramblings and musings – Tierney