Hello people of the internet! Uhm, first things first - that is the 400th time I've said that because not only is it my blog's birthday this is also my 400th post! We're hitting a lot of milestones today! I just wanted to write up a quick post to say thank you and to take a look at my blog over the last four years!

Cardigan Jezebel started out on the floor of my Boyfriend's parent's house. I was really bored and had been thinking about starting a blog for years. When I say thinking - I mean I had started and stopped and failed more times than I could count. Before this I had never really committed to it properly.

I had been fascinated with the likes of A Beautiful Mess and LLYMLRS since about 2010. They still inspire me to this day.

Around that time I was really into listening to the Rooster Teeth podcast. And their sponsor was usually Go-Daddy at the time. So, I swiped up my domain name for €2 for the first year and haven't really looked back since. I'm getting notifications on every social media app that today is my account's anniversary. I was convinced I was going to make this blog work this time.

One of the photos from my early blog posts.

I wrote a few posts here and there at first. To be honest, I didn't commit properly once again. I wrote about some of my current obsessions, Spring style essentials, an everyday makeup post and I did a get to know me tag before getting bored and not blogging again for 5 months.

Around September I started to get annoyed at myself. I had bought a domain name and set up social media accounts and just abandoned them. I was so upset with myself, I felt like I was wasting an opportunity.

This is right around the time I decided to real give blogging everything I had.

During November I really started getting more involved with the twitter community. I made tons of friends and found out about this thing called Blogmas (aka blogging every single day leading up to Christmas). I had just finished working at my local film fest and bought myself a laptop as an early Christmas present to myself. My other laptop had died maybe a year before and I was using a  super run down family laptop. I had all the time in the world and a new functioning laptop to help me (finally) start blogging the way I wanted to.

I got all the way to day 22 of Blogmas. I don't even think I can put into words how proud of myself I was. All I asked for Christmas that year was a camera and my AMAZING parents came through. Have you ever heard that doing something for 21 days straight creates a habit? I think that's true. I haven't been able to leave blogging behind since.

I've met so many amazing people over the past four years. All because of this little site I use to chat about makeup and stuff that I like. People who are truly some of the loveliest humans in the world. I've been constantly inspired by other people and hopefully I've given back enough to inspire at least one person in return.

The opportunities that have come from running this blog have also been beyond my wildest dreams. I've been lucky enough to travel and stay places I never would have been able to stay before. Because they wanted a review on my blog. MY BLOG! I'll never forget the day I received my first ever PR package from Urban Decay. And, if you know me, you'd know they are pretty much my favorite brand. I sat there with a palette in my hands nearly in tears of pure joy. To me that was the moment I knew all my hard work was paying off.

Before I ever started blogging I was a huge fan of photo challenges on Instagram. I've always been a photography junkie and they were so fun to do. In 2016 I started my own photo-a-day challenge. It made me so happy to make it that I didn't even care if anyone joined in. But guess what? My favorite cosplayer decided to try it out during the first month of it's existence. Because of her, tons of people flocked to it. I've had some of the same people do it now for nearly two years straight. The hashtag has nearly 30,000 posts in it. I'm still in awe of that. I can't believe people would want to do something I created every single day.

This blog has basically been my baby for four years. I just want to say thank you to every single person who has ever read a post, liked a tweet or an Instagram photo, comment on this blog, etc. I started blogging for myself but without you guys this would just be the ramblings of a weird American girl living in Ireland.

Thank you.


Be sure to enter my giveaway to help me celebrate the milestone!