4 Year Freckled Nest Anniversary + Giveaway!!

Today is Freckled Nest's 4 Year Blog and Business Anniversary so I'm doing a fun Giveaway... a Yellow Fisheye Camera!!! It takes cool film pictures like this!!

ETA: The winner has been drawn & announced here.
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To Enter:  I'd love to hear why you like Freckled Nest... leave your Name and Reason in the comments and I'll draw a random winner in a few days! Anyone can enter :)

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This is the story of my first blog and internet excitement...
It all started as a teenager with my obsession with Orca Whales... more specifically, Keiko, the whale from Free Willy, on his journey to real freedom. I had dreams about Keiko, I wore 'Free Keiko' pins to school (high school!), I painted pictures of Keiko swimming in the ocean, I even had a whale wallpaper border in my bedroom--- it was like a obsessive consuming crush, but on a whale.
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While I was in high school, marine biologists and doctors were working to assimilate Keiko back into the ocean and he was living at a facility in Oregon. There was a camera that took pictures in his tank every five minutes and you could view them live online. Without the internet at home, I went to my school library everyday on my 10 minute break (pretending it was for a school project), hoping that after the dial up signal loaded, I could log on and see my Keiko swimming by. Day after day, it was just photos of water. Until one day, I logged on and saw him. There he was... right by the window, smiling (at me). My heart stopped and burst outta my chest. I squeeled in the library and secretly printed the photo on the school printer. It was like a high that I needed more of... I needed the internet at home so I could look more often! I begged my parents to get the internet hooked up for a year, constantly showing them the free AOL internet cds, wishing I had a credit card so I could just hook it up myself.
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When we finally got internet in 1999 or 2000, the stalking Keiko phase had faded. But my obsession with connecting online was far from over. I was getting really into music, regularly going to local punk and hardcore shows with Tanner, my cousin/friend. I loved taking pictures of the bands and crushing on all the cute screaming singers. My hotmail account (ha) led me to "geocities" and I built a website for my band photos and I updated it weekly. It had a yellow font on a black background, 3 columns across with scanned pictures down the center and lots of clickable buttons. Oh- and a hits counter... i think it reached 800 :) Essentially, it was my first blog... before blogs were blogs ;)
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In my naivety, I called my blog "Hardcore Chick 204"... www.Geocities.com/HardcoreChick204 to be exact ;) Lol... 204 for my area code, and hardcore for my music preference. This was in the era of ICQ Chat Rooms and my nickname matched my website. I was so perplexed-- why were all these guys chatting me being so frisky and gross!? Lol... it wasn't until my friend Jenny-Lynn said, "I'm not allowed to receive emails from you anymore LA, your hardcorechick204@hotmail.com address got my dad in trouble from his work". I was like, "Why?!" Duh... They tracked his computers' online activity and thought he was getting serviced or something. Yikes!
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That was my first blog and internet experience. I never would have thought the internet & design would become my career... so much has changed in 10 years! Gladly, my old nickname and dial-up have been retired since then ;)
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Thank you for joining me over the last 4 years, it's been very special to me to share it with you! 
To many many more,
Love Leigh-Ann 
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[ Cred: Tape Strips from one of my favorite bloggers, Pugly Pixel ]