Mugshot Monday: Special Guest Kate Selner

MugShot graphic backround

Today’s Mugshot Monday is different which makes it special. Today, I have a special guest who is sharing one of her favorite mugs with a story.

Kate Selner, who blogged at Kate in the Kitchen for eight years, is one of the first Minnesota food bloggers I ever met soon after I started blogging in the Twin Cities. Occasionally, the women food bloggers gathered for happy hours at restaurants around the metro. I joined them a couple of times before moving to Fargo and always remembered how welcomed and included I felt by Kate.

In 2013, I attended my first Minnesota Bloggers Conference. Kate was a member of the opening panel and spoke about her desire to blog authentically and create content in a way that honored her passions and values, no matter how the terrain of blogging and social media continued to shift. I resonated with Kate’s intentions to share her world and food experiences just the way they were. Kate also connected me with her husband Mike who owns a web consulting business. He patiently helped me make the migration from Blogger to WordPress.org and continues to host my blog.

In May 2014, Kate wrote a Bittersweet Goodbye to Kate in the Kitchen, but continues to share her life through social media. I look at Kate’s beautiful Instagram photos and read her encouraging words, catching a glimpse of the beauty she finds in her daily life. I’m honored she is sharing one of her favorite mugs and a story in today’s Mugshot Monday:

Kate Selner Mug

“This mug has followed me and my life for 31 years and I cannot even count the number of times I’ve considered getting rid of it, donating it, passing it on, making it in to a planter  etc. etc….. but something stops me every single time because I simply cannot get rid of it. 

I sipped from this mug in every place I’ve lived since I was 20 years old. I sipped from this mug while negotiating adulthood, scared and excited and anxious for a future unknown. I sipped from this mug the morning after my sister died, as my insides were shredded and the coffee tasted like ashes. It was there the morning after I found out I was pregnant, and as I sipped my cup that day I was so terrified for the future that I could hardly think straight. I held my newborn son in one arm, and this coffee cup in the other, and as those first years of motherhood swept past me, my daily coffee often growing cold, this mug was like an extension of my own hand. It accompanied too many sunrises to count, season after season, from snowfall to Spring thaw and through Autumn leaves dancing past my windows.

For years it sits on the shelf, waiting, and when I want a cup of coffee to taste just right, to bring me down to a manageable spot in life, I reach for this mug. It has been a constant in a lifetime of change and new directions. One tiny chip marks the only flaw after 31 years and the design is as beautiful as it ever was, and of course, the fact that it’s covered with cats makes it even better.”


Kate Selner head shotConnect with Kate on Instagram and Twitter and visit her blog Kate in the Kitchen. For questions about website hosting assistance and Blogger-Wordpress migrations, contact Mike at Tela

6 Comments

  1. Laura VZ

    What a lovely post! As a fellow cat lover, I will be sure to follow on Instagram. 🙂 It’s a pretty great mug, too. I love that something so simple can hold so many memories.

    • Jeni

      Her Instagram photos are great. As I told Beth, we’re all cat people around here:)

  2. Beth Ann Chiles

    Love, love, love the mug and the sentiments behind it! What a fabulous mug to have had for so many years. I break them before they get that old because I am such a klutz. Great to “meet” Kate and definitely going to follow on all her social media now. Thanks for the introduction!

    • Jeni

      It’s so fun to welcome her as a guest today! We all love kitties around here too and hers are also adorable.

  3. Rhonda True

    So many memories with something simple as a mug! Great story.

  4. Donna Hup

    I love the story behind the mug and I wouldn’t get rid of it either 🙂

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