It’s the Engineering Emily blog’s 10 year anniversary! What a wonderful 10 years it’s been! There have been many changes to the blog over the years…and I honestly can’t believe it’s already been 10 years. You can read my first post introducing the blog 10 years ago today here. Back then, I was trying to remain anonymous and didn’t share my face or any identifying information for more than a year.

10 years ago I was a working mom who often felt alone in my struggles as a women engineer and mom. I started this blog to share more about my life as a working engineer and mom and connect with others in similar situations. I shared other women engineer’s stories to learn more about how woman engineers all over the world were balancing career and motherhood. If you haven’t checked out the posts in my Women in Engineering Interview Series, you can check it out here.

Just over a year later, I became a stay at home mom. I eventually changed the focus of the blog from Women in Engineering to STEAM Activities for Kids. I’m still passionate about encouraging women in engineering, but this new focus reflects where my life is right now. I am home with my kids and we do STEAM activities whenever we have some free time together.

In the last few years I started an Amazon Storefront sharing our favorite STEM experiment accessories, materials, books, toys, and more on Amazon. If you shop my links I’ll earn a small commission as an Amazon Affiliate.

I’m also very proud of adding original products created by me to the Engineering Emily Shop. First I introduced STEAM activities printables – it’s a pdf download of your favorite experiments with just the instructions and no fluff, so you can do the experiments anytime and anywhere you want.

Next, I created the STEAM Activity Journal and The Amazing Book of STEM to encourage kids to get curious, and learn more about STEM. The books provide an opportunity for kids to take notes as they work, learn how to create STEAM experiments, and how to learn from mistakes and failures to improve and grow.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve had 3 Logo changes. I started with a purple, teal, and mustard color palette, and have evolved to a more playful green, blue, pink, and yellow. I have a certificate in graphic design, so I enjoy little things like redesigning my logo and website from time to time. I’m sure this won’t be my last revision of the logo and site, so stay tuned to see where I take it in the future.

I made my first YouTube short to celebrate 10 years of Engineering Emily! Enjoy my highlights of the last 10 years in less than one minute!

To celebrate 10 years of Engineering Emily I’m sharing a few top 10 lists to get to know me and this blog better. I hope you enjoy, and please share your favorite memory from Engineering Emily over the last 10 years in the comments below.

10 things to know about Emily:

Get to know the person behind the blog by reading the linked posts. You can also find out more about me on the About page, and search for Emily’s story tagged posts. 🙂

1. I am from New Mexico, and I attended the University of New Mexico to get my BS in Chemical Engineering.
2. I did my summer internships at Los Alamos National Labs in college.
3. I married my college sweetheart, he is a mechanical engineer and we worked every job together from internships on.
4. My first job out of college was at Intel in my hometown, but I stayed there for less than a year.
5. I worked for ConocoPhillips in Farmington, New Mexico for 3 years where I learned about the oil industry hands-on in the field.
6. My husband and I sold everything we owned and moved to Brisbane Australia for to work. We worked on a the world’s first CSG to LNG project. It was an amazing experience, and I am so glad I had the opportunity to work internationally.
7. We moved back to the US to Dallas, TX working for BG Group when I was pregnant with my first child. After he was born, I worked part-time.
8. After my second child was born, BG Group was sold to Shell, and we were being transferred to Houston office. I decided it was a good time for a career break to become a stay at home mom.
9. I now have 3 kids (ages 11, 9, and 4) and love teaching them about STEM and gardening with them. I share our STEAM adventures on my blog and in my books the STEAM Activity Journal and The Amazing Book of STEM.
10. I completed a 1 year course in graphic design at Shillington College in Australia and do all the design work for my website and journals.

Top 10 Posts of all-time on Engineering Emily

Over the years, the top 10 posts on the blog have varied slightly, but these 10 posts have consistently been at the top. Elephant Toothpaste and 4 Simple & Fun Paper Airplanes have dominated since they were first posted. The Five Senses posts were hugely popular for years, but have been less so recently, but still 3 of the 5 are in the 10 ten of all-time.

All of these posts are great and very deserving of these top spots. I recommend you check them all out if you haven’t already.

1. Elephant Toothpaste – An exciting, show-stopper exothermic reaction, that’s easier than you might think to demonstrate!
2. 4 Simple & Fun Paper Airplanes – I show you step-by-step how to make 4 paper airplanes, and teach you the STEM behind them too!
3. Easy Coin Trick to Learn about Inertia and Newton’s First Law of Motion – This seems like a magic trick, but it’s physics! It’s fun and exciting for kids to try again and again.
4. Exploring the Five Senses for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: Sense of Taste – This is a great way to teach young kids about the 5 different tastes. My kids really enjoyed sampling the different foods corresponding to each taste.
5. Color Changing Plants – It’s so fun watching plants change color by placing them in colored water.
6. Can you Fit through an Index Card? – A fun challenge that will amaze kids of all ages! The intricate cuts are a little tricky, but it’s worth the effort.
7. Make a Car using Recycled Materials – Reuse household recyclable items to make a car that really works! The wheels roll freely in their axels.
8. Exploring the Five Senses for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: Sense of Sight – Help young kids learn all about the sense of sight with three fun activities.
9. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Earth Day STEAM Activities for Kids – I love teaching my kids to protect the planet, and I think these activities really helped them think about what they are using everyday and how to minimize waste at home.
10. Exploring the Five Senses for Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers: Sense of Touch – My kids loved these fun activities we did together to help them understand the sense of touch. It’s an intimate and a fun way to bond with young kids.

My 10 Favorite Posts on Engineering Emily

I just shared the posts that have been most read on my blog, but these are the posts that I have loved the most! I enjoyed getting to share my personal life on the blog in the early years as a stay-at-home mom. I treated it almost as my journal: a place for me to share my ups and downs and get things off my chest. It was therapeutic, and I’m so glad I shared these vulnerable moments that I hope help others in similar situations.

1. Make your own Oobleck – One of my favorite STEAM Activity memories is my son playing with Oobleck. I was so stressed about how messy this experiment was becoming, but then my son let the Oobleck drip between his fingers and called himself a “swamp monster” (I took a picture of this moment and it was my phone home screen for years). I forgot about the mess and just started having fun playing with the Oobleck with my kids. This particular activity and moment in our life is permanently ingrained in my brain as a moment when I made myself reset from stressing about things I couldn’t control (like the mess it was making), and just enjoying the moment. In the end, the clean-up wasn’t too bad, so it really wasn’t worth the stress anyway. 😉
2. My Last Day as a Working Mom – I remember sobbing the whole time I wrote this post. It was a very emotional time for me, and I wasn’t sure I made the right choice (I’m still not sure, lol), but it was real and honest. Transitions are hard and even almost 9 years later, I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I continued working.
3. How I got my Dream Mentor by Being Brave and Seizing an Opportunity – I went way out of my comfort zone for a chance to be mentored by someone I hugely admired, and it worked! I had a mentoring call with Brit Morin, and it was such a great opportunity and experience for me. It gave me confidence to keep moving forward with my ideas and this blog. This post is me telling you (and reminding myself) to trust your gut and be brave!
4. Reflections on Mother’s Day – I shared about my fertility journey and challenges I faced before becoming a mom. It is as real as I get on the blog, sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of life as a new mom.
5. Eggsperiment: Make a Bouncy Egg – My kids and I had SO.MUCH.FUN with this experiment. We laughed and just had the best time and they still talk about it being their favorite activity we’ve ever done!
6. Rediscovering my Love for Yoga and Football – Perhaps one of my most random and unhinged (in the best way) posts on the blog. Why did I feel the need talk about both yoga and football (and not playing football, but watching the Eagles in the NFL) in the same post? I tie it all together because it’s about taking care of myself again after having kids. I do remember that I was very excited the Eagles were going to the Super Bowl that year, and I’d like to believe my post helped them because they won that Super Bowl! Go Birds!
7. The Class that made me Believe I could be an Engineer – My Ode to DiffEq. It really was a game-changer class for me and will forever be my favorite. <3
8. 5 Best Things about Being a Mom to a Toddler and Baby – I get real about life with two young kids. It wasn’t an easy time for me, but I was trying to make the most of it and appreciate all the good times we were having. I think sharing the truth about our ups and downs at home helped me get through a very challenging time in my life when I was transitioning from working mom to stay-at-home-mom, moving to a new city, and caring for two young kids.
9. STEAM vs. STEM – what’s the difference? – This post sparked a heated debate on my social media and blog. I still use STEAM and STEM interchangeably. I think about this question often and still wonder which to use when and if I should be using one over the other. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this question. As you can see I use one on each of my new journals, the STEAM Activity Journal and the STEM Experiment Journal.
10. How to Plan and Host a Science themed Birthday Party – I hosted a science birthday party for my daughter when she turned 8, and we had so much fun! I shared all the fun activities we did at the party including some of our favorites: soda geyser, puncture a bag of water without spilling a drop, elephant toothpaste, color changing tea, make a baking soda ball with a hidden surprise…It was a blast and I highly recommend hosting a science themed birthday party if you have a STEM loving kid!

This didn’t make any of my top 10 lists, but I still think it is noteworthy for me personally and the blog: I’ve been asked to do interviews on 3 podcasts and really enjoyed the experience and sharing my story. If you haven’t heard the episodes here’s the link to the blog posts (but unfortunately, I think all of these podcasts and episodes are no longer available to listen to):

• Engineering Heros Podcast
• What do you do Podcast
• Hear my Interview along with 24 other Industry Experts at the She Engineers 2019 Virtual Summit!

Thanks for following along on my journey for the last 10 unforgettable years! Whether you’re new here or have been reading since day 1, I’m so glad you’re here. Here’s to the next 10 years of Engineering Emily.

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