Today marks the one year anniversary of July 5th, 2015: the day I woke up in a post-potato salad & fireworks daze and decided it’d be a good idea to launch a website about breakfast cereal. Call me sentimental, but looking back on it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Or maybe that’s just yesterday’s potato salad again.

365 days, 133 reviews, thousands of kind readers, and countless happy calories later, Cerealously is still alive and kickin’ it: no sugar crash here. I’ve had the chance to taste some cereal-ously tasty stuff (it’s my birthday, I’m allowed to make lazy, self-referential puns), as well as a few that really tested my taste buds. I wanted to give a better visualization of this past year’s reviews, so I went back, tallied the scores, and made this:

As you can see, I love cereal: so much so that I have a hard time giving below average scores. But it isn’t just cereal contained in that Honey Nut Cheerios-colored graph, either. Those bars also represent the many Pop-Tarts, cereal bars, oatmeal, granola, and yes—even Taco Bell Cap’n Crunch Delights—that I stuffed in my face, all in the name of showing the public what makes breakfast so “grrreat!”

For those wondering, the lone “1 rating” in there is from when I ate a 3-year old box Frute Brute. Sometimes I still taste its stale ghost haunting my cereal bowl.

Since there are so many cool things in this first year to look back at, I thought I’d do a good ol’ fashioned countdown of my “Favorite Five Blog Entries from Year 1.” So without further ado, let’s relive 365 days in the course of 5 unnecessarily rambling blog posts. Click any of the titles to read the full thing:

#5: Reviewing Honey Nut M&M’s

Cerealously’s “non-cereal” reviews get a lot of positive feedback, and for good reason—they tend to involve me masochistically eating something ridiculously and/or stupid. This was the case with M&M’s “Flavor Vote” Honey Nut M&M’s: a bag of peanut-stuffed candy morsels that were just begging to be reviewed like they were cereal.

Predictably, this ended with me dizzily sucking down brown food dye-streaked endmilk that was about 50% corn syrup and 20% sadness. Don’t worry, the last 30% was childlike happiness, so it all cancelled out.

#4: Counting Down My “Cereal Top 10” for National Cereal Day

What? Including a countdown within a countdown? Isn’t that cheating?

Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Inception says no. The truth is, this is Cerealously’s longest ever post, and it serves as a proper testament to not only how much cereal means to me, but how much it means to others, too. The comments are littered with people talking about their own personal favorites, so the fact that National Cereal Day was able to join so many together in their love of breakfast nostalgia is, to quote a wise leprechaun: “Magically Delicious!”

P.S. This one’s worth reading for the Oreo O’s commercial alone. Please bring it back, Nabisco!

#3: Going to the Battle Creek Cereal City Festival (in 2015 and 2016!)

I absolutely adore the annual Cereal City Festival, because it’s one of the rare times my enthusiasm for “breakfast food culture” gets to shine beyond the confines of my kitchen. Hosted by Kellogg’s and Post in Battle Creek, MI, Cereal City Festival is a sugary smorgasbord for the senses. It combines unlimited free cereal and Pop-Tarts with costumed mascots, live music, and the spirit of the summer.

My 2015 retrospective is one of the first things I ever wrote for this site, and its rough edges show. That just makes it more fun to compare it to this year’s report, because it reminds me how the continued support from from my readers has made me a better—and slightly thicker waisted—writer.

#2: Building the Monster Cereal Castle

Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry have a reserved spot in the hearts of so many cereal lovers. Even though we all know the three cereals are coming back each Halloween, we still lose our minds when General Mills drops the big announcement in late summer.

2015 wasn’t the biggest year for our favorite morning time monsters (that honor goes to 2013’s revival of Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy), but there was still plenty to howl contentedly about. The normal monster boxes made it possible to interact with the Count, Frank, and Boo via augmented reality, and family sized boxes of other General Mills cereals featured cutout masks of all five monsters. But unfortunately, few people paid attention to the most underrated boxes: the minimalistic, cel-shaded, and Target-exclusive ones.

Even fewer paid attention to what was on the back. Each of the three cereal boxes contained cardboard parts of a larger “monster cereal castle” you could cut out and assemble into a whole. I distinctly remember rushing home with a trunkful of monster cereal, temporarily chucking the bags of cereal aside, and fervently doing arts and crafts with the boxes while blasting the Monster Mash on loop.

The experience was Halloween spirit personified, and I can’t wait to see what our paranormal boys have in store for this autumn.

#1: Reviewing All Marshmallow Lucky Charms

As anyone in my life who’s had to gawk at the rainbow colored box displayed prominently on my desk knows: this box of Lucky Charms Marshmallows Only is my personal equivalent of a stuffed deer head, doctoral degree, and novelty burger competition t-shirt all rolled into one. When people come over, I insist that they need to see this thing.

While non-cereal maniacs may scoff, or claim that they can just buy a box of cereal marshmallows on Amazon, those “in the know” know that this is one of only 10 boxes ever made. They were released as part of a contest by General Mills with the help of Biz Markie, and through the eternal generosity of Cerealously’s friend (and fellow cereal aficionado) Gabe Fonseca, I got my hands on one of them. One more huge thanks goes out to him.

So many kids grow up dreaming about Lucky Charms boxes full of just marshmallows, and by opening mine and smelling its pristine, mint-condition marbits, I finally got to fulfill that dream.

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So there you have it: a year well remembered. While it may seem silly to write so much when 1 year isn’t a lot in “internet time,” I’ve had tons of fun and look forward to so much more. Thanks so much to everyone who has supported this site in any way. I don’t like to self-promote, but if you want to see Cerealously grow even more this next year, any online share, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram follow, or word-of-mouth recommendation is endlessly appreciated.

But enough talk: this celebration calls for some cereal!

If you’re wondering why I chose Raisin Bran Crunch, it’s because that was the first cereal ever reviewed on this site. Now if only I had a candle I could “blow out” with a splash of milk…