8 Years and I Finally Figured Out How to Design My Own Blog

I’ve written in this space (well, this and when it used to be Hormonal Imbalances) for 8 years this month. This blog is just slightly younger than Bella. O_o And in all that time, I’ve never actually re-done my blog theme/colors/headers from start to finish.

REMEMBER THIS?!

In the way old days when I used Blogspot, I just picked a new theme. Then I moved to having friends who were better at design than I do the logos. When I moved to WordPress, I paid people to redesign my entire blog several times – I knew a bit of coding but not enough to install or tweak anything major

. And I loved each of the designs, but I’ve always really wished I could do it myself because I was so interested to know how. I wanted to be able to fix it and change it up without having to go find someone.

Over the years I’ve googled and read and asked enough to figure out more about how to start to fix my blog and update what I needed in CSS. When I realized the other day I wanted a change, I took a deep breath and decided to try to figure it out on my own.

So first I backed up my blog – just in case. hahahaha

Then I went searching for a theme I loved – because that I will never be able to do myself, those people are geniuses – and installed it while working on the colors, installed new fonts, worked on a header, set up the Instagram feed on the bottom, reinstalled my ad code, figured out why certain plugins no longer worked (Genesis Simple Hooks isn’t compatible with this theme and that’s all I’ve ever used), and got it all to where I wanted it.

I’m sure someone with a sharp eye for this kind of stuff will notice things that need to be fixed (and if you feel especially generous I’d love to hear what they are), but I feel super proud that for the most part, I redid my entire blog all on my own. There are a few things I couldn’t figure out (like the hyperlinks in the sidebar that are blue and the font is a bit small for my liking) but overall I can’t believe I actually did it on my own.

So now you can subscribe to email updates on the top right under the header. You can follow me through the little social media icons above that. Search at the top of the blog or down at the bottom of the sidebar. And click any of the links in the menu to find out more about us.

I finally designed my blog all by myself. And I really love it. And I really, really love that when I’m totally bored with it in a year, I can probably do it all over again.

Just with a backup first and about 75 tabs open to find out why I shut my whole dashboard off for a while and a paper bag at my side to breathe into. 😉