Five Hundred

Can you believe it? This is my 500th post. We're halfway to 1000, friends! Blogging has been such a fun experience. Little did I know when I started just how much I would love it.

Today is a big day for my blog, not only because it's the 500th post, but because last night, I implemented a new blog design! I've been working on this for a long time and I'm so excited to unveil it today. I want to do a couple things to celebrate the 500th post today. Let's get started.

the blog redesign

I want to give you all a look into my blog redesign, since lots of things are different in the new design. If you're reading in an RSS reader, hop on over to my site to look at the new design! Here's an image I made of my website on a MacBook, just for fun.

I changed the colors to mustard, gray, and white. The fonts are now Quicksand, Verdana, and Arial. But the big changes have to do with my sidebar, and my pages. The sidebar is wider now, and it has more in it. I put a little picture of myself, and (especially fun) a list of links to blogs and sites I enjoy. Some are friends' blogs, others are blogs of people I don't know but whose work or words I find inspiring or encouraging. I'd invite you to look around the links there!

I only have three extra pages at the top, but they're revamped and have more interesting effects on them. Since my focus for this website is more learning and blogging than business, I thought it would be a good idea to pair down a bit on pages. I actually like this setup a lot.

My about page includes both a story and facts. At the top, underneath the pictures, you can click on either "the story" or "the facts" and be automatically taken to that part of the page. I used something called a jump link to do this. One of the folks I work for at my internship told me how to do it, and it's really helpful.

The work page is my portfolio. I love how it turned out! It shows some of my projects, and you're able to roll over them to see what they are.

To get the rollover technique, I used this tutorial from CoffeeShop. It's surprisingly easy! Then, if you click on the image, you can read all about the project and see more images.

The contact page has my email address and general price ranges for freelance design projects. This is the spot to go if you want to hire me, and also if you just want to send a little hello to my email.

Don't get me wrong - it's not like I hated the old design. It was fine. But I wanted to update my website with some new features, and some colors and fonts I really love. I hope you all like it too!

I've been inspired by lots of great web design, and three sites in particular provided inspiration for this design: Pastor's Girl's Ponderings, Jill Ng, and Andrew+Carissa.

500 posts in review

I also wanted to do a little recap of some of the posts I've done so far. It would be crazy to link to all 500. So I won't do that. Instead, I thought I'd like to some series I've done so that, if you so desire, you can revisit them and see the direction my blog has gone over the past 500 posts. This isn't everything, I'm sure, but it's a little sampling.

+ friday finds: all posts
+ one dozen: all posts
+ rainbow week: all posts
+ typography talk: all posts
+ shapes series: all posts
+ lippincott: one, two, three
+ photos and quotes: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
+ inspiration series: all posts
+ weekend links: all posts

i love comments!

Finally, I just wanted to mention that I really love your comments. In 500 posts, I have over 1000 comments, so thank you! I know you all are busy and I don't want you to feel pressured to comment, but it does make me happy when you do. Feel free to keep leaving little hellos for me.

And I also wanted to shout out to Sarah, who has got to be the world's most faithful commenter. She comments on almost every post! Thank you, dear Sarah!

I'd love to know what you all think of my new blog design. Please give me your thoughts and take a few minutes to explore the new site if you'd like! And let me know if anything looks weird or not quite right. I may still be tweaking a few things in the next couple weeks.