This is it! If you’ve been following this 10 week blog redesign series, this is week 9, and it’s time for the big reveal! (As well as a question I am hoping to get your thoughts on … ) I’ve been redesigning Lori’s blog, In My Kitchen, In My Life throughout the series and giving tips on how you can get set up with a whole new design of your own as well. Lori already had great content, and this redesign was intended to get her set up on WordPress and give her posts the proper garnish and setting that … Read more

Why is it that we blog? Why not just write in a journal? The specific answers may vary, but in the end it all comes down to the audience – the readers. Maybe you want to make people laugh, maybe you want to offer people help, maybe you want to share stories, maybe you want to draw traffic to make money. It’s all variations on a theme: finding readers. Because if we didn’t want readers, we would just write in in a private journal. So when people land on your site, if they are your target readership, you want them … Read more

If coding and customizing your WordPress theme sounds too scary – then this post is for you! (This is part 4 of my DIY Blog Redesign series… a little more techy for this post, and next week we’ll be back on the artistic.) Admission: I designed my blog look – and starting out, I knew next to nothing of how to do CSS. Now, granted, I did know a fair amount of HTML, but I still had to start from scratch on CSS – and it wasn’t too bad. My point is this … don’t be intimidated by coding and … Read more

Yep, it’s cabin fever season! And so I’m starting a new challenge – an adventure a week. My four year old daughter drew an adorable valentine card for me with a picture on it of us driving in the car. I asked her what it was a picture of, and she said “You and me going on adventures!” She often talks about how much she loves our “adventures”, and I realized that we haven’t been have enough of those lately. And especially this time of year we are itching to be getting back outside again! So I told her today … Read more

Well, after an unintentional week off, I’m back up and running for the Creative Business Challenge. 🙂 Last week we talked about product photos and descriptions. I wanted to talk about the two of them together, because in a sense they are doing something similar – providing information about your product in a way that appeals to your target market. However, it is just a lot to cover in one post, so we’re still on that topic for this week, looking more at practical ways to put it into action by doing two shop critiques. If you missed last week’s … Read more

Get inspired! This gallery is a visual catalog of my free tutorials, DIY’s, and tip posts that I’ve made for my blog. And there are more than I’ve added here so far – I’m planning to update it to include more projects soon. Just click an image to check out a post – and enjoy!

These are free printables I have created for creative projects – these photos either link to the blog post that explains the printable and contains the link for the PDF file, or just takes you directly to the PDF itself. Help yourself and enjoy! Brainstorming Printable: Blog Branding 101 Printable: Explore a Downtown Printable: Adventure Challenge – Festival Alphabet Bingo: Adventure Challenge – Go Stargazing: Printable blog planner: Adventure Challenge – Pirate Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable: Spiced Tea Recipe Printable: Adventure Challenge – Explore a Small Town Printable: Resolution Printable:

I decided I wanted more verses around our home – more visual reminders of where our hearts and minds should be. Of course, just having God’s words on the wall is not really the goal .. it should be in our hearts, as taught in Mark 12:28-31. We are to teach them to our children and always have them in mind and in our talk. But having something visual can cue our thoughts and remind us.  I wanted to share these with anyone who would find them helpful. Instructions: They are all 8×10, which is a common frame size, though … Read more

As much of the east coast is blanketed in white blizzard drifts, even though it is late in the month, it seems an appropriate time to post about January! And whether the thought of snow-days already fills you with images of steaming mugs of hot tea while watching the snowflakes flitter past the windows, or whether your mind first goes to thoughts of cold toes, this post is for you: a post about the things to enjoy in January. This is part of the Present-Month Project, focusing on the joys of each month as it comes. Overall, January is new … Read more

Well, we’ve reached the end of the 6 weeks for the Creative Business challenge! And for the finale, we’ll be covering the single most asked-about topic from your handmade biz questions: marketing. I left it for last because one of the reasons marketing can be so difficult is because there are other things about your business that have to be in place first to be able to market more easily, and so I wanted to cover those in the first in the series. I hope you found those posts helpful. If you missed them, they lay out groundwork for how … Read more