Today marks the ninth anniversary of this blog, My Home Sweet Home. I’m thankful that the combination of missing my mother and wanting to leave a legacy of words for my kids prompted me to begin, and that you’ve joined me for the journey, whether you’ve been here for years or pulled up a chair at my home sweet home online today.
Come celebrate with me as I revisit some of the many ways I’ve decorated this space throughout the years!
(Click on an image to see it full size.)
About a month and a half into blogging, I became inspired by this post from Sophie Hudson, a.k.a. BooMama, and began to experiment with design. I ran an active business, Barefoot Blog Designs.
I met a lot of nice people, which you can find on the Gallery page, from this period of my online life.
This early design won first place in the 2nd annual Homeschool Blog Awards. Diary Girl, as I liked to call her, appeared in most of my blog’s headers for a few years.
My blog was called Home Sweet Home for the first year, until I moved to self-hosting and needed to buy a domain name. That’s when I discovered that URLs containing homesweethome belong to real estate companies, so I added My at the beginning and acquired myhomesweethomeonline.net as the address for this little corner of the internet.
As you can see, I liked to spiff things up for seasons and holidays!
My interest in blog design waned as my interest in photography grew. You can see keywords floating around in this header design from July 2009: photography, photoshop, homeschooling, family, lightroom.
In August of 2009 I asked you to help me choose a tagline. You can find the winner—Decorated with Family, Faith, and Photoshop—in the comments on that post.
Clearly, I still liked seasonal design changes!
This birds nest design was the only one done by someone else, the talented Heather Steck, a designer I met when I visited Arkansas in February 2012, to attend Camp Creativpreneur.
My site wore that design until last fall when I changed it to reflect the release of my first book, The Beauty of Grace.
Earlier this month I made the switch to a new blog theme, which changed the layout and allowed for a large image, minus text, in my blog’s header. I love this field of flowers from our trip to Callaway Gardens’ Summer Family Adventure (best family vacation ever), so for now it decorates the top of this space.
Based on history, that’s likely to change. 🙂
A Few Questions for You:
Do you blog? If so, for how long?
Is this your first time here or are you a long-time visitor?
Do you remember any of these old designs?
Congratulations! I remember a few of those headers. I don’t know how long I’ve been reading here, but it’s been a while. I do enjoy reading your blog. I began blogging in February 2007 with only about four posts that first year. 😉 It’s more of my journal now, a place for family far away to see photos of the children and grandchildren (how did that happen!?), a place to write down my thoughts. I’ve made friends through blogland and wouldn’t trade it for the world!
Renee, thank you for being here! I’m thankful for these friendships too.
Yes I do have a blog and I began in 2010 but that was private only, then around 2012 my husband convinced me to open it to the public. I have visited your blog before and do remember some of the different looks.
I tend to keep my blog the same. some day I do want to make the background more personal instead of the blogger ‘background’. for now it’s fine.
Sharon, so many blogs are private until someone gives the blogger a nudge to share. 🙂 Thanks for visiting!
I love the monthly calendars! Thank you so much for sharing your life and talents with us!
Suzy, you are so welcome! I use them too. 🙂
What a fun stroll down memory lane! I remember all but that first one, I think?
I began blogging in 2005. I miss it! It’s been so much fun making online friends and meeting them in person. I’m so glad that I’ve had the joy of meeting you! It seems like a million years ago!