Hey there my fabulous blog readers. Today’s a great day to be stopping by and I’ll tell you why. I have a new blog design! It’s been at least 6 six years with my old look and the logo was even older than that. I loved my old design so much and it says a lot that I didn’t change it out sooner. However not changing out a blog design is sort of like not changing your living room furniture around once and awhile. It’s good to change things up occasionally. A chance to simplify and find a renewed love for the space. The joy of simplicity is a beautiful thing.
I’ve been blogging here for just over 14 years. I’ve gone through many blog design changes over the years. And the designs have followed where I am at in my life. I started out with crazy loud colors (think bright neon, who remembers that?) in my thirties and slowly over the years transitioned to less busyness and more white space. This new design introduces even more white space to my blog which correlates nicely with my current state of life. It’s important to me that these two spaces line up because who I am online is who I am in real life. And for awhile now I’ve been feeling a disconnect with that. My forties for me have been all about slowing down and learning to delight in the everyday ordinary. Of truly learning to linger and appreciate the simple things I was always too busy to see before.
And I feel my new space here reflects that starting with my new logo.
I hemmed and hawed about changing my logo because it’s a big departure from the old. However, the new softened colors are calming to me and I hope they are to you as well. The bouquet of flowers and stack of books are reminders to me of how beautiful the ordinary really is. These things can be so easily missed if I’m moving too fast or buried in clutter.
Simplicity to me is all about removing the excess in my life so that the beautiful ordinary in the everyday shines through, calming my soul and bringing great joy. Stripping back the layers of stuff to reveal and recognize that there is so much beauty to be found amidst the ordinary and mundane.
I am once again reminded of the poem my daughter wrote when she was about eight.
HOME
I like my home
My home is great
I love my home
Ahhh! home.
Isn’t that something? That’s my hope for all my readers. That your spaces not be a source of stress and overwhelm but instead be a place of comfort and calm. It’s really hard to experience that when there is clutter everywhere whether that’s with your stuff or your schedule. Organization lends itself to simplicity in the most beautiful of ways.
I crave the beauty of simplicity so much now whether that’s in the more obvious like flowers catching the rays of the sun or organized books in a basket. Because believe me, books in a basket will always make me so very happy! Well let’s face it, anything in a basket makes me so very happy, ha!
So I hope my site reflects all this as an extension of who I am and where I am on this journey we call life. I hope to continue to inspire and encourage you to continue the simplifying process in your own life so that you too can walk into your home, take a deep breath and say “ahhh, home!”.
If you see anything not quite right with my site, please let me know so I can get it fixed up. I am still working on cleaning up the categories to make them a little more user friendly. Also you’ll notice I now have a “home” page that hopefully makes it easier to find some of the posts you may be searching for. If you just want to read the blog, click on “blog” at the top of the home page or if you are on the blog click on “home” to check out the features there.
Thanks so much for being here and supporting my site all these years, it means the world to me. And if you’ve got ideas for future posts or other ways I can support you, I’d love to hear them!
Suzanne says
Love ? the new design! So fresh and pretty ??.
Laura Wittmann says
Yay, thank you Suzanne!!
Becky L. says
Nice design! I’m slowly getting my house unclogged. Long story but it will happen. Do I need this? No. Then it’s tossed or recycled to thrift stores. I’m going to fix my daughter’s bath room counter top items where it will be organized instead of stuff all over the counter. She’s gone for a bit this month. Not tossing anything unless its old. Did toss her lunch box as it was putrid due to smell as a couple small oranges were molded and bottom messed up!
Take care!
Laura Wittmann says
Keep up the great work Becky!
monica says
Lovely!!!! We live in a small house by American standards and one of my goals is to make sure that my kids understand that having a lot of things will not make you happy! Have enjoyed your blog for many years!
Laura Wittmann says
Thanks Monica, and yes that is such an important lesson to teach!
Rebecca says
I really like the new look!
Laura Wittmann says
Thank you Rebecca, that means a lot to me!
Donna says
A suggestion, if you don’t mind? The primary font in posts is very light and, for those of us with some eye problems, is a bit hard to read. Would it be possible to darken, please? Not necessarily in bold, but just darker?
Laura Wittmann says
Thanks for your feedback Donna, I’ll see what I can do 🙂
B Rogers says
Yes, the print on the blog is too light, very hard to read
Laura Wittmann says
Thank you for your feedback!
Shawnda says
Love the new look. I actually went to the web archives to see what your site has looked like over the years. Thought you might want a link to assist your walk down memory lane. And yes…very BRIGHT in the beginning.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071201000000*/orgjunkie.com
Laura Wittmann says
Thanks Shawnda, I clicked on the link but can’t see where you see blog design and would love to see it. Help!
Shawnda says
If you click on one of the colored date dots, it will give you a list of times your site was crawled and a “snapshot” of the site was created. When you choose a time, it will link you to working copy of what your site looked like on that date. 🙂
Laura Wittmann says
Oh that’s interesting, where are these colored date dots?
Rebecka M says
I love the new design! I loved the old one as well. 🙂 🙂 Have a great weekend!
Laura Wittmann says
Thanks Rebecka, that’s kind of you to say 🙂