Umm are you SEEING THIS?! I have a legitimate-looking-pretty blogging website! You can search things! And subscribe! I am beside myself thrilled. For the past year, as my number of views seemed to grow...I struggled with the way my little, insignificant, yet special, hobby-blog looked. I know enough to be dangerous but I am not a computer person, capable of watching some YouTube videos to figure out HOW to make this space look the way I wanted it to. That, and my only software for creating a logo is Microsoft Publisher. Which is laughable. It's funny how my eye for all things decor + design just DOES NOT translate into being even mildly competent at graphic design.
Enter: My college bestie/roommate/Graphic Designer, Steph (Fun Fact, we actually met at Hidden Acres in 2005 before randomly ending up on the same dorm floor at Iowa State in 2007...not only that, two rooms away from each other, both enrolled in College of Design core classes. Life is so funny and great.)
We don't keep in touch like we should, but on a whim I decided to text Steph and ask if she could create a 'logo' for me out of my favorite Instagram pictures (the top of a grain bin found in our shed, cleaned off and drilled to our basement wall, posted earlier this spring once I finally got to start decorating our new house!). I wanted 'Glitter and Grass' centered in classic, white cursive...explained that I wanted it to be 'cutout' so it could be plopped in the blog as a logo/title (I obviously used really graphic-design-y phrases to explain what I wanted)...and off she went...working late into the night, exactly the way she did in college when she was excited about a new project. In less than 24 hours I had a logo that literally could not BE more perfect. It's so original, pulled straight from our house, and ties into my current style in a really classic way.
I felt like that was the first piece of the puzzle, but now I needed someone to help me GET MY CRAP TOGETHER WITH THIS BACK-END COMPUTER CODING MAYHEM.
Enter: Mikayla Allender, Mikayla Allender Creative
What's funny is that I did not go searching for this. I had poked around a bit here and there throughout the past year, asked some people/messaged some acquaintances about how much they charge to do this kind of coding stuff and pretty much came up empty. Hence my silence and inconsistency for the last couple of months (actually, year?)...I have so much to share with you about our life and I've barely scratched the surface telling you about our house renovation...AND ALSO I WENT TO WACO AND IT WAS EVERYTHING. I was just not in love with the way this little space looked and when I don't like how something looks I either DO SOMETHING to change it immediately, or I lose all interest/motivation. So that's where I was at...had this super-cute new logo for G & G with no way of implementing all the changes/additions I wanted to.
Mikayla and I are members of the same creative group on Facebook, a place where business owners and general creative people post questions and network. She found my post from a couple months ago about the 'new business venture' I made up overnight and reached out to see if I needed help with branding/designing/website work. Funny for two reasons, 1. Because I'm terrible at checking my Facebook message 'requests' and 2. I actually responded...unless it's a text, I tend to forget about Facebook messages. Within 24 hours we'd exchanged information, set up a phone date to chat, and less than a week after that...I HAVE A PRETTY NEW BLOG! She had no problem working with the logo Steph designed for me a month ago and turned my list of 'wants' into exactly what I was looking for.
All this to say...you can get used to hearing from me a little more often.
One of the book clubs I'm in this summer had a paragraph in our reading last week about how 14% of all mom's run a 'mommy blog' WHICH JUST KILLS ME. I'm actually dying laughing about the fact that I contribute to that 14%...3.9 MILLION to be exact. Not only that, I'm not even close to being in the 500 that have 'considerable reach.' (Glory in the Ordinary, Courtney Ressig) But for some reason, I just don't care. I like going back and reading what I wrote about our life in 2013. And referencing what Maverick's 9-month schedule was when I have a friend who has questions. I know podcasts are the HOT NEW THING right now (and they're what got me through the endless hours of painting + work on our house last winter), but there is something about the WRITTEN WORD that people crave. It's why we still buy hard copies of REAL BOOKS. It's why we prefer to sit down and study our ACTUAL BIBLE vs. scrolling through it on our phone. Even though you're likely accessing this blog post from a phone, you're READING it, not watching a YouTube video or listening to someone read it to you while you're attention is actually elsewhere. While I think podcasts and book recordings and the Bible app certainly have their place...I'm going to keep on plugging away over here with decorating advice, mom life, and funny essay's...because I want to.
My absolute favorite quote from Jen Hatmaker just brings all of this full-circle for me...
"I sincerely believe we were created by a Creator to be creative. This is part of His image we bear, this bringing forth of beauty, life, newness. This bears out in one thousand different ways: we write, sculpt, paint, speak, dance, craft, film, design, photograph, draw, bring order, beautify, garden, innovate, produce, cook, invent, fashion, sing, compose, imagine. It looks like art, it looks like music, it looks like splendor. That thing in you that wants to make something beautiful? It is holy." (Of Mess and Moxie)
I like to decorate. I like to organize. I like to write funny, relateable stuff for moms to laugh and/or cry at. I think this space is valuable because it's where I share those things, whether anyone thinks they're worth sharing or not. That was never the point. It's my way of 'bringing forth beauty' in a unique and thoughtful way...I think beauty and creativity bring glory to God in a way that's not typically thought of as 'ministry,' but that's what I'm doing here.
That's my why. And that's really all I need.
Happy 5th Anniversary, Glitter and Grass. You're cute and fun.
MmB
