Blog Updates

Have you noticed the changes on the blog recently? I had a random weekday off last week and I wanted to spend about an hour making a few quick updates to the blog – well that hour quickly became 4!

It all started when Grace mentioned to me that she wanted to have social media icons on the sidebar of the site. We figured that it would be easier for our readers to follow us on Pinterst & instagram or to email us.

I stumbled upon Ashton’s site- SomethingSwanky.com and she had a whole tutorial on how to create these icons. Her directions were so easy to follow! I won’t go through it step by step, but if you want to make something similar- stop by her site. Here’s what I came up with.

After I successfully made the icons, I found another tutorial on Ashton’s site that explained how to use image-maps to link multiple urls to an image. With these directions, I was able to make a section in the sidebar that highlights our most popular posts. Again, I won’t go through the step by step directions – Ashton does a good enough job of that. Here’s what I came up with:

From there, I came across a tutorial on how to create sidebar gadget titles. It was surprisingly easy to make these titles. Here’s what I came up with:

I also added the feature that allows readers to pin directly from each of our images. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found the tutorial for that.  If I come across it again, I’ll be sure to update this post!

All in all I think the updates have made a world of difference with how the site looks. I wish I had taken a screen shot of how the blog used to look. My next mission is to fix up the header a bit. What do you think of the updates? Any suggestions on what we should do with the header? Thank you Ashton for all the tutorials!