Exciting Changes + a $100 Giveaway!

Hello, and happy FRIDAY! As you may have noticed, posts have been a little slow coming out on the blog lately. It’s not for lack of trying, lack of content, or even lack of focus– there’s actually several reasons, but the biggest is my time has mostly been invested in working on rebranding and on the, ahem, ‘back end’ of the blog for over a year.

There’s a million ‘backend’ jokes I can make here, but know this– working on my back end is not my favorite. So it’s taken me awhile to wade through Making Lemonade’s extremely large back end.

It’s not just an addiction to salted caramel frappuccinos making the back end so big. Believe it or not, this summer Making Lemonade turned 10 years old (at which time she promptly slammed a door and yelled at her brother. Oh wait, that’s the other preteen in my life.)

But seriously– WOAH– Making Lemonade is TEN! Ten years ago I sat down and wrote my first post on this blog, in the hopes of mentally getting outside my four walls and connecting with others while caring for my medically fragile child. Seems like yesterday, if yesterday was covered in chevron.

It’s an understatement to say that much has changed in the past 10 years. At that time, iPhones were just coming out, and Farmville requests were terrorizing Facebook. Blog backgrounds were covered in pretty patterns and bloggers had cute cartoon avatars of themselves. ‘Mommy Blogs’ were hobbies instead of the multi-million dollar businesses they are today. Pinterest hadn’t even started yet, and when it did it was invite-only!

my blog circa 2011 or so

My website had undergone quite a few cosmetic changes during that time, so by 2018 was like a giant Franken-blog. There was so much to fix, and I’m still slogging through updating and deleting old content, to be honest.

With a lot of work, the new Making Lemonade has been freshened up and is way more navigatable (is that a word? Spellcheck says NO.) The new design went live in the early spring, but we’re still making changes.

First and foremost, the branding is updated and I’m in love with it. My previous branding never matched my vision, so thankfully Bliss + Tell Creative helped my dreams come to design fruition. We started by discussing how I wanted the site to look, feel, and function, and my direction for Making Lemonade as a brand. They came up with this beautiful design board that was the springboard to sharing several gorgeous logo ideas.

They came up with several iterations of potential logos, but after some tweaking here’s the one that spoke to my vision the most:

After the branding and design were in place, we overhauled the entire framework of the website. It was the ‘brazilian butt lift’ of the blog back-end world. (yes, I promise, the backend jokes stop here.)

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out part of the beautiful new homepage! That’s the ‘hub’ of my site now, where you can find links to the blog, the free yearly planner, my book, popular posts, and more. You can always navigate through the drop-down menus too (I’m still working on making old posts look pretty, that’s going to take awhile.)

here’s a screenshot of the homepage, to click the links you’ll have to go to the actual homepage. 😉

When you click on the link to the blog, you’ll see all recent posts. You can also find previous posts sorted by category in the menu area as well.

Plus, when you read a post, you’ll find the previous and next posts linked at the bottom to make moving around easy. What’s great about that feature is if you find yourself reading a holiday post, most likely you’ll find other seasonally related posts right before and after it as well.

The Essential Oils sections got a facelift too! You can click to read how to purchase essential oils and join the Lemonade Essentials team, favorite essential oil accessories and supplies, and I’ve also put all my recipes and tips & tricks for using essential oils in one place.

I’m often asked for links to items that people see in my posts and in Instagram stories, so I made that easy to find too– at the tippy-top of the page, there’s links to my Amazon Favorites (there’s some serious GOLD in there, it’s literally all my favorite things!), my book, and a way to shop the items you see and love on Instagram.

As for the website, there’s still some tweaks that are scheduled for this fall:

delete or update old posts that slow the site down
decide if I need to fix the font and font size (any input? is the font hard to read?)
properly tag all previous posts so they show up properly in the galleries
add new recipe plug-in to update the old, outdated one
finally get a house tour photographed and up on the blog!

If you see anything you think needs to be updated or fixed, please let me know! Your experience using the site is of the upmost importance to me.

While it may look simple, there’s over a year and a half of work that went into the overhaul and I could NOT have done it without my amazing team! Huge thanks to Bliss + Tell Creative, Linda from Curious Notions photography, and my hardworking contractors past and present (Heidi, Kelly and Carmen, to name a few.)

As a reminder, here’s a snapshot of what my site looked like this time last year:

And here’s how (part of it) looks now!

With all that being said, NONE of this would be possible without all of you. I’m so deeply thankful for those of you who read here, subscribe to the newsletter, follow-along, connect on Instagram, and share my posts with your friends or on Facebook and Pinterest. FOR REAL, I’m full of gratitude for each and every one of you!

How to Get Insider Perks

Another really exciting feature is I’ve been regularly sending out newsletters full of freebies and insider’s only tips to our Making Lemonade Insiders. Not only do they get first dibs on all our printables plus tons of free, behind-the-scenes info, they also get access to our entire printables library all in one spot. Are you an Insider yet? Fill out the form below to become an Insider and get our FREE 2019 planner, plus have early access to our 2020 planner and all the perks listed above!

Enter the $100 in Amazon Gift Cards Giveaway

To make sure the content we’re creating is tailored to you and fits what you need to help you solve life’s little problems, take this quick survey and give your opinion on what types of content you LOVE, HATE, and everything in between. It should take less than 5 minutes and you could win $50! Please know how much your answers matter. I read each and every one. And as a thank you for filling out the survey, I’m giving away two $50 gift cards to Amazon to lucky randomly chosen readers!

What’s Next for Making Lemonade?

This is a question I’ve been pondering and praying about for awhile. The blogging landscape is rapidly changing, but at the heart of it I love to create content and my #1 goal is and always will be to help others find solutions to life’s little problems to make more room for what you love. What does that look like? More frequent newsletters? An ebook or online course? a PODCAST? Heck, if I had unlimited time and money I’d love to create a Making Lemonade Market retail space or pop-up shop.

So my question to you is this– What would you like to see next? What would serve you best?

Right now, we have an editorial calendar packed full of ideas for making the most of the fall and holiday season and beyond. I’m furiously trying to finish up the approximately 58 drafts in the queue (not an exaggeration). Plus, literally 3 room makeovers scheduled before Christmas. It’s gonna be a wild one for sure, but I’m so thankful for the ride.

I just have one more word for you…

BACKEND.

Sorry, I had to. 😉

Thank you again, my loves! Don’t forget to take the quick survey and get yourself on the Insider list to get early access to all our printables and planners!