Becoming A Blogger

This is a first time making a blog for both Lucas and I. We started it shortly after we got engaged because we wanted to extend information about the reception to friends and relatives. In the process, we decided we would introduce ourselves via the blog by posting a summary "About Us" for each of us. From there, we added stories about how we met and the proposal story. We expected a few close friends and family to be interested enough to go to the website and see those things. We did not expect a large handful of people to come through the Reception line and make comments like, "I've read your entire blog." "Jamaica sounds amazing. I want to go there now." We even had one lady say that she did not know either of us, but she saw our names in the newspaper and came across our blog and decided to come to wish us luck. We were the most taken aback by this, but very pleased that this sweet lady had learned about us through our blog and went out of her way to come to our reception. I wish I could remember her name and thank her for this act of kindness. More than several people came through the line and said, "keep posting." 

I've heard so many stories about blogs going flop after a short time because kids become overwhelming and making blog posts is soon forgotten. I'm sure we'll have times when we won't care to make any posts, but I hope to make posts on occasion to allow family and loved ones a way to access photos and stories when we are separated by distance. Right now, we have few interesting posts because our lives are boring. I go to school, Lucas goes to work, we eat, we study, then we go to bed. It's pretty dry for making blog posts, but be patient. Soon enough we'll have kids coming out our ears and so much excitement in our lives that if we had the time, we'd have a good handful of exciting stories to tell.

For those of you who have visited our blog before, you've probably noticed a drastic change in the way it appears! 

Before

After

I got sick of looking at our plain blog and decided we needed to make it more attractive, especially if we want anyone to ever return to it. So, I have been working on it's appearance on and off for some time now. It is still going through changes and I'm learning a lot just by doing this. Our blog has also become Lucas' testing tool. He is currently trying to improve Madison Memorial Hospital's online presence and whenever he's trying something new for the social campaign he tests it first on our blog, Lucas' wordpress profile, or our Facebook page. 

It's been a lot of fun to learn a couple new things about HTML and blogging in general. For the most part, I find a website where they already have what I want and I copy the HTML code to paste into my own. :) I thought about making some of my own tutorials, but there are so many websites and blogs that give tutorials, I'd rather not be the broken record. However, if you notice something on my blog that you'd like to incorporate into your blog, let me know and I'll shoot you the HTML code or make a tutorial if it's a little more complicated. I've already discovered a couple widgets I added that took more time to load than what they were worth and they have since been deleted. I would appreciate some feedback. Tell me what you like, don't like, and what can improve.

Happy Blogging!