The Blog’s Got A Whole New Look!

Welcome to my new look blog! What do you think? It only took me….oh, around 100 hours to choose the new theme! And then I am very fortunate to have a talented husband, as he is responsible for the shiny new header there. Overall, I am absolutely delighted with the whole new look. The redesign is to mark a few changes around here, so do let me explain more…

This is it. This is me, finally, able to work full time on this blog. I’ve been writing here for a little over five years now, and now that the children are both at school and I have graduated, I am able to go for it here. I am able to share whatever I’d like to share and have the time to create the content that I want to.

But it’s a funny old thing, that level of freedom all of a sudden. It’s taken me a little while to adjust to it. I’ve been finding my feet for a few weeks. I’m now used to having no studying to do, and I’m actually not missing it as much as I thought I would. I have started to carve out a new routine Monday to Friday, and wherever possible, I’m getting the majority of my work done by 3pm, ready for that school run, with ‘just’ social media interactions to work on after that – OK, any blogger will know that there’s no ‘just’ where social media is concerned!!

With a new routine in place, it’s time for me to crack on with the blog and make the changes that I’d like to make. Which sounds quite clear cut, but it’s taken a lot of brainstorming and drilling down for me to establish exactly what that is, it’s harder than you’d think! But I am there now and I am positively brimming with ideas and excitement over the direction I want to move in.

What’s the idea behind the new direction?

I’ve changed over time, my family is growing, our priorities are shifting. I’ve also been blogging long enough to know what I love sharing.

As part of my brainstorming process (oh, such a process!) I managed to come up with what I’d like to be the essence of the blog, something of a mission statement, if you’ll forgive the corporate phrase.

I want to offer practical advice to people like me. It kind of boils down to being that simple. And no, I’m not professing to be an expert at any of this – parenting, running a home, blogging – I’m just figuring it all out like the rest of you. But if I can share things that do work, or even things to avoid that have gone spectacularly wrong, or perhaps something that just resonates with you, then that seems to me to be a worthwhile thing.

And secondly, as I share ideas to free up your time or makes things that little bit easier, I’d like to offer suggestions around well-being and self care, sharing whatever is working for us and for others. Creating quality family time, living the little things, grabbing some me time and being present whilst juggling everything else, are all areas I’d like to cover.

The first theme, the practical advice, should be all about complementing the second theme, making life easier so that you’re free to focus on the more important things.

So what can you expect?

I will share family life. This is something I’ve always done here, and something I am keen to continue. From days out that we enjoy, products we’d recommend, our favourite ways to spend time together, recipes we’re loving, projects around the home and garden, and any parenting blips or wins, I’ll be sure to share them all with you.

I plan to share lots of organisation, planning, budgeting and money saving posts. My life revolves around this, so I want to offer practical advice for people like me, with families and homes to run. I know how busy we all are, I know the tricky balancing act, so I want to offer up quick wins to save time and suggestions for saving money. We all want more time and money, right?!

Where well-being is concerned, I’d like to inspire you. In any way that I can. I hope to inspire you to try something new, to get back to something you loved, to just go for it. As such, I’ll be sharing stories from others along with my own experiences. And mixed in amongst this inspiration will be Bring Back Paper. There was never any doubt in my mind that this needs to continue. I adore sharing and inspiring people to read more, send happy mail and buy loads of stationery! To me, this fits perfectly within the category of ‘me-time’ and self care, as these activities are personally essential for my own well-being, and I know many of you would say the same.

With the new look all up and running and notes upon notes for upcoming blog post ideas, all that’s left for me to say is thanks for your support here so far. I really hope that you will enjoy the new content I’ll be creating and that you’ll come with me on my full time blogging journey. You can subscribe to The Reading Residence brand spanking new newsletter below, and if you’re new around here, you might like to start by finding out a bit about us, before having a poke around. Happy reading!

What do you think? I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and any feedback would be really appreciated.

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