I suppose a couple of weeks into the new year I may be a little late on having goals for myself.  As “they” say, better late than never.  I have found on my mommy blog that though I’m not a big “resolutions” girl, having goals etched in internet history to check on a year later is a helpful way to measure improvement and growth.  Here goes:

1. Focus:  An excellent accomplished designer gave me the advise to narrow my focus and decide what kind of blogs I want to design.  I tend to dive both in the more masculine/ clean looking blog world AND the girly blog world.  Truthfully, I love both.   As much as I love the clean more professional look the fact is I just can’t give up the girly girl in me. For a little while I thought that meant I would have to give up completely doing all else.  Instead, what I have realized is that just as my mom blog that I have maintained since 2004 does not stay limited to mommy topics, this one does not have to either.  My mommy blog is an accurate reflection of me.  I hope for my design blog to be the same.  I know that the advise I was given is absolutely true for growing a larger business.  Focus and target market are important.  But the fact is, I don’t even have time for a huge business :)  Especially if I want to grow my card business.  So for now I’ll be me.  I will do the girlier stuff and hopefully the more masculine blogs will give me a try from time to time.
2. Free Themes:  I would like to release 2 more free themes before the year is out. I would say more if I did not have a third baby on the way!
3. Card Me:  I would like to get “card my baby” launched to grow the Card Me brand.
4. Premade Themes:  I would like to get more premade themes for sale.
5.  Know my Limits:  I would like to know and understand my limits, how much I can take on, better.  Both for reasons of not getting overwhelmed and not saying no to too much business at the same time.
6.  Posting:  I would like to post on gazelle more!

I had the urge to do a super girly pre-made theme last night and am hoping to put it up for sale soon on Girly Blog Designz.  If you are interested let me know!

Christmas Card season has well subsided and so has my massive morning sickness. All job requests that I had to turn down in November and December I now can take on. It’s good to be back.

As my Christmas Card business, CardMyChristmas.Com is beginning to pick up I will probably not be doing too much in the way of blog design before the new year. I am really excited to see how our first holiday season online shapes up…. Unfortunately the downside is this blog won’t be getting a lot of attention from me, but I’ll do my best

This is my first free theme release. Randa had recommended I create a free theme to get this site going! I thought of how many bloggers out there I knew that had homeschooling blogs. It seemed like a good place to start since I have not seen too many geared toward them. So by all means enjoy it!

Preview Homeschool Theme.
Download Homeschool Theme

Before I really get going much further on this blog, I wanted to take a moment to give link love to some of the designers on my design blogroll that have helped me so much on my path of learning this web arm of design.

First off, Heather Bixler of Girly Blog Designs not only first inspired me to transfer my design career into the web, but also taught me first. She spent a month consulting with me to learn the basics of the trade and I found her excellent to work with.

Then Michael of Pro Blog Design. Many times he guided me through glitches I had using k2 theme and answered many questions out of the goodness of his heart. And look at him now, he’s big time A great young guy with talent and people skills. A killer combination in this world of blog design.

And I can not leave out Randa Clay who lately has been extra helpful when I have encountered bugs I could not figure out. She has spent a lot of time purely out of her sweet generous heart. Thanks Randa.

I have found that many people in this blog design niche are so extremely giving and helpful. I hope that I can in return give back to these people in the future. You don’t find this attitude in the corporate world all the time. It’s so unique. Anyway, I just did not want to go much further without linking out love and gratitude.

I completed this theme for nextstoplauderdale.com today.

Yes, starting over.  There were so many issues with resurrecting my fallen blog and it was so new… that I just deleted the whole thing and am re-loading it.  All old posts are gone.  But again, with the grand total being 5, that is not so much :)  Hopefully within the night I will ONCE AGAIN, be back up, for good, Lord Willing.