New name, new look, same Kate... Sort of.

I really wish I'd built up to this moment and had a big "unveiling" of my "new blog," but it honestly happened after I spent an afternoon at Starbucks. I was supposed to be doing homework (I have a shit load to catch up on after being sick with strep and missing two classes), but of course I couldn't get my mind in the right place. So, I have a new blog.

Sort of.

I've been thinking of changing things up for months but couldn't quire decide how I wanted to do it.
I'm so grateful to those of you who have been following along for nearly TWO years now (and if there are any readers who have hopped around on here since 2010, God bless you). I started out with a "busy" page. I had one of our weddings photos as my header with a caption across it I think.

Then sometime towards the end of 2014 I had a pale pink floral design that was a cute but a little underaged for me. I finally went full white with my layout--I've always thought the plain white layouts looked the most professional! You can make the blog your own by decorating with pretty fonts and different colored texts. So that's what I set out to do!

I use PicMonkey for all things editing, and I finally caved and bought a membership so I get all the cool fonts and features (I don't know why it took me so long to do this--it's only $2.50/month)! I love the header I created using my favorite color blue and black for my name. I had considered using navy and gray, but I didn't like the way it looked with the rest of my site.

Speaking of the header, I guess I should discuss why I decided to change my blog name. I loved the pun with my last name, Pace. It was such a cute idea and so easy to do! But now I think the game is shifting a little. There are a lot of little changes taking place in my life and so many more to come. I basically just decided that I want the focus to be more on "keeping Kate" than keeping up with her. It's taken me years to find myself, and the truth is that I'm still doing it, picking up little bits and pieces along the way.

I don't think I'll ever have myself completely put together; I'll always be discovering new things about myself, so my goal is to hang on to all of these little things I'm finding out along the way. That's the idea behind "keeping Kate."

I set up my new header, then worked on restyling my clickable social media icons you'll notice if you're on a desktop (they're on the right side of the page, before my profile picture). I decided to go with simple, black ones. I love the ones I found here for free!

Tackling a blog makeover isn't easy, but it was definitely easy the fourth or fifth time around! Now that I have a pretty solid handle on HTML coding and blog design, it was basically just a matter of making the time and making decisions as to how I wanted the new design to look.

I wanted something even more grown up, and I think I nailed it right on the head by getting rid of a lot of the pastel colors and swirly texts. I desperately need a new, more professional profile picture for the right side of the page though, and my goal is to have a new one within a couple weeks!

The last step was changing my domain name. I purposefully saved it for last because when I bought KeepingPaceBlog.com, it literally took me five hours to set up the name on my blogger site. I use GoDaddy for my domain name, and I highly recommend them! I started a customer chat with a representative named Keith, and he was so helpful! He processed my small payment for my new domain and sent me clear instructions on how to plug my new domain name in. Guys, it was so easy the second time around! It took a total of about 20 minutes once I'd purchased it!

I absolutely love my "new" blog, Keeping Kate! I'm excited about reestablishing myself as a blogger and getting my name back out there in the blogosphere. Thank you guys so much for reading along and being so supportive. Love you all!

**What do you think of the new blog name/look?