Finally, a Facelift

For all my regular readers out there, you may have seen my last post about following this blog via BlogLovin. If you're someone who follows more than one or two blogs, but aren't yet using using BL (or some other Reader format), I highly suggest you try it.  Readers have made my blog-following experience so much easier and more meaningful.  So, yeah...check it out!  

In that same vein, have you the seen face-lift on my blog?  Sometimes Readers don't show blogs in their original formats (especially if you use an app version), so I wanted to be sure and tell everyone about the new and improved "Breaking the Mold."  Instead of using one of those cookie cutter templates with backgrounds, images, and colors, I downloaded a new set from someone who designs custom templates.  Now, this particular template I'm using is not a custom template (I didn't pay for it), but it takes a lot of time and a bit of sweat on the brow to use this type of design.  If you can't tell yet, I'm SUPER excited about this big change to my five-year (and counting) blog!!!

In my quest to find outlets for creativity, personal expression, and general hobby-type ventures, I'm slowly learning how to improve my blogging and (maybe eventually) increase readership.  I have to give mad props to Kara over at The Simple Life Blog for sharing some tutorials she's used along the way.  She's been a huge help in making the learning curve not so steep, and I really look forward to learning more and more as I work to up the ante on this here blog of mine.  Maybe one day we'll even be in the same "league" of blogs and then we can teach each other how to make fancy new projects for our pages.  A girl can dream, can't I? (Also thanks to Dawn and Christy for serving as reviewers as I ascertained the style/color combinations were clear and readable before this big reveal.)

Never fear, though.  I don't aspire to ever be one of those blogs with thousands of followers because let's be honest, no one wants to see give-aways, ads, or product reviews all day every day (and that's what's required to be at that level in the blog world).  Plus, that's not "me" anyway.  I just like recording stories and experiences so I can look back on them one day and smile about the many people and places who "moo-lded" me into the person I am today.

I might, however, try out a few blogger-style entries every now and again.  (Note:  This is your warning.)  Eventually, I want to learn about "linking up," creating buttons, and building an audience.  For now though, I'm going to stick to the basics and probably keep playing around with my page design before I move on to other things.  Lately, fonts, colors, and images are really intriguing to me, and even in my professional work, I'm trying to learn more about creating materials that are attractive to others in order to do a better job of growing our program.

So, what this all means is that I hope I'm finding a fun new hobby that will give me a creative outlet to feel connected with others in a different way.  For all you other bloggers out there (I know, I know, all... three of you? ha.), feel free to share tips and suggestions, or even tutorials that were helpful to you.  I'm like a sponge right now!

In other news, this was a really busy week for me.  The "fair" is in town where I work and given my line of work that means lots of activities that require coordinating volunteers and all those hundreds of details that go into executing events.  Plus, some super intelligent person (not!) decided it would be a grand idea to take all the 4-H agents out of their parishes for two days during the first week of the first month of club meetings and have them go to an overnight training session at 4-H Camp.  Genius, right?  I felt super anxious returning today to a mound of missed calls, e-mails, and list of things to do before three events we have tomorrow.  The only thing that makes the idea of working all day Saturday not totally depressing is that Alex is in North Carolina overnight for the ULM game against Wake Forest.  It would be that much worse if I had to work all day on Saturday while he sat at home alone or something.

I was on the team that was designated as "Overall Winner" of the Top Chef:  Healthy Tailgate event during our training this week.  We made crock-pot fajitas and they were totally yummmmmmm!

This is the office explosion that occured while I was out at training for two days.  Really, the photo doesn't do it justice.

Ok, enough of the pitty party.  Ya'll go check out my new and improved page, and let me know what you think!  While you're at it, go ahead and click the (super cute) buttons to follow me on BlogLovin, Twitter, and Facebook.  You're also welcome to leave a comment or send me an e-mail (because there are adorable buttons for that too!).

See ya, folks!
-Lauren