I love staying up late. Everyone is in bed.  My obligations for the day are complete. I am listening to a playlist where nearly every song I can sing to, sway to, groove to. This is my time of the night. I live for this time of the night. 

And, this time of night gets in the way of my desires of waking up at 6 am, and “getting a good start to the day.” I look longingly at my neglected journal, where I love penning my thoughts with my TWSBI ECO Fountain Pen, inked in Noodler’s turquoise. But, the time to write is before the kiddo gets up, with a cup of coffee. And, when I stay up late, where I also thrive, I do not have the capacity to get up at 6 am. 

Alas, I sit here at 1:02 am, keying these thoughts into my blog on my newly updated website. This was actually a struggle! I refuse to pay a monthly fee when I can get the same function for free. The challenge I am facing is which theme works with which plugin, without error. And today, I struggled to find it. 

I think I have something that will work. I have ditched the landing page (I hated this interruption before getting to my site. And, besides, isn’t that what this static front page is for anyway?) In this theme, you can have “sliders”… it’s been so long since I used these header sliders! So, I chose to create custom images that linked to the thing I wanted to “advertise. The sidebar seems to to be working, on all the pages, so that will remain with a permanent newsletter sign up. 

I am thankful for Canva and its ability to keep my branding consistent, so creating images is quick and succinct … and on brand.

I invite you, now, in these wee hours of the evening, take a look. What do you think? I pay for hosting with my site, and not much more. So, what you get is the time I spent researching, dabbling, and trying things until I think they work. 

And, my hope – that I can squeeze in a few hours of sleep AND rise at 6 am. Let’s get these journal pages written!