It’s finally here! I have a new blog design and it’s really cool. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s pretty, it’s fabulous and it was designed by Brian Hurdle, IT/network guy by day, wedding photographer extraordinaire by night/weekends. I’ve changed the subtitle from “babbling about business, babies, and parenthood” to “babbling about business, parenting, and music.” My kids aren’t babies anymore. I realized it’s been closer to 4 years since I started blogging (thanks to Connie Reece) and a blog redesign was way overdue! And my current entrepreneurial endeavor is music related.
The design incorporates musical notes, buildings, paisley type designs, and of course elephants! Elephants are my favorite animals, and I have a collection of various elephant figurines. My songwriting partner and I have been making progress on music creation, and we have 5 songs in various stages of completion. We even have a band name, a facebook page (if you are really curious to know the name, you’ll just have to click that link), and a YouTube channel.
We haven’t done much promotion of any of these because our songs aren’t ready to publish, but we may begin promoting at least the facebook page so we can get support from folks to help us make sure we do complete what we set out to do. This will be no easy task given both of our busy schedules and different worlds. He’s a professional musician and I’m a professional “wondering what to do with my life next while wreaking havoc in some small business” type of person.
Thanks Brian for exercising your creative muscles to come up with a design that makes me happy! Next he’ll be updating my twitter page (which I rarely use but may one day be worth something since I was a fairly early adopter) to match the blog design.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
entrepreneurship,
FYI,
marketing,
twitter |
Tags: band name,
blog design,
brian hurdle,
connie reece,
elephants,
facebook page,
twitter,
youtube channel |
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What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
But the same doesn’t go for blog names! (Sorry Shakespeare) My new blog design is finally ready to announce to the world. It was tough picking a new name and design. I wanted to capture who I am (a South Asian, high-tech woman entrepreneur) and what I’m trying to do (i.e., shift the definition of entrepreneurship to one that I outline on my About page) while at the same time including the biggest parts of my life as mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, neice, aunt, and friend. So I set out to come up with a name and design that I thought would allow me write about all of these things.
Last week I attended a meeting where Gail Evans, former VP at CNN and author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, spoke (more about that later), and she said she can’t understand why people always talk about work/life balance. She said we have one life and our work and our personal stuff are all part of that life so why make it sound as if work and life are opposing factors? My work is part of my life and my family/kids/friends are part of my life. So when the name entrepreMusings was quietly said during a discussion on the topic by our brilliant volunteer, college student Marketing Intern who we pay with the un-spendable but highly leveragable currency of experience, it just seemed to fit. 🙂
Prior to that eureka moment, we threw around:
- entrepreMuse – which I refer to myself on this blog, but we didn’t feel it was the right name for the blog
- entrepreMusing – didn’t sound quite right until the s was added to the end.
- Entrepreneuse (a female entrepreneur)– I almost went with that one but several friends said it sounded like entrepre ‘noose’ to which I replied well being an entrepreneur does sometimes feel like you have a noose around your neck! Plus there were some others around using the term (e.g., Entrepreneuse Live)
- A bunch of others that were in jest and not appropriate to note on the blog. Name creation is a crazy, unscientific process…at least in this house.
As I mentioned in my How to Create a New Website post, I found Swank Web Style and Karen (who blogs at Vodkarella) from a link on Mocha Momma’s site. I picked the image at iStockphoto of the woman babbling on the phone, and Karen modified it to something that I liked. The woman had some blush on that made her look like she had a skin disease and some other features that I requested to be changed. After some back and forth (and my design fits, last second changes, and design seizures), late nights and both of us having to deal with sick kids and her having to deal not only with sick kids but also a sick dog, a broken toe, and moving houses it was finished and it was COOL!
She then turned the original design over to Vicki (who did our new corporate site) and Vicki did everything in her power to make it work! After this new theme design process, I have a huge amount of appreciation and respect for those designers who create free WordPress themes. (Check out Randa’s cool new Pink for October Free WordPress Theme.) The browser compatibility issues, the widget alignment issues, the blog stats integration issues all surfaced when you least expected them, but Vicki patiently, meticulously, and kindly addressed them all!
Now I can (hopefully) blog all of the post ideas that have been swimming around in my head, and oh yeah actually get some other work done such as selling, marketing, public relations, calling people, setting up partnerships, etc. 🙂
I hope all of you all like the new direction. Please help me change the world view of entrepreneurship and parenthood by entrepreMusing with me one blog post and one comment at a time!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
wordpress |
Tags: blog design,
Wordpress themes |
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