Imperishable Beauty

Our pastor preached about reconciliation and forgiveness today, as we studied in Genesis about how Joseph and his brothers were reconciled after Joseph revealed himself to him. One point he made was that when Joseph forgave his brothers, he didn’t shuffle his feet and kick the dirt and stare at the ground and mumble:

“I, uh, um, I… forgive you.”

No, instead, Joseph looked right at them, and basically said:

Wow, it’s a lot of work building a blog! When I started my personal blog there was no goal, no focus. I just started picking out themes and started writing about whatever. Heck, it was easy!

This blog, having a focus, and a goal, takes a lot more work. My original intentions with this blog have shifted in focus and I haven’t specifically laid it out here, so I’m copying this from a recent post on my other blog to help clear things up. A bit. I hope.

You may have already read this at Bringing Good Home, but if you haven’t, well, here it is:

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you’ve heard me mention my other website, Imperishable Beauty - and you may or may not have noticed a subtle shift from the time I first started mentioning it (many months ago) and to what I have been saying about it the last couple of weeks. In actuality, what I originally started out with (an online store where you could browse and purchase products) is completely different than what I am doing now. Is it a blog? Is it a website? How about an online publication of some sort?

In truth it’s a blog, but when I get it all going the way I see it in my head, it’ll be so much more. It will be a hub- a “water cooler” to gather around and connect. I’m envisioning:

• Thought-provoking articles on all manner of topics relating to biblical womanhood and motherhood.
• Interviews with inspiring women from bloggy-land.
• Links to other sources of good information, product reviews and recommended resources.
• Guest authors, writing about things God has laid on their hearts, wisdom they have gleaned or lessons they have learned.
• Semi-regular giveaways.
• Mini-devotions.
• Semi-regular carnival type activities.
• A good dose of fun.

What do you think? I already have those planned out for specific days of the week, and I’m still brainstorming something for Saturdays. Maybe something with a family angle. Hmm. Of course, everything is still very early infancy so it’ll take some time (and a lot of work!- don’t think I haven’t thought of that!) to get this to that point. I still have graphics to create, layout things to tweak, traffic to create, and guinea pigs authors and interviewees to find.

So that’s where we’re headed. You’ll notice the pieces slowly falling into place over the next few weeks.

And by the way, thanks for traveling along with me!

Hopefully next Monday I’ll be able to post the first of many interviews where we’ll be getting to meet and know some women out there in bloggy land who desire biblical womanhood and mothering. I’ve got a few people in mind to start with (I’ll be contacting you soon!) but if you have someone you would like to nominate, you can do so by emailing t0: imperishablebeautyATgmailDOTcom.

This segment will feature Moms-to-be, Moms-of-many, Newly Married, Empty Nesters.. anybody that has a blog, is married, is a fellow believer, and is seeking to be the best wife and mom they can be is qualified. So start nominating!

The first part of this tackle had to do with my personal blog, and so the second half has to do with my business blog. I’ve been busy ironing out some bloggy wrinkles today since I (FINALLY) got my Etsy store set up last night. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

• Set up my Etsy store (last night.)
• Removed Flickr from my sidebar and added Etsy Mini instead (I didn’t know they had that when I set up Flickr.)
• Added my new store logo, and uploaded the new signature (which as I pointed out in Part 1 is still too big.)

Also this past week I:

• Added RSS Feeds.
• Created my Support I.B. page.

I’m glad to have all this behind me. Setting stuff up and tweaking all the details takes time. Sometimes A LOT of time. Now I can focus on the blogging part more. Although this blog does serve as a “portal” to my Etsy store, I plan on blogging about a lot of related topics such as true beauty, attitude, honoring God, love, serving, stewardship, etc. I’m excited to get to that part more and stop messing with the “behind the scenes” so much. On the other hand, even though I hope to develop a business that will honor God and please my husband, I don’t want to spend so much time on it that it interferes with taking care of my family and home, etc. So with that said - Off to work on the laundry! God Bless!

Tackle It Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom. Thanks ladies, for keeping us accountable!

I’ve added my product photos to the sidebar via Flickr - how neat is that? Each refreshed page will display different photos. It’ll be really cool once I get more products.

By the way, the photos were taken by my friend at Faith Photography. She thought it was a little strange that I was asking her to do a photo shoot with jewelry but fortunately for me she agreed. Thanks, Shelly!