BACK–OR BEGINNING–IN BUSINESS…

Well, after very unintentionally floating in blogdom limbo for the last week…I am back!

Now, I am not the most tech savvy gal by any means, but in my recent attempt to establish a site on WordPress.org, I simply felt….stupid. First, I had no idea that WordPress.com and WordPress.org were so vastly different from each other (a good tip here: do your research!). Generally, WordPress.com is a free blog site, similar to Blogger, Typepad, etc. with basic templates, a few customization options, and other additional options you can purchase for a fee. In order to look slightly more professional (even though I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time), I chose to purchase my domain name for a small yearly fee so that my site reads “themodagecottage.com” rather than “themodagecottage.wordpress.com.” Yes, I realize that my business name is already long enough without adding that additional hodge podge!

Anyhow, with this amateur attempt to up the ante, I found a host to support the WordPress.org application, made all the appropriate purchases, tried to transfer my meager content along with my domain name…and failed miserably. So I have spent the last week trying to make sense of the whopping mess that I created – installing themes, adding widgets, blah, blah, blah, so that I could proudly publish to the world at least a semi-professional site that I put together all by my lil’ self.

But heck, there comes a time when one must face reality. My reality, just this afternoon, in fact, was telling me that I wasn’t yet prepared to wrap my head around WordPress.org and all the CSS BS that goes with it, and to go back to what I actually enjoy doing, which is writing for my blog instead of customizing it.

So here I am, a week later, back on WordPress.com and loving every minute of it! I say all of this to you because I imagine that one day, when I actually have readers and followers, some of you may be in the midst of starting a business, or thinking about it, and I am here to say that no matter how much potential you may have and no matter how bad you may want it, everything will not happen to you all at once (something like “patience is a virtue…”). You will hit road blocks, and many of them, but a road block is not the end of the road and you WILL find a way around it – even if that means reigning in your ego a little and starting back at the beginning.

SO, now that I’ve gotten this business talk / inspirational message out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! Here are a few things that I’ve been thinking about over the week that I have been M.I.A….

Easy, breezy, and bright summertime style. Love, love, LOVE that boyfriend jacket! Time to go shopping…

Cool, calm, and collected summertime style. Seriously, could she look any cooler?

Time to brighten up that living room, change out the slip covers, throw in some flowers, and add that dramatic touch (I recently found a HUGE, vintage milk jug, and just ordered these branches in white, not to mention….repainted my entire living room)!