Take a trip down memory lane.....

I can’t believe it, but my little blog Fizzy Peaches has just had it’s third birthday, and what an amazing ride it’s been. To celebrate 3 years of blogging, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and look at how this blog has developed over the years. It’s also been a big lesson to me that developing a blog takes time, patience and a lot of mistakes – I mean look at how my blog used to look! Sweet, but totally unprofessional. It’s taken me a while to develop my blog and brand into what it is today – it’s still by no means perfect and it’ll continue to change and evolve forever, but I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made so far.

December 2012

FizzyPeaches Blog was born. It was a dark, dull evening and I was bored. I’ve always been into web design so I thought it might be a fun challenge for myself to try and design a website. I just opened up Fizzy Peaches (based on the sweets I was eating at the time, pick & mix – yum!) and started writing. I had no idea what I wanted from a blog or where it was going, but Fizzy Peaches was born. My first posts were about New Years eve nails, Christmas Presents and a rant about how I am thought I was not where I thought I would be for being 27. I had no idea about the blogging community, blog events or anything at this point. Writing was my creative outlet, the rest was to follow. Unfortunately I don’t have a screenshot of my very first layout – shame!

April 2013

5 months later, I had designed myself a header of my favourite things (knitting, bubble tea and Brighton) and had a cute bob haircut with a fringe. I was starting to get hooked on blogging and started to post regularly. I began to chat to other bloggers via Twitter and had a handful of followers.

July 2013

By this point, I’d attended my first blogger event and reviewed my first ever PR sample (which was a face mask from Lush) I remember how excited I was to be given a free product, I couldn’t believe it – before I attended my first blog event I was so naive, I didn’t know blogging would involve reviewing products so it all took me by surprise! I decided I want to make my blog look a bit more professional so I cleaned up my layout a little, keeping my home-made header as a trademark!

October 2013

I really don’t know what I was thinking with this layout. Out of all of them this is my least favourite. I quickly knocked up a header on Photoshop and the photo looks so blocky. I also posed outside my house with the number of my old house showing (hello, stalkers!) I had a lot to learn about blogging and design (and security)…. My bad layout aside – I had found a really great circle of blogger friends (the Brighton blogger girlies) and was starting to go to events regularly. Blogging was starting to be about both the writing and the friendships and became my absolute favourite thing in the world to do.

February 2014

In 2014 I enlisted the help of the Pastel Feather Studio and my blog turned into this beautiful peachy watercolour. This was one of my favourite layouts, although it looks a bit dated now I loved it at the time. I had 264 followers on bloglovin and my blog was still just a little baby but I loved it and enjoyed watching it grow. I started to work with The Body Shop quite frequently and attended my first event in London.

April 2015

A year later, I decided to go for a more chilled out look and changed my layout all to blues/greens as we’d just moved house to the seaside. I got right into the beachy theme, by taking lots of photos by the sea, even my product reviews can be seen laying on the pebbles of Brighton beach (and I got a few strange looks setting up product photography on the beach). But things seemed to be settling in and I was finding my style with blogging, finally. My followers over this year went from around 300-1500, it was a big year… !

January 2016

So here we are now. In November 2015 I moved over to WordPress and changed my design again. I stuck with Monika from the Pastel Feather Studio as I just love her designs, she created my logo, the layout is from Pipdig. So far I am loving being over on WordPress, there is just so much more functionality and the plugins are awesome. I still have lots to learn but that is just part of the fun! I feel settled with blogging now and the blogging community – like I’m part of the furniture. I understand my own writing style, what works and what doesn’t. I’m getting better at photography but still have a way to go with that too. I wonder where the next year will take me!