It took me most of December, but I finally brought Wedding Decorator into the new decade. I hadn’t redesigned Wedding Decorator since 2008. I think in between 2008 and now, I may have tweaked the header a little, but that doesn’t do much. I’d planned to redesign Wedding Decorator sometime this year, but when it became apparent that, yes, I would definitely be having a baby, the timing was perfect — I’d use some time during my maternity leave to do the redesign.

In fact, all year, I’d been scoping out premium themes. I think I decided to use five different premium themes for several reasons — I wanted there to be a lot of space for content and images, but I wanted to keep my two sidebars;  I wanted to have separate widgets for archive, tag and category pages, then I decided that I had better make sure that the design I got was responsive for mobile devices. Man, designing for web has gotten complicated.

And in fact, I did buy a theme, called Easy. I actually did start to format my website to use the theme, but then I realized I always like to get into the code and tweak things so they look juuuust right for my site. Using a premium theme like Easy was not conducive for this — I think its designed to be used right out of the box, so, yep, that’s $35 down the drain. And, I had deposited money so as to get a discount on the theme. Now, my money is stuck in Mojo Themes purgatory. I’m kicking myself because, actually, this is not the first time I’ve bought a premium theme and decided to go with a free one.

So, here’s the lesson learned, somewhat experienced WordPress users — if you’re redesigning your blog, go with a free theme with a large support community like the one behind Twenty Eleven. The one exception to that rule might be the Genesis framework — its a bit pricier than other premium themes, but there seems to be a lot of support for customization.

It did take me longer this time around to do a redesign, naturally. I do have a newborn, after all, and I could only dedicate maybe four or five hours about 4 days a week to the redesign. Back in 2008, I think moving the site from Blogger to WordPress and giving it a facelift took a weekend. Plus, WordPress and themes have changed a lot since 2008.

But redesigning my blogs during my maternity leave has really helped me stay sane. You might remember how I got stir-crazy during my last maternity leave. I’ve learned a lot since then — pace yourself, finish a few projects, and enjoy your baby! And now that its finished, its the holidays and I can enjoy my family time!