Hello-and Happy New Year!
I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. We had a great time with our family, and I am looking forward to 2016.
I wanted to tell you about a little side project I've started, which is the main reason I've been neglecting this blog lately. Let me explain...
I started T-shirt & Jeans without knowing, well, anything about blogging. I just picked a name that reflected our casual family lifestyle, and opened a platform to talk about whatever.
I blogged, as many do, about our lifestyle. I like cooking, so I posted recipes. I love design, so I posted about decorating and art. I love my children, so I wrote about parenting experiences. I'm a religious person, so that made its way in too.
That's all fine and good, until I started trying to "market" my blog. Everything from networking and hashtagging, to joining link-parties and pinterest groups, was more complicated because I didn't have a niche. I had to kind of pursue every circle from every angle, and that just became exhausting.
This past fall, I decided to find a focus for this blog. I've had personal experience with simplicity and trying to reduce stress, and that seemed to fit well with the whole tee and jeans concept, so that became my filter. However, I quickly found that even though everything I blogged about was related to simplicity, I was still writing about everything.
Not simple.
A while ago, I read advice on creating a mission statement for my blog. I really thought about my goals, and what I wanted to put out in the internet world. I came up with a 2-word mission statement:
Bring peace.
Whether it was through photography, pretty spaces, personal stories, encouragement, or quotes, I wanted to bring peace, and explore what peace means, through this little platform.
Simplicity is good, but it just didn't quite entirely fulfill the mission of peace.
As I've learned more about how blogging works, there is so much advice about finding a niche, and then narrowing that niche as much as possible. I knew I needed that, not just for blog success, but for my own sanity. As I struggled to know the next direction, I thought, maybe I should just be more blatant about it.
Thus, @thepeacenotes was born on Instagram. I figured an Instagram account was an easy thing to experiment with. It didn't take long for a blog to follow. A much simpler blog, one that is more manageable for me.
Apparently, there is an interest. Response is good. Not blow-up-the-feed, thousands-of-followers good, but I never expected that. However, there is much quicker and easier growth than the @tshirtjeansnicki account.
Although this little "brand" is new, I feel excuse the pun at peace with the direction. T-shirt & Jeans has given me invaluable experience. I now know how to blog, how to photograph, the brand and look I'm going for, and what my "voice" sounds like. While I'm still making minor tweaks, I can basically jump right into The Peace Notes without the learning curve, and feel good about it from the start. It has already been SO much easier. It is really nice to have a fresh start.
If you've been following along here, THANK YOU! Thank you so much for your support and friendship. I've met the best people here. It's been a blast!
If you would like to stay in touch, just head over to thepeacenotes.com, or @thepeacenotes on Instagram or Twitter. It will all look pretty familiar, since I have taken posts from here that apply to the themes there.
I hate goodbyes, and feel like this isn't really goodbye. More like- "I'm moving!" I'm still the same writer, just in a different location, without the family recipes and such. But, there's enough awesome recipes out there, I'm just going to focus on peace for a while.
Hope to stay in touch!
Nicki xoxo
