Our Corner Turns Two

Well, if you've clicked on this post instead of--heaven forbid!--skimming these first sentences in your feed, then you've noticed the most obvious excitement for this week: our brand, spanking-new blog design! Ara from My Designer Girl created all of this for us, though, sadly she shut down her business at the beginning of this month. (We're hoping the two are not related. ;)

All is not lost, though, because she's offering a giveaway for you guys! Ara will provide the "Surprise Designal"--what we chose for our blog--which includes a new, custom-designed header, background paper, and installation--plus three to eight surprise extras of her choice. Did you notice our new tabs, our post dividers, our sidebar titles, our blog button, our new signatures, and more? So many cool details--we can't wait to see who wins this and what Ara comes up for you!

Also, we put ourselves to work and came up with something we're quite proud of--a piece of jewelry that is not only artistic and beautiful, but also will be a reminder to brighten your corner! We're giving away two of these charms, with love. (Due to some unfortunate and unforseen setbacks. the official photos of these delightful charms will have to wait until a bit later this week. However, they look something {and only something!} like this photo.)

So, how to enter? We will have three separate winners; you cannot win more than one item; and one entry will give you a chance to win any one of these three prizes. For the first entry, you must be a follower of our blog and leave a comment on this post with a question for us or a suggestion for a future blog post. After this entry, there's also some extra credit! You can gain an extra entry by

• Putting our new blog button (you'll find the code on the sidebar!) on your blog
• Following Ara on her personal blog, Shilah
• Announcing the giveaway on your blog

For each extra entry, please leave a separate comment telling us that you did it! (Do not include all your entries in one comment, as this will make our job more difficult when we sift through all the entries.) Your comments must be entered by midnight PST, Monday, February 28, and we'll announce the winners in Tuesday's post on March 1.

Remember how we're asking for questions or suggestions in your entry comment? We did this last year, too, and we got so many great ideas that kept us busy through over the past year. However, we're not just planning on blogging through these ideas this year. We're also planning on uploading a video on Friday with answers to some of the questions you might pose! As much as we try to open up through our writing, there's just nothing quite like seeing someone with their personality and idiosyncracies. Here's hoping we won't scare you off!

We hope that you enjoy our new design, our giveaways, and our special guest posts this week. Honestly, we're doing all this for you, because without our readers, our followers, and most importantly, our commenters, we would not have persisted in blogging for two years. If you've been lurking for awhile now without introducing yourself, now's your chance! Your insights, encouragements, friendships, and "just-wanted-to-let-you-know-I'm-reading-comments" mean so much to us and make us excited to blog every Tuesday and Friday. This week is our big "thank you" to you--thank you, thank you, thank you! To God be the glory!

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THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Picture Credit