The Relaunch of Cobani Bleu, The Art of Sitting Soft

A Fresh Start for Cobani Bleu

When I started Cobani Bleu, the blog, its purpose was to support my upholstery business. I had a little dream to retire from corporate America and create a new life with upholstery. I knew absolutely NOTHING about websites, blogs and even less about social media. This being the case, I hired someone to help me create a brand and then build my website. I really struggled with the branding because I had no idea what I was doing. But the end result was a beautiful logo and website. Everyone that saw it, loved it. And I loved it and was proud of how it looked.

Now during this time, I was still employed full time and using every spare moment to build my upholstery business. The hope was to have a business that could somewhat support myself by the time I retired. Haha! But that left absolutely no time for the blog. And I was okay with that at that time. Haha! In three years, I had like 5 posts. I was pretty consistent in not being consistent.

By now, I had retired. And no my business was not able to support me, but I was making headway. I still put little to no effort into the blog. But I was beginning to learn just how much I didn’t know. I attended my first Haven and had my eyes opened to a whole new world.

I was reading blogs, and their comments and beginning to follow some of these bloggers on social media. And I found this amazing world where the bloggers become online BFFs. The support for each other was amazing. I saw bloggers commenting on other each other’s posts. They supported each other on social media. The relationships between bloggers was and is incredibly empowering. These bloggers, mostly women, were finding success. And they openly share this success by teaching others. This is a world that speaks to my core values of providing good service and support to my clients. And its a world I want to be a part of.

With each Haven I attended, I left bursting at the seams to conquer the world of blogging. But there I was, still being consistently inconsistent. A big reason for this was that my beautiful blog frustrated me. I didn’t know how to make it work the way I wanted it to. You see, I like to upholster things; tear them apart, figure out how they work and put them back together again.

My pretty blog was a custom design. And I didn’t know how to tear it apart and make it do what I wanted it to do. My frustration had nothing to do with the branding company that I hired. Their work is gorgeous and I highly respect them.

Six months after I retired my life took a pretty amazing turn. My sister and I decide to become roommates!

The plan was to sell both of our homes and buy one that would work better for us both. I would move to Nashville. I had lived in Atlanta for longer than anywhere in my life, so it was home. But only because that was where my job was. I do like Atlanta, actually I kind of love Atlanta. But I knew I could be happy in Nashville also. Its been over 30 years since I lived near family and I must say, it’s wonderful living close to family.

I have spent the last year and a half transitioning from Atlanta to Nashville. Crazy, I know. But for various reasons we opted for a stepped approach. First we sold Sister’s house, and luckily we found, bought and closed on the new house at the same time. So we moved Sister in. Then I got my house ready to sell, sold it and moved here last March. First on the agenda was to complete a renovation to the main living spaces. My focus was totally off the blog at this point. But I knew renovating the house would be great blog content.

Here is where the real trouble began. You see, when I moved here, the contents of my house where loaded into the basement. Since we were doing a relatively major renovation, there was no need to bring any of my belongs into the living spaces. My life was stacked to the ceiling in boxes. Amongst these boxes, was one in particular. It contained my life. Financial records, tax documents, business papers and a little notebook with ALL my passwords. You know those passwords that are for important purposes, but you don’t log into very frequently. Like my hosting company! It was time to renew my service. But I could not log in. And the email address listed to reset the password, you guessed it, was terminated when I moved and discontinued internet service in Atlanta. I called the hosting company. They wanted documentation which for various reasons, I could not provide. And of course, I had no backup!

Bye-bye blog!

This was completely user error! I have no one to blame but myself. At first, I was pretty upset with myself, but slowly I began to see lemonade!!! You know when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

I had a beautiful blog with 5 posts, that frustrated me. Maybe this wasn’t such a big loss.

This time I would build my own blog. And this time would be different. I bought some tools to help me.

• Building a Framework from Abby Lawson, Just a Girl and Her Blog
• What the Tech from Lesley Clavijo, Chaotically Creative
• And a child theme from Restored 316

There have been many other things to purchase as well, hosting services, Genesis Framework, fonts, security services for the blog and email, a backup service! Haha!! And there has been much to learn; how to use PicMonkey to create a logo, how to buy and use a font in PicMonkey. And Lightroom. I was determined to learn to use Lightroom to help manage the photos on the blog. I bought Beth Bryan’s The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Lightroom. She blogs on Unskinny Boppy, check her out! But all these things I have bought, still don’t even come close to what I spent having someone else design my blog. And I have learned so much!

And here is the other thing. My life has changed so drastically since I started the first Cobani Bleu. I no longer want to just support an upholstery business. Although that will be a big part of it. I want to share about our renovation, and the continuing projects here at home. I love to cook and will share some recipes. Our yard is a blank slate, and it will get some blog time.

Family life with Sister and 4 (yes FOUR) dogs, and family get togethers.

And any other creative endeavors that I decide to tackle. Thanks to my mom, the new Cobani Bleu will focus on the concept of ‘sitting soft’. The Art of Sitting Soft is my new tag line and I think it really pulls everything I want this blog to be together. Read about this concept here.

I am so very excited to relaunch my blog!! I still have a lot to learn about blogging and social media. It’s gonna take me a minute to figure it all out, but this time, I can assure you, will be different.