My 20th blogging anniversary was earlier this month. In honor of this milestone, I’ve assembled a visual retrospective post I’ve long wanted to do. I realize this is probably more of interest to me than some of my readers, but I want to keep this record. I’ve invested 20 years of my life into my online work. My point isn’t to evaluate whether or not it’s been a successful endeavor, but to keep a visual record with some related thoughts. 

So below you will see the various themes, names, and rabbit trails I’ve been down over the past twenty years. I wish I had saved a screenshot of every design I’ve had, but I didn’t. We do, however, have digital copies of many of the various headers and such I’ve used. In some cases, I might not have a header but I have included a related graphic. The Wayback Machine is also helpful at times. 

This is in roughly chronological order. I left a few things out for various reasons, but this is the vast majority of it all. 

I also want to say clearly that I own every decision I made. I mention different groups I got involved with and how it complicated my life. No one held a gun to my head and made me do any of it. I own all those choices and the consequences. 

February 2005

My original Blogspot blog was Two Talent Living. After a few months, I bought my own domain and moved. 

May 2005

I don’t even remember what my first Two Talent Living website looked like. This was in the header and the title went across it.

June 2006

I wanted a website name that was easier to understand and so I purchased the domain A Gracious Home. I wrote with an emphasis on Christian grace in daily life.

This doesn’t do the design justice. It was really pretty with the entire blog showing. There was quite a bit of black which set off the rosy color. 

Caroline would be born about three months after this. 

August 2007

My first attempt at a second website that was focused on link sharing. Too much to keep up with on top of everything else. Caroline was an 11 month old high-need baby at this time. This has always been my challenge. More ideas than time.

January 2007

The first of a number of designs featuring purple, flowers, etc. 

July 2007

I honestly don’t remember why I switched to this and then back to the violets. 

January 2008

I have a thing for fonts that are all caps. I like the classic look. 

May 2008

I changed the website name (and domain) to reflect where I wanted to go with my writing. I purchased A Quiet Simple Life.

Even though I don’t currently use it, I have kept ownership of the domain A Quiet Simple Life for over 15 years now. This is the name I truly love, but I did not keep using it for reasons that will become clear as we go. 

October 2009

This was a period of exhaustion. Caroline was three and I was in the midst of serious neck and shoulder problems. Life was very difficult. The lack of design originality and quality reflects that time. 

December 2009

March 2010

I still love that little bouquet of pansies.  

March 2010

Some of my readers encouraged me to do a website devoted to learning ideas when Caroline was little (due to my background as a teacher). I played around with it and even briefly had a second site (?), but didn’t really do much with the idea. 

October 2011

This was prettier in use than it looks here. 

Spring 2012

Back to the violets, but with the different name. 

November 2012

I liked this one with the pictures. At the time, this was a bit more complicated to pull off. 

I don’t like that Q. Having a website name with a Q in it makes it challenging to find a font that works well. 

January 2013

Starting to sell products on Teachers Pay Teachers in 2012 was the beginning of my struggle with an online identity. One of the big things was switching away from A Quiet Simple Life to branding with my own name. A part of me still throws up a bit when I talk about branding with my name. There’s something about it that I don’t like. 

In the years that follow, you can see my difficulty in fitting TPT in with who I was. There are times I wish I had never gotten involved with TPT. I’m not sure the money I made was worth the time, stress, and struggle that entered my life from multiple directions due to my decision to sell on that platform. I do wonder what I might have done online and achieved if I had avoided TPT. 

I hate this header. It represents (to me) trying to fit into the Teachers Pay Teachers paradigm. Okay, the flower bouquet isn’t bad. But this is not me AT ALL. 

Did I mention I hate this header? 

May 2013

I only used this one briefly (for some reason that escapes me now) but I still like that photo and font. 

January 2014

I think this was a time I tried again to keep the homeschooling and printables separate so I had two blogs for a bit. It, of course, did not work. 

April 2014

Now the struggle of too much content and too many interests starts to hit. TPT has complicated it. I’m also now part of the iHomeschool Network which brings with it another set of requirements and expectations. I now feel compelled to focus on learning and let many of my other favorite topics fall more and more to the wayside. 

This was long before WordPress widgets and everything had to be coded. My thinking was way ahead of what could be easily done. We tried this idea, but it was too complicated to easily maintain.

July 2014

Rebranding with focus on learning and printable products

July 2014

September 2014

Still rebranding. About a year before this (?) the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum contacted me and I started down the path of understanding Caroline’s unique needs were related to gifted/2e. It was truly a blessing that they contacted me and invited me to participate in their group. But now I not only had TPT and iHN to contend with but a gifted/2e homeschooling blogging group as well.

In addition, the gifted community overall is not friendly to Christians. (I imagine it has gotten much worse since I left the group.) So I struggled with downplaying my faith to not offend. At this point, I’m not even really blogging about the things that got me started in the first place. Rather than writing about things that I love, I’m writing to make money and fulfill obligations. 

I was unhappy trying to keep everyone happy. 

I don’t hate this logo, but again it is not me. It’s me trying to find something that fits into the worlds I’ve moved into.

November 2014

Trying to find the solution

December 2015

Still trying… 

February 2016

A Woman’s Freedom in Christ was my second website for a number of years. I shared what I was learning as I worked out my understanding of what the Bible teaches about women in the church. I moved the content to a separate website because a significant portion of my conservative Christian base left when I started asking questions.

In retrospect, it probably didn’t matter. At that point, I had lost so many readers who would never come back that I probably could have saved myself the trouble and just kept writing on my primary website. 

I really like this photo. I related to it at the time. Still do. 

May 2016

This is one of my favorite designs. Ever. I still think about going back to it at times. I don’t know why. I just love it. 

You can tell by the design and topics that I had reached one of my big moments every so many years where I decided I didn’t care what anyone else wanted or didn’t want. I was fed up and done trying to keep everyone else happy. 

It was a three column layout, the only time I had that. I only kept it a short time because the experts said you couldn’t continue with this layout. To this day, this is what I would like. But because it is not mobile friendly, it’s pretty much a no-no. 

September 2016

Trying to thread the “I need to be teacher friendly” and “I just want to write about the things that matter to me!”

October 2016

Still trying to figure out who my audience is. 

December 2016

And still trying to figure out that tagline…

December 2016

For a time, I decided to relaunch A Quiet Simple Life and keep my learning products and posts separate. However, it simply didn’t work. Our family life is too integrated to separate them. I can’t break it up. It makes no sense.

*** I just don’t think that way. ***

This is still one of my favorite headers and designs. David likes this one as well. I used a pretty blue for the hyperlinks and it was just very pretty. 

January 2017

Winter version with the Christmas clip art removed. 

January 2017

New design for my other website. 

March 2017

Spring version 

April 2017

The beginning of the acorns and red combination which I still love in the later forms (not so much this first version of it).

I hate that tagline (as I continued to struggle with what to do and make everyone happy).

July 2017

New design over on that website

January 2018

I love this red (and the acorns). I’ve returned to this theme off and on. The only negative about it is that it rather requires making all the hyperlinks on your website red since green doesn’t show up well. Red hyperlinks are not very relaxing and can make the website seem like a lot. I’ve done it multiple times, but it’s the biggest drawback to this design. That said, I wouldn’t rule out using some modified later version of it again. 

September 2018

A secondary website I tried for a short time. Great idea. Not enough time. (Story of my life)

September 2018

Another version of this design. This is a screenshot from the Wayback Machine since this was a dynamic design and didn’t really save like other headers. 

December 2018

Around this time I was sick of trying to fit in and make people happy. I went super girly and didn’t care who didn’t like it. 

April 2019

This is also from the Wayback Machine so the formatting is a bit off. This had really cool sliders across the top of each category.

June 2019

This is a shot from the Wayback Machine. I don’t know why that random graphic is floating on the top. But this was very pretty. I really liked the slide show that went through lovely pictures where the piano picture is. 

In the end, I decided it was too busy. 

October 2019

Another secondary website I tried for a bit. When I wrote at length on my main website that there might be a few problems with the MeToo movement and the Kavanaugh accusations, I lost a ton of subscribers and readers (again). 

I’m too liberal (ha ha ha) for the conservative Christians and too conservative for the moderates and liberals. In reality, I just ask questions and search for the truth. A lot of women find that incredibly threatening. That’s one of the main things I’ve learned over the past 20 years. 

So this was the forerunner to Sallie’s Rebuilding America which came later. I really like the red on the Constitution and the font. (There was an earlier version that had a bright blue. I couldn’t find it. This is much nicer anyway.)

January 2020

April 2020

This design is another favorite. I really like the colors and background. 

June 2020

September 2020

February 2021

I love this artwork. 

July 2022

This is a screenshot from the Wayback Machine. I really liked the simplicity of this one.

September 2022

September 2022

January 2023

January 2023

I opened a second website for news and such. I went back and forth multiple times regarding where to park this content. Again, tackling ideas that are out of the mainstream lost me many readers and subscribers. 

This one was cloned off my main website to make it easier. It worked well and the two websites had somewhat similar designs for a time with the navy blue and gold. 

February 2023

February 2023

I had a number of different looks using fine art along the top. This is one version. 

December 2023

I don’t have a screenshot of this design. If I can find it, I’ll add it later. 

January 2024

This was extremely short-lived. A few days. Too boring. 

April 2024

This originally had the gold pansy in the middle. We changed it to a cross. Then I felt uncomfortable having a cross on there when I discuss conspiracy theories and content most people will find hard to believe (even if I know it’s true). So we changed it to a star. I felt much better with that. 

I use this artwork of Washington crossing the Delaware as the main image for the website. There are multiple reasons for that. 

August 2024

I love the Albert Anker artwork of the blonde girl doing her homeschool work. I have adopted it as the symbol of my website at this point. 

February 17, 2025

Sallie’s Rebuilding America today 

February 17, 2025

Sallie Borrink today. I originally had this design in 2024 and went away from it because I felt a lot of people would find it too much (even though I loved it). I tried to go with something cleaner. Nah. I went back to this. 

It is one of my very favorite designs. I love the artwork and black combination. 

So that’s my journey over the past 20 years. I’m sure I’ve forgotten things, but it’s a good overview.

The one thing I wonder is where I would be and what I could have accomplished if I had simply listened to gut and did my own thing all the way. I’ll never know. But a part of me really wishes I had never gotten sucked into all of the products, homeschooling, gifted/2e, etc. stuff. That isn’t what truly drew me into blogging, but it is what burned me out in many ways. 

I think this also illustrates why my content production has dropped off dramatically in recent years. I’ve pivoted so many times over the past 20 years and I’m tired. Trying to psyche myself up (again!) to put forth a lot of effort here just doesn’t work any longer. 

I have this huge website full of content and it’s a lot to manage. It feels like there is no way forward that will bring me any measure of success that will make a significant continued effort worthwhile. Success could be defined a number of different ways in this context and I still don’t see it developing at this point.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I wish I could figure it out. 

I don’t mean for this to be a downer way to end the post. But seeing all of it here in color does drive home to me why I’ve lost my motivation. I’ve made choices I sometimes wish I could do over. Like everyone online I’ve suffered due to big tech. Apparently I’m not capable of just saying happy things all the time that people want to hear and pretending like the truth doesn’t matter so I am apt to lose more online readers and followers than I make. That’s reality. 

Perhaps God will move in some way to show me to keep going in a meaningful way. Or maybe He has something else for me to do. 

In any case, I hope you found this walk down memory lane with me interesting!