It's officially been one week since my birthday and I'm so excited to share a little bit more about how great a day it was and how Paul totally spoiled and surprised me repeatedly throughout the day.

It's important for me to also say that Paul is NOT a planner by any means. He is one of the most spontaneous people I know which I think is really good for me (because I am an uber planner) and also frustrates me at times! So he was a little stressed putting all of this together, but he did amazing and I was so honored and felt so special that he put some much time and thought into everything!

I got to sleep in a bit and when I rolled over I was greeted by a hot cup of coffee in this new mug! Ya'll know we are proud of being Team '76 so this mug was perfect! In addition to the coffee there was a huge vase of flowers as well. Awww.

He also brought me in a glittery crown that said "40" on it as well as a super sweet card. I was already feeling the love and I had only been awake 5 minutes!

There was also a super funny surprise in the bathroom waiting for me as well. Totally made me chuckle. (See below photos...nothing horrible I promise) ;-)

He told me we needed to be out the door by 10 so I showered and got ready and then we headed out for the day. It was gonna be rainy and cold which was kind of a bummer, but I was excited for whatever surprises were ahead of me!

Our first destination was about an hour away, so we listened to the latest episode of Serial on the way. We are such podcast junkies.

Our first stop was at Carlo's Bake shop! If you aren't familiar, Carlos is the guy from Cake Boss which is a TV show. I'm not a huge fan or anything, but I've seen the show a few times and it's cool experience and the cakes are AMAZING.

Paul picked up the cake he had ordered for me and we made an impulse buy of red velvet cupcakes as well to eat after lunch.

Speaking of lunch it was time to find a place. We found this awesome place called Think Grill and had some Gyros which were SO good. The fries were pretty amazing as well.

After we had lunch, we stopped at 7-11 for an afternoon Diet Coke and then headed off to the next location....Liberty State Park!

I've been wanting to go to Liberty State park for a WHILE now and it's just never happened. Its a beautiful HUGE park right on the hudson between Jersey and NYC with amazing views of the city, tons of bike and walking paths, a very cool and historic train station, boats to Liberty Island and a memorial to to 9/11.

We walked around for a bit, but it was so cold and wet and windy that we didn't last long! We did drive around a bit just to explore the park and we made plans to come back during the spring for some bike riding!

Paul's back up plan in case the weather was bad, was to head to Newport Center which is a HUGE mall in the area and walk around a bit in there. We headed over and checked it out and then stopped for a coffee to re-energize for the afternoon.

Once it was time to head to our next location we headed out and Paul navigated us to Hoboken. I had a feeling I knew what was next...a massage!!

We went to Massage Envy in Hoboken and while the store was really nice, my massage was terrible!! I'm kind of a massage snob and this poor lady just did not know what she was doing. But as my friend Brandy says, a bad massage is like bad pizza or cake...disappointing but still edible! ha!

After the massage our tummies were rumbling which was a good thing because now it was time for dinner!

Paul took me to Ruths Chris Steakhouse and we had probably one of the best meals we have ever had! We both had the Prix Fix menu and had a salad, 6 ox filet with shrimp, mashed potatoes and a yummy little pecan crusted cheesecake (which neither of us could finish). Our table was overlooking the Hudson and it was pretty foggy and rainy but it was fun watching the people run to the ferry to NYC.

By the time we got home, we were totally stuffed and exhausted and couldn't eat a bite of the cake Paul had picked up earlier. We did however have two slices the following day. It was AMAZING. I detest whipped cream frosting so that was my only request...none of that! It was a vanilla cake with a lovely buttercream frosting that was perfect in every way.

And there you have it!! A perfect birthday spent with my best friend! Thank you Paul for making my day so special and for making me feel so loved! <3<3<3

The branded blog graphic. Not a new thing by any means but something that I think holds a lot of people back from really taking their blog to the next level in terms of not only being branded, but standing out in the sea of sameness that is out there in the internet land.

What is a branded blog graphic you ask? Well there happens to be one right underneath this sentence ;-)

Why use branded blog graphics?

Ties your blogging into your brand

You may or may not have a blog associated with your business, but if you do, you want to make sure your brand ties in nicely within your blog. Having graphics within your blog posts that tie in with the elements of your branding will tie everything together nicely and create continued consistency of your brand message.

Your brand is more recognizable

Incorporating elements of your brand within blog posts and on your blog page itself (translation: Sidebar baby!!) points people to your brand without being super obvious or in their face. I'm sure many of you photographers out there are highly familiar with the statement "I knew it was (so and so's) photo instantly because their style is so recognizable". You want the exact same thing to happen with your brand. The more elements you can put out there in the world to show off who you are will result in this same thing happening with your brand itself.

Here is a great example. This is a screenshot of a popular RTS pinterest board in which I am a contributor (I am able to add pins to it specifically). My graphics are similar but different and very recognizable amongst the other pins on the board. You instantly know that they are all from the same website or brand.

Why should I use blog graphics? | How do I create branded blog graphics?

Consistency and cohesion

Consistency and cohesion both contribute greatly to inspiring a sense of professionalism and trust with your audience or target.

I know that when I land on a blog and the images are all over the place or use different fonts and styles on every other post, it just makes me feel uneasy. I get a sense that the writer or blogger can't make up their mind and or can't make a decision on direction and any trust or confidence I had in their content kinda sorta flies out the window. I hate to say it but its true!

But when I land on a website that has consistent branding and messaging throughout the site, it bolsters the trust I have in what that blogger or website owner has to say. I know that sometimes it feels like your branding might become tired and you want to try something new, but be strategic about it and make changes slowly and purposefully.

I recently went and updated quite a few of my graphics because even though they were branded, I felt like they still weren't cohesive enough. I reduced the number of designs I use and changed out the old graphics on my past blog posts. I am super pleased with the results!

Example of previous graphics:

Example of new graphics:

How do you create branded blog graphics?

Adobe Illustrator

The initial design of my blog graphics was done during my branding process which happened back in June of 2015. Lauren and I talked extensively about this as this was super important to me going forward as someone who is heavily invested in blogging, but also not so good at any sort of graphic design.

She set up a template for me utilizing my branding colors and showed me how to use Adobe Illustrator going forward to update my new graphics with current title and also how to add personal images into the template if I want to go that route instead of using a template with the solid color background.

Although Illustrator has a learning curve, for the limited things I need to do with it, it actually works really really well. I can usually create a graphic (once I have landed on my blog title) within about 5 minutes or less.

Sometimes, when I'm really on my game and have blog posts planned out far into the future, I can go in and create multiple graphics at once to save time.

Fonts

Its important to keep your fonts and style cohesive. I struggled with this for a while as well. The fonts associated with my brand (fertigo pro and district thin) are not flowery or flowy or romantic. But then I have to remember that neither am I! My brand is a very good representation of who I am as a person and I'm simply not a flowery, pink-y, super sweet romantic-y type of person. I'm more structured but fun and I think my fonts actually portray that really well.

I do have a secondary font that I can use when the occasion calls which is a little more "loose" and I've incorporated it a few places within my site and plan to use it more in the future!

Size

The size of your blog graphic is another thing you need to consider. You will see tutorial after tutorial tell you that your graphic has to be a vertical image for you to get any interest on pinterest at all and while I do think there is some truth to that, I feel like your title and branding have MORE impact. I get 10-20 repins a week which I consider a huge win considering I don't push pinterest as much as I should and have limited presence currently.

Although I do think that your images should likely not be horizontal (landscape) because those images do tend to get lost in the pinterest landscape, a square or vertical image on pinterest does tend to stand out from the crowd.

See below...that poor image in the top row is hardly noticeable next to the other images. Its hard to see, there is no branding with it and it almost looks squished next to the bigger, branded images surrounding it!

Alrighty! I hope this post has been helpful to you in some way if you are considering adding branded blog graphics to your current blog posts! Put a little bit of time and energy into it and you'll see it pay off in big ways down the road!