Let's do this.

Hi there! I'm Nicki. Welcome to Cake for Breakfast!

So, I'm starting this blog, and I haven't told a soul. Not my friends, my boyfriend, or even my mom (who knows everything). This is something I've been debating internally for quite some time now, and I finally decided to jump in and just do it. Why not? How hard could it be? Well, let me tell you...

Okay, so you want to start a blog. Where do you begin? Well, first you need a domain name, which means you actually need to figure out what the name of your blog will be. This is a huuuge decision, and can't just be made on a whim. What is the brand of your blog? What do you hope to convey through your blog? This takes some time and thought.

Personally, I toyed with several different names. I wasn't in love with anything though, and nothing really had that ring to it I was resonating with. Then a few weeks ago, I was laying on my bed after work and I looked across the mess of my room (I just moved and I haven't fully unpacked yet). I saw my favorite coffee mug sitting on my bar cart:

And I knew. Cake for breakfast. This had to be it! I felt a buzz of excitement in me as I got up and grabbed my laptop. I knew I would spend the rest of the evening looking up domain names, blog hosting sites, etc. This thing might actually happen!

Cake for breakfast, to me, means playful, daring, and a little bit of yolo. It tells you to take that adventure, jump in head first, or throw caution to the wind and just live your life.

When I first had the idea of starting my own blog, I wrote down what I wanted it to be, or what I wanted it to convey.

"Relatable yet inspirational. Beautiful imagery. Filled with happiness and truth."

I think Cake for Breakfast can fulfill that wish, and I look forward to evolving this blog over time.

Okay, so we have a name. Now how do I put that into a www.heresmyblog.com format? A professor in college once told our class that we should all buy our names in a domain before they were gone. I remember going to GoDaddy.com and buying my name, thinking it was dumb and I was never going to do anything with it. So, maybe I'll go back to Go Daddy and see what's available.

After doing some searching, I decided on www.cake-for-breakfast.com. I hit purchase, and again, the buzz of excitement hit me. This was sort of my mini and secret project. I got to take joys from these small victories and keep them all for myself.

At this point, I truly didn't think that this blog would become anything. And to be honest, I still am unsure. Whether 2 people, 200 or 2 million (lol as if) read my blog, it doesn't make as much of a difference to me. The reason I'm doing this isn't for a following or attention. I just want to tell my story, to tell my truth. If someone else reads a post and it resonates with their life, that is amazing. But really, I just am looking for an outlet of self-expression and creativity.

So I own my own domain name. Now what? How do I get my blog to show up when you type in that URL address? I went over to WordPress and played around with some layouts and blog styles. Honestly though, it was super confusing. I shelled out for a premium service, looked up how to "map" what I was creating to my URL, and toyed with different formats. I couldn't get it to look how I wanted though, and I felt like the site was made for someone with a much higher understanding than myself.

Part of me wanted to give up on my little side project. Domain mapping and managing your DNS to route to the correct server was confusing and not what I thought I was getting myself into. I gained a major respect for bloggers who have this whole thing down and understand what's going on behind the scenes of their webpage.

Then last week, a coworker was telling me about how she had just created her own site for her new personal training business. I asked her what service she used to build it, and she told me Wix.com. I went back to my desk and did a bit of digging (yes, during work, sorry boss). The whole process that Wix offered seemed pretty simple. They didn't make the complicated even more cumbersome, yet their finished product of sites seemed elegant and nice looking. So, I jumped in and built my own site.

It was fun, piecing things together and getting sections look the way you want them to. Obviously it will always be a work in progress, but slowly I was able to build something I was pretty proud of. Earlier this week, I hit the Publish button. The bubbling of pure joy came over me as I got to see my site come to life on the actual internet. This baby was live and happening.

So here we are, writing and reading the site's first blog post. It wasn't easy getting here, but we made it. Again, I really don't know what Cake for Breakfast will grow into. I hope that as time goes on, it will be a platform for stories and life-happenings. For questions to the world and the answers I've figured out so far. For my interests and things that make me happy and topics that intrique me. To tell you about how I am the way I am and the people who got me here. I won't promise you to have it all together, but I promise to deliver my authentic self every step of the way.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to visit from time to time to see whats new at Cake for Breakfast. You're always welcome!