new design! + updates

Hello readers! (the picture above is not related to this at all, just thought it was hilarious :D)

  I have been trying for over half a year to get a new blog design. I swam through many designers' websites, got together with the one that made my Voyage design for me and attempted to make one for Pages. She ended up taking quite a long time, and then decided to take a break from designing, leaving my blog unattended. Grace Anna is really nice and friendly, so I don't really mind. She was really patient and attended to loads of designing requests from me! But alas, the design was never done so I finally took the move into buying a pre-made design from one of my all-time favourite designers, Ana from Blog Milk. And so, wah-lah! I'm so ridiculously relieved/happy that I can finally stop worrying about my design problems for the next few years at least!

  I would love some feedback on what you like and what you don't. My sidebar's a bit bare now because some of the gadgets I had didn't look well/were too extraneous.

  I had always been wanting to modernise my blog and make it look like a website. But I realise that I don't want to go full-blown proffesional. I want to make people comfortable with a small post area and the simple boxed sidebar. The navigation bar completely adds to making this a more comfy blog and I'm in love. I may be making some minor edits, like getting a new header. But for the most part, this is it! Yay!

Updates:

1) The New Years Giveaway is over and I'll be picking and contacting winners soon. Thank you for those who participated!

2) As you may have noticed in my Dracula review, I'm taking more time and effort into writing more professional reviews. I'm actually typing them up on Word Documents, editing for a few days, making changes and touches, and then publishing them. I've noticed that many reviews, even from well-established and popular book blogs/websites are really just someone's thoughts on the book overall. I feel like I want to delve deeper into my books, observe more and give you all a feel as to how the book will be with more quotes, concepts, motifs and all that. My reviews on classics will be essay-length, haha. My young adult reviews will be less "professional"

3) I have stuck with my goal of posting reviews more than any other type of post. Lots of mini-film ones and more book ones. I'm more than happy with how Pages has been turning out

4) I miss you guys. In between schoolwork, homework, and the little free time I have, I will be visiting the blogs I follow and put more of an effort to participate. This will be the next thing to crack down on my list. When I scroll through my feed, I see that many posts are usually just cover love, memes and promotional posts and all those things that I don't place an importance on. However, I'm making an effort!

5) School related: I'm so thrilled for a four-day weekend next week! I have a shortened Thursday (school gets out early), Friday off plus the weekend plus Monday off. Ahh, I cannot wait! My grades have been improving and I also made first chair viola in one of the upper orchestras at my school.

6) MY PAGES: I've reduced all my pages down to just a few that I've been updating/cleaning up. I hope to add some more manually like the "reviews by genre" idea I had and such.

Thank you all so much for being with me this far! Let's have a splend-tastic year!