Purely Olivia is 3 Years Old!! // ft. take my blog survey (!!), memory lane, & other celebrations

Today is Purely Olivia’s third birthday.

It makes my heart so happy to type those words. Three whole years!! It may not seem like a lot, but I’m genuinely so happy and proud that my little blog has lasted that long (it’s practically all grown up by now), and I’m looking forward to celebrating it in today’s post.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I have a few exciting things up my sleeve. First of all, I’ve created a blog survey! I haven’t done one of these in over a year and a half (and my blog has changed drastically since then), so I’m hyped for that. I’m also going to be taking a look back over the years and most definitely getting a little sappy.

I don’t know if I’m the only blogger who feels this way maybe I’m just weird, but in some ways, my blog is like my child, or at least a really good friend, and I’m just feeling really sentimental and excited about Purely Olivia’s birthday right now.

Without further ado, let’s get into the birthday celebrations!

I want to kick off the celebratory post with something I’m very, very pumped about- a blog survey for you to take! I’ve been wanting to do this for forever, so when I was thinking about something special to do for my blog’s birthday, this came to mind.

Even though my blog is now three (three!!) years old, there is no shortage and will never be a shortage of things for me to learn and opportunities to grow. Y’all are such kind supporters and have made blogging an incredible experience for me, so I want to do all I can to make my blog the best experience for you.

That’s what inspired me to make a blog survey! There really aren’t any rules, besides that I would really appreciate your honesty in this. You have the option to take it anonymously or you can say your name and blog, it’s entirely up to you!

None of the questions are required- since this is a longer survey (it won’t take forever, but it is more in depth than just a few questions) I didn’t want anyone to feel like they had to answer all the questions. Of course, I would love to hear your thoughts on everything, but I know you’re all busy and I don’t want to take away too much of your time.

Finally, this survey is a Google form and I think (?) you have to be signed into an account to take it. I’m pretty certain it doesn’t give me access to anyone’s email, but rest assured that everything from this survey will be kept completely private.

Thank you a thousand times over for taking the time to fill out my survey! As I said, my hope is that this can help make me a much better blogger. I’m looking forward to reading your responses!

To continue with the birthday festivities, I thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane, aka the history of Purely Olivia. It’s been a long road to get here, that’s for sure.

I know I’ve talked about how this blog came to be in more depth before, but as an overview, I started this blog after blogging on Weebly for two years and then making the decision to create a new blog on WordPress and take it more seriously. This blog has seen a lot of changes since 2016, and while I don’t have screenshots to show the progress (tip to new bloggers, take screenshots so you can see your design progress), I do have some of my old headers just to show how much has changed.

I think the first to second header is probably the most dramatic change, but even just scrolling back from my media library to find these reminded me just how much the aesthetic of my blog has changed (and hopefully improved) over the years.

Something I did in my birthday post last year was take a look at the most popular posts of all time here on Purely Olivia, and those have changed from the last time we did this, so let’s see what posts you’ve enjoyed over the last three years!

Okay, wow, can I just say that it’s extremely clear what my blog aesthetic is? Besides the glaringly obvious pink vibe we have going on here, I think it’s noteworthy that all of these posts were published in the last year!

The posts that were close behind these were also some of my more recent posts. That makes me excited for blogging in the months to come because the goal is to always go up from here! I feel like this is a good point in the post to say hello to my future self reading this post in August 2020 as she writes her fourth birthday post.

Another thing that makes me all emotional is looking at the world map and seeing where people reading my posts are located. I mean, look at this!

So much of the world is pink, and that makes me so happy and blows my mind all at the same time. What in the world?? Pun intended. I hate myself.

The last stop down memory lane is to do something I did in my birthday post last year, which is acknowledge the current top five commenters on Purely Olivia. They’ve actually nearly all changed from last year, besides one.

Annie Xia // Kitty Jade // Rhi // Jenna // Chana

Of course, I love and appreciate every comment and seriously have the best time talking with you all. I just thought it would be fun to mention the people who, according to WordPress, have commented the most times!

This concludes this small journey down the timeline of Purely Olivia. I hope next year brings more memories to include in this section of the annual birthday post, and here’s to the memories from this past year.

Finally, I want to give you all a well-deserved thank you.

Thank you for supporting my blog. Thank you for commenting on my posts. Thank you for fangirling about everything under the sun for me. Thank you for being such kind, sweet humans who genuinely make my day all the time. I hope you know that you are amazing and are loved by me and so many other people!

I wish I could give you all cupcakes because unpopular opinion they’re better than cake but instead I have to settle for a virtual hug. *hugs you all* Here’s to blogging friends, the blogosphere, and you guys being the best!

If you couldn’t tell by the amount of rambling in this post, I’m feeling just a little emotional about Purely Olivia turning three, and I’m also feeling so much gratitude. It’s a crazy world we live in where we can have our own websites that are our own corners of the Internet where we can talk about whatever we want and connect with people from all around the world.

I’m very grateful to have this blog, and thank you for sticking around both throughout this post and for my journey as a whole!

If you feel so inclined, I would love for you to take my blog survey so that I can continue to make Purely Olivia a better place for all of us. ❤ Thank you again for celebrating with me today, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Did you take my survey? How old is your blog? Do you celebrate its birthday or am I just the equivalent of an overly proud mom? I’d love to chat with you all in the comments.

P.S. Fun fact, today was my first day of school! Well, this isn’t a very fun fact. I don’t know why I’m sharing that small detail, I just felt like it needed to be out there that summer is totally and officially over for me. 🙃

Credits for the image in my featured image >> Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash