Goodbye April - Hello May | The One With A Redesign

Well well well, what a month it's been! We've been through a blogging rut and creativity mumbo jumbo, a temporary hiatus, a redesign and put into place new minor changes and format alterations and started up new features since we reopened. Even though we've been reopened for a short while, we're still really excited to be showing off some of our upcoming features and changes to ones you all know and love, and we've also decided that embark on Monthly Recaps (at least, for the time being), so you'll be getting a more detailed overview of both the blog goings on and our goings on both blog and life related on a less frequent basis, but it means you'll be getting less 'it's been a quiet week' and more of the interesting and exciting things instead. You'll also get to see more of the books we've read and some our favourites, something we haven't really showed off or talked about previously, which we really miss doing. We hope you like the new set-up just as we do.

Beautiful Bookish Butterflies In-Review

Reviews	Popular Reviews This Month
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: Burn Bright by Bethany Frenette: We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Neilson: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard: | Flesh and Blood by Simon Cheshire: Sweet Reckoning by Wendy Higgins: Perfectly Ella by Candy Harper: Armageddon by Christina Bauer: The Last Summer of Us by Maggie Harcourt:

Features and Discussions

• Stacie shared what books she planned on reading throughout April.
• Amanda shared her correlation between visiting the library and reading series.
• Amanda talked about the things you should consider when marathoning.
• We returned from our hiatus and shared Beautiful Bookish Butterflies 2.0
• Amanda talked about why she's proud to be a blogger
• Stacie wondered: do new childrens authors dumb-down their literature?

Blogging News

First and foremost, for those who may either be new, or have not yet noticed (how please?), the biggest news is that we redesigned. Amanda talked more about this when unveiling BBB version 2.0, but generally, we could not be happier at the response the new design has gotten over the last week or so. Amanda was terrified, and we do mean absolutely bricking it when it came to unveiling, especially considering just how different the new look is, but we're really pleased to be owning this new style, and we can't wait to show off more features within it.

We also opened our UK Trade/Giveaway feature this month, which involves us sharing the books we don't really want or need to keep hold of, and you can either pay postage, or trade with us! This is an exciting adventure for us, and with time, more books will be added and made available to those who might be interested, so if you think you might want to take a look at what's there and possible acquire these books for yourself, check out our Trade/Giveaway option in the sidebar.

Stacie's April In-Review

Books Read	Books of the Month
Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson: Day Four by Sarah Lotz: Remix by Non Pratt: Wait For You by J.Lynn: Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Pure by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Deity by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Sweet Reckoning by Wendy Higgins: Biggest Flirts by Jennifer Echols: Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang:

Away from the Blog

This month a lot has happened, and nothing has happened, does that make sense? I've had a few things in my personal life to deal with, while trying to keep my head above water with the blog and reading. So as you can imagine when Amanda suggested we take a break, I jumped at it. I spent a lot of time trying to schedule posts in the time off, and I didn't really get to do as many as I would have liked because I had discovered the XBox and the joys of laying in bed watching TV (Caitlyn had just come off two weeks Easter holiday, one where I had no time to myself so don't judge the sloth in me haha).

As far as reading goes this month, I've read enough that I'm happy but not enough of the ones I wanted, you know?. I had this plan to completely breeze through all my eARCS, even ones that weren't needed until June/July, but I ended up just breezing through books that I bought or got out of the library and now I'm in deep with books I NEED to read. But I'm not letting it bother me, I know I should but if I get stressed about it then I'll stop enjoying blogging and I don't want it to feel like a chore. So I'm not panicked too much because in March I pretty much only read review books so I'm happy I wasn't so strict with myself.

I'm looking forward to May, not only is it my nephew's 10th birthday (which makes me feel old because I was just finishing high school when he was born) and Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen comes out on the 5th, seriously guys you can expect me to be talking about the book CONSTANTLY!. She is without a doubt my favourite contemporary author, one of my top 5 actually and I'm super excited, I plan on taking Caitlyn to school and catching the first bus into town to buy it, park my big butt in Starbucks and drink copious amount of hot chocolate/ice coffee while reading the book. (I might even have to set an alarm on my phone so I know when to make my way home for Caitlyn's school pick up haha) Other than that I think I'm just going to be going to the park a lot after school now the weathers nice and trying not to melt, I hate heat :(.

Amanda's April In-Review

Books Read	Books of the Month
Perfectly Ella by Candy Harper: World After by Susan Ee: Armageddon by Christina Bauer: Bruja by Aileen Erin: Reading.. Simon vs the Homo Sapiens: DNF The Walls Around Us: DNF

Away from the Blog

April has predominantly been a month of severe change for me. There are certain events that transpired at the end of March that have continue to affect me throughout April, affecting my reading the most obviously and harshly. I've been in a horrible place that's left me really wanting to read, books that when I do read, I really enjoy, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do so, and that's sucked, a lot. The last time I had a period of time reading so little was somewhere close to Spring-Summer '13, and trust me, I do not want to continue this bad run of reading, so I'm seriously hoping that May will see me making up for this reading.

I've actually spent a lot of time this month doing some work experience which has been really demanding and much more hard work than I had expected. There's a lot more heavy labour involved, but the times haven't been too bad and the people have been nice to work with. At the moment, I have around a week left, and after that, I have no idea what's going to be happening, although I can guess I'll still be applying for jobs unsuccessfully and dealing with this dark patch I'm going through.

One thing that did take up a lot of my time in April was our redesign. On the whole, minus little tweaks, changes and alterations I made during our hiatus, the actual design itself took around two weeks to create and was definitely was the most creative and exciting designs I've made. I've managed to learn a lot more code than I thought was possible, learn how to improvise and create my own and actually know what it is I'm doing without needing to research, and that is an achievement in my book.

May is hopefully going to be a little more exciting and positive. I'll be finishing my work experience, having a weeks break, and then I'll be dog sitting for my Uncle and Aunties most wonderful little devil of a dog for a whole week while they go on holiday in Florida. I've never really been left along for longer than a day or two as it is, and being able to lounge around in their house for a whole week blogging, reading my backed-up review copies and eating the food I really want sounds like the perfect way to wind-down and recover from everything that's happened.

How Was Your April? Let Us Know!