The birthday website came alive on November 4, 2020. This was approximately a month or so after Shailey's thirteenth birthday and the idea was still pretty fresh in my mind. I gave her lots of things that day, including a bracelet, a book of reasons that she and I are best friends, a smelly necklace (aka essential oil diffuser pom-pom jewelry,) a pop-up card, and possibly a few more. She called me the ultimate queen of gifts, which, for some reason, has resonated with me for sometime. And then I realized that her next birthday, fourteen, was her golden birthday and it just kind of clicked that I had to make something so memorable she'd be able to go around bragging to people like, "My bestie gave me a freaking website on my golden birthday." At first, I was brainstorming ideas for a bit and then I don't know, it just happened, I suppose. I can't really explain my thought process because my brain is utter cattywampus, but I just remembered being familiar with Wix since around fourth grade and I kind of just knew: That. That's what I'm gonna do.

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The website underwent significant changes starting on April 22, 2021. The entire theme, aesthetic, and look of the website was changed. I felt that it looked a little too bland and playful. This new aesthetic, I hope you agree, looks a little more formal but still cute. The entire site is mostly gallery images, but hopefully it's hard to tell. I designed a lot of them on Canva, which was possibly the most valuable website that I used while creating this. This was mostly because they gave free access to lots of amazing photography, either through Unsplash or their own exquisite photographers like Jasmine Chew or Retha Ferguson. Nonetheless, both Canva and Wix were clearly instrumental in the birthday website's creation. I actually started out with just the main pages of the site and I guess things escalated. Like a lot. Now we've legitimately got a whole potion shop, log in accounts, and a lot more. I quickly realized there's no way in heck that Shailey will read all of this on her birthday itself. No way in heck. I bet on it. Let's see if I owe anybody money.