basic info :)

Basically, this site is a place for me to do what I like. It's somewhere where(within reason, of course) I can say what I like, add any resources/tutorials/stories I feel like making/writing, whatever, without the fear of someone telling me I'm running a site wrong. In real life I'm a very shy and nervous person wh onever says what she thinks; here, I'm different. I love having this little place to say whatever the fuck comes into my head. :)

the big long history :3

My very first site was called NeoZomutt. It was one of those crappy neopets fansites you see all over the internet, though at the time I thought it was amazing. It was the first experience I'd ever had with either web design or making graphics-I was 12 years old, as NeoZomutt opened on the 10th of July, 2007.
Yeah, I have a freakishly good memory for dates.
It took a long time for me to realise NeoZomutt was terrible-almost exactly a year, as a matter of fact-which is why I opened my second site, Grey Lemons, on the 3rd of July 2008. I'd originally planned to keep both sites, but I quickly realised I was far too lazy for that and closed NeoZomutt on the 16th of July; it lasted for a year and 6 days, and I haven't yet beaten that personal record. I'm too much of a perfectionist now.
I kept Grey Lemons open for, well, not long. It wasn't fantastic either, and I decided I simply wasn't cut out for owning a website. I gave the site away on the 14th of September 2008, and it's still running: click here. No, it didn't have a domain or what I'm guessing is paid hosting back when I owned it. :3 I'm glad I gave it away, partly because the people who run it now seem to be pretty cool and partly because I've really gone off the name.
After that I didn't even go near any of the millions of websites I'd discovered while owning sites. I lost contact with friends I'd made and lost track of blogs. It didn't take me long to realise that I missed the world of web design and I wanted back, and in November 2008 I began work on site number 3, with the view to working hard on it, keeping it a long time, and not making any of my past mistakes.
Site 3 was called The Last Smiley, and was part neopets graphics, part blog, part random crap. It was pretty unsuccessful hits-wise, it usually averaged about 20 hits per day(though there were pretty huge valleys at points as well), but it was still the most popular site I'd ever had. It was opened on the 1st of March 2009(it was meant to be opened on my 14th birthday, on February 26th, but I, er, forgot).
I loved TLS(sometimes. Sometimes I couldn't stand it), but I decided I wanted a domain. And paid hosting, for the first time. And I thought I may as well create a whole new site(again). That's how Autumn Rainbow happened. :) The name came to me when I was on a train going into Glasgow one day just as the leaves started to change-I saw 4 trees standing in a row by the track, one with orange leaves, one with red, one with yellowy-green and one with purple. I said to my friend 'It's like an Autumn rainbow or something, isn't it?' and then it came to me. XD
The Last Smiley closed on the 7th of January 2010. Autumn Rainbow opened on the 7th of January 2010, about 5 minutes later. :D
Then, Autumn Rainbow's host RigRag went and closed on the 10th of April, 2010. I'd kinda been getting fed up of the name though; it seemed too long, and it just wasn't...memorable, or personal. So I almost welcomed the excuse to start again-when RigRag lost my domain, I don't think I was nearly as angry as I should've been.
So I started trying to think of more personal names for site number 5. I thought of rachelhelen.net(Helen being my middle name), but I didn't like it much. I tried adapting a few song names: sweetestwave.net, fadedmoments.net, fadeforever.net, but none of them grabbed me. I began to think of things that I connected to the computer, hoping that would inspire me, and the first thing I thought of was my little blue stapler that I sit absent-mindedly opening and closing whenever I'm reading something on the computer. It seemed great. I set up a poll at icecaves.net, and most people agreed with me that it was memorable, and a good name.
So, here we are. I opened this site on the 11th of May, 2010, deliberately so it would share a birthday with Kathryn. :D