I think you made good decisions. Current and changing content is very attractive to returning customers and it shows that the site provides up-to-date content.

Out of my experience what works the best is to have a precise tagline that describes in easy to understand and short words what your site is about. No need for complicated descriptions, your logo, title and the tagline should give users a good sense of what's going on. More important, in many cases your first time users even know already what your site is about because they came to your homepage through a referral link or they don't even hit your homepage anymore because they enter your site in a deep-link referred by a search engine result.

I don't think it's wrong per se to start a personal blog with a greeting to your friends. My point was that it is kind of redundant for whoever comes to your site because they either came consciently and therefore know it already or task-driven (through a search engine for example) and then they care more about finding the desired information.

But again, for personal pages/blogs it is ok because it will add a personal touch that your friends might enjoy and you don't need to 'optimize' the user experience in terms of task success. Happy blogging!