My Thoughts on Blog Design

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of retching. again. in my bed. again.

*sigh*

I spent the bulk of my Sunday holding a feverish 2 year old who couldn't keep his Tylenol down. I needed a mental vacation. (O.K. in all honesty, I probably needed the vacation before that, but now I really needed it!) You may have noticed things look a little different around here. I am not real big on artistic commitments.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might understand I am still struggling with these narrow margins. I am still not sure if I can handle them. I mean, I am not a woman who leaves a small footprint, metaphorically speaking. But for now, right now, I am feeling a little better about things. You see, for a while now, Blogger and I have been fighting. Oh yes. We are lovers, Blogger and I, but...well we had a spat. (I'm all over the metaphors today aren't I?) To punish my brazen flirtation with html, Blogger had banned me from adding widgets and blog buttons! Oh the frustration! How did I survive it? I still don't know. I think it may have been some sort of aspartame-induced psychosis. Or maybe just stubborn indignation. (They are equally likely, you know.) I worked and worked and worked. I studied all of your source pages, tried every trick I know--admittedly fewer than I'd like to know--and STILL I could not find the teeny tiny error that must have been preventing the fix. So I gave up. I apologized to Blogger, we kissed and made up. (ie. I completely wiped it out and started over.) Now I am playing by the "rules" (kind of) At least for a few days. Of course, I always indulge in a little flirtation custom font or something. I have to. You wouldn't want me to be a boring all-business blogger, would you? I thought not.

In the meantime, I had a great excuse to play visit Megan at Shabby Blogs. (Have I ever told you I am her stalker? Don't tell her, but I totally am! I'll bet 50% of her page views are just me milling around, drooling over her awesome backgrounds. I even try some of them on in my test blog. Oh yes I do! I am like that crazy blond-haired guy in The Bodyguard. Ok not really...) I chose this one because it is much brighter, while still being a bit distressed and vintage. It seemed a good fit. I am SO not done with the title, but if you have been around here long, you know that is nothing new. I love to tweak and play. Photoshop and I are buds. So be on the lookout for some cool stuff coming up...(if the Turkey-Master allows such frivolous diversions.)

While I am rambling, I am wondering if you can guess who's handwriting I used for the font. Not mine, by the way. I am sure some of you will know, or at least recognize it once I tell you. Leave me a comment with your best guess.


And since you are looking things over, take a gander over there in my sidebar and check out that typewriter font. That is Adler from DaFont. It is one of my faves. Did I ever mention how CRAZY I am about typewriter fonts? I keep meaning to show them all off (I have a small collection), but I can never figure out a cool way to do it. But I used Adler over there so we can both enjoy it. You will also see that I removed all the buttons, except for those that are required (I think). I replaced it with a blogroll that rotates by what blogs have been updated! Cool, huh? Are you all already doing this and I just didn't know about it? Well, it's new to me so I'm loving it! I hope I didn't delete anyone. If I did, it was NOT intentional. I will be looking at it again once the puke has cleared I get a good night's sleep. or ten.


In all my surfing and secret agent work on your blogs, I noticed a few things. On some blogs, it is next to impossible to find a place to leave a comment. I'm not saying I am an expert, but I AM saying as a reader, I have a limit to my patience (so do my kids) so the easier the better, capiche?  Another thing I noticed is a TON of Bloggers do not have their sites linked to their profiles. Maybe this is on purpose? I don't think so. I, myself did not know that my email was not on there for a long time until my one of my bloggy buddies clued me in. Thanks Jill!

I mention all of these things for a reason, but I am not yet going to reveal the secret inner-workings of my mind. Just let it be known that there is a method to my CRAZY madness.

Thanks for stopping by. Let me know what you think about my look. For my part, I will be disinfecting the house in between taking care of whatever Turkey spews today. And I'll be working on that title, which definitely needs a piece of torn up scrap paper in it, don't you think? You can bet I'll also be trying to figure out how to use this beautiful background with wider margins. And as soon as I figure that out I'll be ready to start all over again.