What's New at the Blog? {and some posts you may have missed}

Notice anything new around here?

My five-year-old blog got a facelift. Five blog years is equal to ten human years. It's a fact. The facelift is sort of a temporary fix, one I did myself even though I don't know code or have photoshop or any skills whatsoever with this sort of thing. 

I can pick out many things here that aren't what I would choose if I had more options. {Blogspot is easy but limited.} 

But. A certain blogger--the very first one I began reading way back when--her mantra kept ringing in my ears: It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. Or, in this case, It doesn't have to be perfect to be better than it was. {The Nester, God love her.}  

Honestly, I felt like a preschooler attempting calculus. I did everything using the ready-made stuff that Blogger already has and I made my header using Picasa and this tutorial. Sort of. The tutorial didn't exactly work for me but it gave me the idea and I hacked my way through the rest. 

Just seven short hours later, I had a finished product that would have taken a real web designer about seven seconds to produce. Yay for continuing education and steep learning curves! 

A more comprehensive overhaul is still in the works but we are having blog-naming issues. Like I said in an earlier post, naming one's blog is proving to be more difficult than naming one's child. {Suggestions welcome.}

I'm happy-ish with it, considering my lack of expertise. And I hope you'll like the cleaner, more organized space. 

At the top you'll notice that I have "pages." Apparently blogger has had that feature available for years. I just figured it out a month ago. You can find everything from booklists to my 31 Days series to the craziest "About Me" section you've ever read. 

Also, if you've never subscribed to the blog, I invite you to do that. If you want. No pressure at all. {I am the worst self-marketer ever.} When a la mode moves or renames herself or whatever it is she's going to do, I think that I can simply move over the subscriptions at the same time. And if we can't, well, I'll just have to sheepishly invite you to subscribe again. 

Here are the ways you can read or subscribe:

• Subscribe through a "feed." You'll see that option on the right sidebar. 

• Have the blog delivered to your inbox each time I post. Just enter your e-mail address in that option box on the right sidebar and voila, a little fairy who lives in the enchanted forest of the internet hand-delivers each new post with love and pixie dust, directly to your inbox. 

• Subscribe through bloglovin. Ever since Google Reader shut down earlier this month, I have loved reading my favorite blogs through bloglovin. It's a very user-friendly "reader" that receives new posts from your favorite blogs and displays them all in one place. If you don't already use a "reader," I highly recommend it. You don't need any tech skills whatsoever. Simply go to bloglovin and set up an account. {It takes 10 seconds.} Then you can enter in the addresses or names of your favorite blogs that you want to regularly read. You can even search for them if you're not sure of the correct web address. I especially like the mobile app for bloglovin. It's free and so very easy. You can sign up through the bloglovin link on my right sidebar.

Hey, Scooper, I've subscribed via e-mail or through an RSS feed and it looks like you haven't written a post in two months. What's up with that?

I am so glad you asked. Apparently there was a glitch through Feedburner at the end of May. It is now the end of July and I just fixed it. And by "I," I mean my husband.

I develop a nervous twitch at all things numeric and code and techie. But my husband does not. And he is infinitely more patient than me at figuring out things like computer glitches that Satan himself invented just for me.

In case you haven't stopped in since the feed broke, I've listed all of the posts since the end of May. Thankfully, I am not prolific so you haven't missed much. Here they are, listed in order of most recent first:

True Consolation

The Space Between Where You Are & Where You Wish to Be

10 Things I Learned in June

When Your Little World Conspires to Love You Big {my surprise 40th birthday party}

Because Forgetting the Pull-Ups is Just What Happens This Time of Year

Today I'm 40

So there you have it. A new look. New features. And some new posts that are actually old posts...but new to you. You're welcome.