Sunday, September 27, 2009

Fall decor, home and here

It began with changing the table runner. And then adding a few fall decorations. And soon all the Halloween decor followed. Was that enough? Apparently not. The blog needed sprucing up too.

Some bloggers rarely change the appearance of their blog. That could be a wise choice on their part. Their blogs are recognizable immediately. Some change their appearance seasonally. Others change on a whim. Those are good choices too. Hey, whatever makes you happy will probably result in more blogging, all the better for the readers, right?

Do you ever admire someone else's style and try to adopt it as your own? Are you successful or do you feel that it falls short of your goal when you look at your result? There are so many backgrounds that I love, such as the ones from The Cutest Blog on the Block and many others, but often when I try them on for size, I fear my site looks cluttered instead of cute.

I was gone most of the day today but that didn't stop me from coming here late in the evening to learn some things from The Cutest Blog on the Block's site. Like how to change the background color to something different from those offered by Blogger. (Yes, I was the kid who couldn't make do with the 48 pack of Crayolas, I had to have the 64 pack, minimum. ) You wouldn't believe or want to know how much time I spent playing around with different colors tonight. And then...why the heck not see how hard it would be to change this to a three column template? Guess what? It wasn't hard at all!

So I played around for another hour, deleting some things and adding a few others on either sidebar. And I like it. I think. Until the doubts set in and I wonder if it is too cluttered.

* sigh *

My life would be easier if I did things the way my husband does. If it were up to him, furniture arrangement would never change, wall color would probably be the same each time we paint, and one set of dishes would be more than enough. He does admit that I keep life interesting. I think that is my life's purpose: to decorate the house (and blog) and keep Bill wondering where I moved the salt shaker to this time around!

Have fun with your seasons as well as your seasonings!

4 comments:

Karen at Nittany Inspirations said...

I think your new look is just fine. It's not too busy and the orange is very fall. New looks are OK.

I have only changed my background once, but I change my sidebar all the time.

Some folks pick colors where the text can hardly be read against the background. Sometimes their pictures are too large for the space and sides are cut off. Then there is the blaring music that makes me exit immediately.

Knitty said...

Thanks! I agree about the words being hard to read on some blogs. I think some forget to check the colors on the links and the area for comments which can become invisible on some backgrounds. Music can be startling, especially if you are reading in an otherwise quiet setting. I don't mind when I see the source right away and can mute it if need be.

Olde Dame Penniwig said...

Halloo dearie. I very much like the look of yer bloggie.

If ye want the middle section a different color, just go to yer HTML and ADD a line of code. You will just tell it to call up a certain color (whichever one you like) right after the #main-wrapper attribute. Here is a snip of code from my bloggie showing the new piece of code I added to get the main wrapper area (that middle column) a different color:

#main-wrapper {
background-color:#e8e5ce;
width: 500px;
margin-right: 15px;
margin-left: 15px;
padding-left: 15px;
padding-right: 5px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
#sidebar-wrapper {


-
Okay dearie, it looks to me that your code does not, at this time, include any "padding" along those sidebars. I do believe ye will need to add some padding (space) on the sidebars. Look back up in that code above. See the bit about padding? That is new HTML that was added. I added it for both sidebars. Sometimes the amount of padding added will be "uneven," just keep taking a pixel off or adding a pixel until it looks nice to yer eye.

Olde Dame Penniwig said...

*oops* -- padding added for main wrapper and both sidebars, that should read. Ye know to go to an existing bloggie such as mine and right-click to call up Page Source, correct? And then see where the padding was added and exactly how? Very handy.