Spilled paint, HTML Style

Happy November! (And already getting off-topic for a sec:  Ladies, it’s “No Shave November”. When it comes to facial hair, this girl is. a. fan. Big time.  Yes, I’m excited enough about seeing rugged men everywhere that I’m blogging about it. Ok, done now.)

So you may have noticed, but the blog has a new look!

When it comes to the blog, I’m self-taught in the ways of web design. I could pay someone to do it for me, but I’m a proud geek. The DIY dork in me loves the challenge (and my stubborn streak simply refuses to give up control). Which means that any time I decide on a new design, I’m toiling away for several frustrating months until I figure out what I’m doing. But in the end, I was happy, and my blogging makeover made its debut just a few weeks ago last month. Yes, last month. I am totally late in the big “hey did you notice my new look?” post.

I first planned to wait to talk about it once I was done tweaking post-launch. But that’s not gonna happen. I’m a tweaker. I’m going to continue to mess with things because I’ll see something cool on someone else’s blog and want to DIY it on mine. But for now, there are several new things I thought were neat (for you email and feed/reader subscribers, you will need to click over to the blog to see things in action:

Tabbed box

I thought it might be helpful to have things right at your fingertips:  subscribe, search, find topics, read more about me, and a simple thank you for reading. Plus, my new “full personality” head shot is there, too (thanks again, Linds!).

Latest projects

It’s no secret that I have a full plate between working full time, grad school, and keeping up with DIY projects on the blog. So since so many of my posts skip from one project around the house to another, I grouped some of my more recent projects by room so you know where I am trying to concentrate. Simply click on the picture for a whole series of posts about the room or project.

A page for Charlie

I thought it was high time Charlie get a page of her own. She winds up in a ton of my projects, but she is all over my Instagram under the hashtag #charliebug_DIY. See some of her goofy antics by clicking over to her page.

Socialize

I had a lot of fun with this one. See that paint brush on the left? All of my social media buttons are available there. I’ve also joined Hometalk and added its icon to the homepage.

Cleanup on aisle 2

I am still tweaking the double-column sidebar. But I think it’s a little cleaner than what I had before and makes reaching new items (like my popular posts and places I’ve been featured) a little easier.

Pages

I am really happy with the changes to my About Me page. I’m also hard at work to dress up my “Lessons Learned” (aka Projects page). Now that the new blog design is in place, I can start to organize things that have long been left on the to-do list and not get distracted with other site coding.

There you have it. I hope you like it, too! And while I’m still new at this whole web design thing, I can honestly say that I am truly loving it. I actually think it’s fun. So if you’re in need of a little tweaking help yourself, feel free to drop me an email. For quick questions, I’ll be able to give you a quick reply (and many of them will be “I dunno, I just Googled it.” Ha! But if you’re in need of actual coding or design help suggestions (Blogger only – clueless at WordPress!), feel free to send me an email with your specific request and I’ll see if I can work out some pricing for you (I’m cheap, promise).

Thanks in advance for the kind words (if any) about the new digs. I’m new to this stuff so it makes me nervous to share that I’m the one responsible for it if you hate it. But I enjoy working on it, so that counts for something!