Looking Good

i hate to sound superficial, but it really does matter. all the others seem to come by it so easily! but i'm here to tell you, it's not as easy as it looks! you have to have the right style, the right colors, the right...spacing. yes, people, having a good looking blog page is very important. wait...what did you think i was talking about?

when i decided to start a blog, i figured it would be easy enough. it was not my first ride on the merry-go-round, after all. i have a family blog and have been part of a group theme blog. and blogs are the new black, so to speak. there's one for everything you could need! and quite a few that you probably don't. so i figured with everyone doing it, how hard could it really be? it would be no sweat to get up and running.

i was wrong.

yes, the typing and the subjects are not an issue for me. in fact, i've had about four sitting here, finished but unpublished, for about three weeks now. why, you ask? because i suck at designing a blog page. this was a major set back. when you think about it, that's the most important thing about a successful page. it has to be rather eye catching, but not too loud or distracting. it has to catch the reader before the subject does. people do judge a book by its cover, regardless of the warnings not to. let's face it, there are so many blogs out there that you could go to, why stay on one that hurts your eyes? oh, the pressure!

when i started to look through the templates for blogger pages, nothing was clicking. so i searched for something else online. still no luck. i tried different photos for a background, plain backgrounds, patterned backgrounds. nope. nothing was working. i have no eye for design, it would seem. shocking, i know.

i finally got some help from my technologically sound husband who found a decent template for me (how did i not see that one?) and i chose my colors for the text and whatnot (how many freakin' things are there on this page that need a color?!). then i was faced with a boggling question: how do you center the blog title? for some reason, i couldn't get this darn thing to center! there was no option to choose alignment. i tried adding spaces, but they just disappeared. i looked online for answers and nothing i saw seemed to work (or make much sense.... i even tried to read all that html code stuff. not pretty, people). it was hopeless! finally, i had to rely on the old dash trick. add a few dashes on either side of the title until you have it exactly (or at least close enough) to where you want it to be. does it add to the beauty of the page? not so much. but it was the lesser of two evils.

bottom line: leave this one to people who know. don't try this at home. for now, i'll leave the results of my blundering up as a warning and example. eventually, i'll get it fixed up. i'll let you benefit from my mistakes.