New design for my Blog and Website

Well, I have been working on it for a while now. Trying to streamline a bit and clean things up. It's hard because I loved by last blog template - it was just "me". The messy desk, the spilled coffee, the "to do" list... It was NOT an actual picture of my desk but it was, in some ways, a representative snapshot of my days and sometimes my state-of-mind. Anyway, I will miss it but I have a copy of it saved so I can revisit it if I miss it too much!

That being said, I hope you will enjoy visiting my newly re-designed and streamlined blog and website. Too often my days feel a bit scattered and I just wanted my online presence to appear "put together" even if my real presence is not! I also hope you will let me know if you like it. Be sure to tell me if there are links that don't work! (I hate it when links don't work...). I'd be interested in hearing your opinions regarding everything from layout to color choices.

The banner...

which is now being used on my website, in my Etsy shop and, of course, here (and of which I'm really quite proud!) was made using GIMP (get your own free version here). If you are lucky enough to have Photoshop, you don't need GIMP. But if, like me, you don't have Photoshop, you will love it. But, not knowing anything about Photoshop, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do anything with it!! That's where YouTube came in. Whew! Thank goodness for YouTube!

There is a wealth of information about GIMP (well... about everything, really) on YouTube. Here are a couple GIMP tutorials I found helpful - the first is from GIMPtricks and is for the absolute beginner. She has a YouTube channel with lots of great info. The second is from GloryProjectz - don't let the fact that the instructor sounds like a 14-year-old boy, because it's a pretty cool tutorial (at least, I thought so!). 

So, I hope I will be able to get back to some normalcy and start blogging again on a regular basis. Hopefully, some of you missed me! Maybe by streamlining my virtual world it will spill over into reality. One can always hope...