This Here New Blog **UPDATED**

If you've ever been here before you may have noticed that I've changed my blog. A lot. And even if you haven't been here before, you might notice me changing it in the future. A lot.

I got inspired by this post over at Samster Mommy to make some changes to my blog. So what started as a little interest to make some changes (like adding a navigation bar) became a MAJOR OBSESSION over the past few days. I think that a day hasn't gone by in the last week that I haven't changed something haha. In fact, I even made a test blog so I could try designing some other blogs and I made one for my sister-in-law that she doesn't even know about yet (hi Kassie). I'm sure the excitement will wear off soon, but the fact that I could make changes outside of the preset limits just got me so pumped that I couldn't stop.

Anyway, like Samster Mommy did, I thought I would post a few tips on how I did it. Also like she did, I'll be posting a lot of links to other people's tutorials that really helped me (actually a lot of the same ones). And I'll also post some things I figured out on my own. Ok, enough preamble. Here's the breakdown:

• To make my navigation bar I used this tutorial from The Girl Creative. You're going to want to make sure you look at parts 1 AND 2. I made my graphics using this picture and color pallet that I had made:
  
  ...see how some of those colored squares look the same color as my tabs? That's because they ARE my tabs! I edited each one (crop, add text, ect.) in Picnik, which is a free online photo editing tool. There is a fancier version that you can pay for but I only use the free one.

• To make my "About Me" and "Life List" pages I actually originally made regular old blog posts and linked them to the tabs. (A lot of bloggers actually do this) but I literally JUST found out how to make a separate page that is not a blog post. If you go to your "Posting" tab on your blog and click on the link that says "Edit Pages" you can make pages to link to your tabs. So that's what I did. Moving on!

• To make my pictures bigger I used this tutorial from Stephmodo. I don't really have anything to add to that because it's all very simple.

• To make my header image I used this tutorial from Clover Lane. She does the whole thing in Picasa (which I also use) but I only made my collage in Picasa and then edited the rest (cropped, added text ect) in Picnik because I like their fonts better. Also, instead of uploading my picture directly from my computer (blogger was having an issue with that where the picture would come out blurry) I hosted the picture on Photobucket and uploaded it using the direct link. I used a tutorial that I can't find so if I find it I'll update.

• To center my header this is what I did: I clicked DESIGN>EDIT HTML and then scrolled down until I found this piece of code: ]]>/b:skin I then pasted this piece of code directly in front of it:

}#header-inner
{
width: 775px;
margin: auto;
}

There are a lot of tutorials on how to center your header but this was the easiest for me. The original number was 700 instead of 775 but I adjusted it until my header was where I wanted it. And you can too!

**UPDATE**
This actually ended up being so much easier. The tutorial I posted above does work but it didn't seem to work all the time for me.

• To make a button for your blog, I used this tutorial. Very easy.
  

I think that's about it. The only other stuff I really did was play around with the different effects in the "Template Designer" link that is located under the "Design" tab on your blog and add some pictures to the side. The "Template Designer" is how I edited my blog width, changed the fonts and colors of fonts, links, ect. The only other thing I would recommend is, once you've got your blog how you like it, go under your "Design" tab and click on the "Edit html" link and copy everything in the box. Then save that in a word document or send it in an email to yourself (that's what I did) so you'll have it in case you decide to make any changes later and you mess up your blog haha.

Alright, sorry for the long post. Have fun blog editing!