Never Mind

So after that last post I've kind of changed my mind. I'm not ready to talk about this stuff. At least not in this forum. Not exactly sure what I want to do with this blog right now. Time to turn over some new leaves in this new adventure in my life!

I'm Positive

If you haven't been able to pick up on this so far, I am a very introspective type of person. One of the things I've been introspecting about lately is negativity. Earlier this year I started to notice that I had a bad attitude about a lot of things. And, more recently, I've noticed that I've let my bad attitude spill over into my online life. I really don't need to be tweeting, updating facebook and blogging negatively. Sure, I could argue that these are my personal outlets and I should be able to vent. I could also bring up the argument that neglecting to post negative things (i.e. when I'm upset/frustrated/sad ect.) leaves out the whole picture of my life and makes me fake. And I DO think there is a place for being honest about how you feel. STILL, I don't think that gives me a free-for-all pass to be spewing negative things about the internets. So if you've been noticing, that's why I've been gone lately. I've been taking some self inventory and really trying to decide how to curb this bad habit of mine. I don't want to be fake (and God knows I'm not a perky, happy-all-the time person), but I DO want to be a positive and uplifting person. I don't want to let my emotions control my life and what I present to others. 

And this doesn't just apply to my online life. I really desire to be a more positive person in all areas. I want to smile more, and have lighthearted interactions with people more. I want to be (and feel!) happy (yes I think they can be different things).

Anyway, that's what's going on in these parts. Cross your fingers for more posting soon:)

P.S. I know I've made a few changes to the blog again, including the name. Not sure that's what I'm going to go with yet, but we'll see. I just really enjoy changing small things and I can't, for the life of me, seem to land on a name I want to stick with yet. Sorry if that's confusing and/or annoying. Le sigh.

Absent

I'm sorry for my absence. I've been working on a lot of stuff to get organized this month. Trying to pull my goals together and whatnot.

I've really been trying to evaluate the things I want and the things I need to do to achieve those goals. I've also been trying to form some good habits. Sometimes it is really hard for me to remember to do things so I've been writing everything down and making charts and stuff (yes, charts). The good news is: I'll be prepared with good habits once I get old and lose my memory for real! Yay! I've also been getting in the habit of working out and watching what I eat, to get me healthy. I've decided to forgo meat on certain days of the week in hopes of forming better eating habits. So far, so good and I'm really excited about finally TAKING STEPS to achieve what I want as opposed to just complaining and being depressed about what I don't have.

Another thing I've been working on is some blog design. I first got really into it when I redesigned this blog, and since then I've continued to really love it. Here are a couple of blogs I designed for some friends:

I especially love the bottom one. So much so that I didn't want to give it up haha. (click on the pictures to view the actual blogs).

All for now. Hope everyone is having a good week and a fantastic Wednesday!

A Launch

Today I am launching my new blog:

I am weirdly nervous about it. I will still be posting on this blog, as my personal blog, but this new one will be more of my "business blog" (?).

I'm hoping to turn it into kind of an online magazine, with content that you can consistently expect every month. This month, my "launch" month as I'm calling it, is (hopefully) only the beginning. So, while I hope it's good, I'm also hoping it will get better from here on out.

Go check it out and I hope you like it! Also, there is now a button on my right sidebar that will take you directly there. :)

Peace!

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!

Don't go changin....

Obviously I've been making some changes around the ol' blog. I'm trying to find something that is more unique to me, which means a LOT of trial and error and a lot of learning about html code. There will probably be more changes around here in the next little bit while i try out different things. Thanks for being patient with me and expect regular (or maybe better than regular) posting to commence in the near future:)