Getting Brave

A little over a year after starting "String of Pearls," I have finally made the first small changes in the layout of my blog site. My daughter-in-law occasionally updates different design elements on the home page of her wonderful blog, "Knit 1, Pearl 2," and as a result, it's got a really professional look about it. But I've stuck with the original, bare-bones design I chose back in March 2011, just happy that a technology-challenged person like myself was able to figure out how to start a blog in the first place.

But yesterday afternoon, I got brave. I added a new design element--a list of the topics about which I write most frequently--at the top of the page. The words are printed in pretty pink rectangles, and I think they spiff up my site a bit. (If you're reading this page right now, you can see them yourself--so I suppose I didn't need to describe them to you, did I?) If a particular topic interests you, you can click on the label of your choice and you will find everything I've posted about it so far. I also chose to change the layout for the list of labels that is located at the bottom of my home page, the list that you come to when you scroll down until you can go no further unless you hit the "Older Post" tab. That list includes everything I've ever blogged about, not just the nine subjects in pink listed above, and you can click on any of those words to read posts on a particular subject. I'm currently in the process of re-labeling some posts that could fit into more than one category (both "Faith" and "family," for instance, or "family" and "travel").

This was a big step for me. I was very comfortable with the look of my blog page all this time; if somethin' ain't broke, I've always believed, then don't fix it. I thought if I tried to get too fancy and played around too much with design, I would ruin everything. I feared my entire year's worth of blogging might disappear into the nefarious blogosphere, and I'd never be able to find it again. That's how much I understand about the internet and how it works. That's how comfortable I am with computer stuff (and with change in general).

But I hope these new design elements make my "String of Pearls" home page better-looking and a little more user-friendly.

Baby steps, baby steps. If I'm still at this by next March, mabye I'll be ready to do even more sprucing up; but for now, I'm pleased with these little changes. I feel like a brave new me.

And I hope this new me really is brave, because I just found out minutes ago that my husband swapped with another pilot for a four-day trip to Athens that leaves tomorrow. If I want to, I can tag along. [Gulp!] What do you think: do I want to? (If I do go, you'll be seeing some great pictures in the coming days!)