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Sprucing Up

January 9, 2009 By

I’ve felt a general dissatisfaction with my blog theme lately.  While I do like my theme, I find myself wanting a bit more from a theme.  I mean, I have a free theme so it’s pretty easy to tell when another blog has the same great taste in themes that I do.  But I’ve been growing restless lately.  I’ve even been considering a premium theme, but I won’t commit to something like that unless I’m 1,000% sure that it will give me what I want.

I’ve also been thinking about my old space, the one I had before I switched to WP.  I’m pretty satisfied with what I was able to do there (just not satisfied with the abilities of Blogger, which is why I switched).  Here’s what I like about the way that space ended up:

  • The headers for the date and sidebar widgets.  They’re bold, and do a great job of delineating the sections and highlighting the text at the same time
  • The proportions.  The sidebars are slightly wider than the ones here (195px vs. ~175 here), and at 950px the entire thing is 50px wider than this one, which means it doesn’t feel as cramped.
  • The thin double line between the body and sidebars is a definite marker between the spaces, yet remains delicate and unobtrusive.
  • The same double line border is around both the header pic and title of my blog.  On the new one, the KirstenL4W title (there only so a name shows up in your readers) just kind of floats above the header pic.
  • The symmetry!  I almost forgot about that one.  I’m the kind of person who likes symmetry, so having a sidebar on each side appeals to that sense of balance.

And for the WP blog:

  • The calendar like date stamp.  It keeps there from being too much text at the top of a post, what with the post title, author, and categories.
  • There’s a white text area and I can have something else for a background.  It leaves open the possibility of having a patterned background.
  • The menu bar.  The fact that I have one at all is one of the big reasons I switched to WP.
  • The header image.  This particular theme supports a custom header image, which means I just upload whatever pic I want and move it around within the box for an instant, decently proportioned header image.  It’s easy to do and makes changes easy, if I wanted to do that.

A few must-haves for any theme are:

  • 3 columns.  I really like having dual sidebars and I’d really feel like something is missing if I didn’t have them.
  • I must be able to have a header image without a lot of tricky coding to make one work with the theme.
  • The proportions need to be right.  Things should line up to the exact pixel, and there should be proper spacing where necessary to make things easier on the eyes.  Sorry, but after working for a few years as a receptionist in a graphics studio, I’ve learned to recognize and appreciate these often-overlooked design details.

I could go on to list the things I really don’t want in a theme, but if I start looking then this list might get too long, so I’ll just leave that alone except to say that I don’t want a magazine style theme.  I think magazine style themes are too business-like for a personal blog, and I don’t like seeing them on other personal blogs.  If the elements I really like and want are in place, then I would think that the theme will do a decent job of omitting the don’t wants.

I’ve really not seen any free themes that are condenters right now.  I’ve uploaded a few and tried to work with them, but once I started trying any customizations, they quickly fell out of favor.  That leaves premium themes.  The two I’ve seen that have promise are Thesis and WP Remix.  Does anyone out there have any experience with either one of these themes?  What about them do you like and not like?

In the meantime, I’ve done a bit of sprucing up.  The blue-gray was getting old, so I created a new header image from a photo taken during the recent vacation that Mister and I took to the east coast.  This was taken at Salisbury Beach, MA.  I was looking out towards the ocean (trying not to get blinded by the sun) as the sun came up.  It’s a bit more colorful than the last picture, and I complemented it by changing the background to a soft seashell color and defining the borders around the image, body, and footer with a deeper color.  The menu bar looks a bit sparse because of the borders everywhere else, but I think if I tried to put a border around the menu bar buttons, then it would look a bit crowded.

So quit hiding behind your feed readers, stop by and let me know what you think of the new image and colors.  And if you have any experience with the above-mentioned paid themes, I really want to hear from you!

Filed Under: My Blog

On Shakey Ground

January 8, 2009 By

Just a few minutes ago, as Mister was playing Silly Little Game, I hear one of the guild members say, “Hey, we’re having an earthquake right now!”  What she was talking about was this.  Not a huge one, but big enough to cause a commotion.  As for me, not being from a seismically active area, have only felt an earthquake once in my life.  This quake occurred pretty far from where I lived at the time, but I we still felt it all the way on the MA/NH seacoast.  I remember waking up because of the noise of my window rattling.  It was a window that was cracked and a bit loose in the frame, so it made a bit of noise.  I woke up and felt my bed shaking back and forth a little bit.  Even though it was my first experience with quakes, I knew right away what it was.  I said to no one in particular, “Cool!” and went back to sleep.

There’s something funny about how people react to quakes.  I watch disaster shows on tv, and they’ll show footage of quakes in various places around the Pacific Rim.  The Japanese barely react at all, unless it’s somewhat severe in which case they’ll nonchalantly take cover from falling objects.  West Coasters are similar.  Mister says he won’t wake up for anything less than a 5.0, but then again he was at the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.  East Coasters, on the other hand, act like the world is ending.  When a quake occurs back east, news reports are overflowing with stories of how 911 call centers are bombarded with calls.  “I think I just felt a bomb!”  “A large truck just drove by my house really fast and it shook the whole house!”  Yeah, we get excited and/or freaked out when the ground shakes.  Give us a major nor’easter and we can handle it, but a little hippy hippy shake and forget it.

So, have you ever been in an earthquake?  Tell me all about it!

Filed Under: Friends

Thick as Pea Soup

January 3, 2009 By

I made a ham for Christmas, and since it was just Mister and myself, we had a lot of leftovers.  Today, with some of those leftovers, I made pea soup.  I have to admit – I’ve never in my life eaten pea soup.  I had no idea if I would even like the stuff.  And since I’ve never had it before, I’ve also never made it before, nor seen it made.  So here I was, with grandiose ideas on making something that I didn’t know how to make and didn’t even know whether or not I’d like it.  Quite a commitment, eh?

I saved the ham bone specifically for this, and it had a lot of meat left on it.  A LOT.  Then I went online for recipes.  I wanted to do this in the slow cooker, because crock pots are a lazy cook’s best friend, so search the interwebs I did.  I finally came across this recipe, which was simple in its ingredients, prep, and technique.   I got up this afternoon morning, and got to work.  I rinsed the peas and sorted them, not knowing what exactly I was looking for during the sort, so I just took out some yucky looking ones.  Then I chopped the rest of the ingredients, plopped the ham bone in, poured in some water, and turned the pot on.  A few hours later I went to look at it, and it smelled divine.  Heavenly, I tell you.  Finally, around 7pm, I could take no more of the smell.  I was hungry, and I’m sure Mister was too.

I went over to the crock pot, took the lid off, and with some tongs lifted out the bay leaves.  Then on to the ham bone.  I lifted it out and had a fork ready to take the rest of the meat off, but the fork wasn’t really necessary.  The meat fell off the bone and plopped into the soup.  I stirred it up, thinking I’d need to add more water like the recipe said, or use the immersion blender, but that was not necessary.  The thickness was perfect, and because they’d cooked so long, the peas took care of themselves.  The carrots and chunky ham looked so good that I just left it alone.  Besides, pea soup is a hearty soup, and in my opinion hearty soups should be chunky.

I served dinner with some fresh artisan bread, and took a bite.  Hey, Mikey likes it!  This is really good stuff.  You should have some.  But make it yourself, because between Mister and me, there won’t be much in the way of leftovers.  Enjoy!

Pea Soup

Filed Under: Food