I’m Beautiful Like Me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love to read blogs. In all honesty, I think it is satiating the need to read books, which I haven’t been able to do since the baby was born. I loathe being interrupted and well, babies don’t much give a damn about that.

So as I was reading today, I was inspired by a couple of my fellow bloggers to count my blessings. First by Jaime, whose blog is primarily about her premature daughter, Molly. Her post today was especially inspiring to me. I encourage you to check it out. Next, I was inspired by Anna, who posted that she was having a generally bad day, until she decided to be positive.

That said, I’m going to count my own blessings and share them with you.

Huh. We are having Thanksgiving tonight. How appropriate! Life is good. Photos sure to follow.

I have made some changes around the blog site. If you hadn’t already noticed or read about it, I bought a domain! With that, I felt it was time for some changes and upgrades.

Firstly, I have changed the appearance ever so slightly. I gave up on the three column format because it felt too crowded to me. I have added some new widgets - curse those widgets! I love ‘em and want to use every widget I come across, but they really bog down page loading time and well, everyone hates that! So, I’m trying to keep the widgets simple and relevant to the blog. And I have managed to hide about half of them on post pages, which is not as simple as it sounds! Please note there are two new ones that I’m quite pleased with: Buzzworthy Posts and Top Commenters. Buzzworthy Posts are posts that received a lot of attention, either via comments or tags, diggs, etc. on social networks. Top Commenters is a widget that lets me spread the love of my most dedicated commenters! Thanks, BHF. You my girl!

I have two polls going on in the sidebar (so posted in the event that you are a feed reader) that I’m sincerely hoping will get some votes. Basically, I want to know how you read the content of my site and how you feel about the site’s appearance. I’m concerned that some people might have trouble reading the layout as I use a black background and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard complaints about it being difficult to read. Also, I have very recently subscribed to a large number (think: 80+) of blogs. With that, I have been exposed to all sorts of inspiration on blog appearances and think I would be up to the challenge of more format changes if the masses so demand. On that note, if you are a plurker and blog author, please add your URL to my plurk blogroll page.

Finally, I have discovered the I Follow Movement - manually removing the ‘nofollow’ code from blogger’s template so that links posted in comments work. I urge you to leave your links in all comments henceforth and I will spread the link love! Please see the image on the top right of your screen. You can get your own and learn how to remove that code properly from your template (regardless of what blogging platform you use) at Randa Clay Design.

I do expect a couple of additional changes in the coming weeks. When the polls close here, I will make a decision about the format on the web and I also have some other things in the works that are temporarily stalled. I’ll be sure to update you when I know more.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and voting!

In an act of sheer self-importance, I purchased a domain for this blog late last night/early this morning.

While I write this blog primarily for journaling purposes and sharing photos, videos and updates for family and friends, I am making discoveries: that I really enjoy posting about crocheting and knitting, that I am enjoying practicing my writing skills again, that reading other blogs (I am subscribed to 80+ and I still have a list to pour through!) is inspiring me to write about more than just the family.

It gives me something to do with my time and - as Mike C. (pictured left with Buddha) says - my talent, which he believes I am otherwise wasting.

I’m not entirely certain what the long-term goal here is, but I am hopeful. I’m a bit surprised at how simple and inexpensive it is, too! The only difference in what you used to see and what you see now is the name in the address bar. Whadda name! I’m most giddy about the name, I think.

Visit the site to find out how you can enter to win 100% alpaca wool, made right here in America.