To continue Part I of my Blogroll, I thought I would share a different side of my taste, one that’s less trashy and more tasteful. I know I said it’d be the food blogs but because of the current state of my house, I’ve been digging decor blogs lately in a big way.  I have this side of me that wishes I was creative and artistic in more ways than just relating to photography.  I really wish I had an eye for interior decorating.  I can spot what I like from afar but when it comes to decorating my own spaces, it’s not as easy for me.

I have, as you can tell shortly, an decorating identity crisis.

One blue wall to match the lovely curtains from Iceland as well as the fantastic painting that’s been in B’s family for years.  One wall with earthy tones, a line of beautiful tealight candle holders in shades of dark orange, green and brown, with an apple container and a handmade framed mirror made by Spanish nuns.  Dark wood coffee and end tables (that double as bookshelves as we don’t have space for a real bookshelf, plus books weigh a lot which we have to keep in mind when we move every few years) mixed with lighter wood entertainment center and secretary and even lighter computer desk.  Hideously stuffy dining room set with eclectic red and green paisleyish tablecloth - and thank goodness you can’t see the awful painting over the table.  Fortunately for everyone, said awful painting is soon to be replaced with very cool new art that will, in its very own way, not match anything else in my entire living room.

So we’ve established that in my decorating style, I suck.  I do have one place in my house that I like, and that’s my entranceway:

While the cat scratcher is admittedly out of place, I really like everytihng else.  The orange is shocking and yet it works, because it’s an awesome backdrop for the incredible painting that B bought for $20 at a thrift store - a total steal!  I also love the chest, a memento from B’s father’s days as a sailor.  It’s good for storage (which is at a premium in our little house) and makes a good surface for the lamp I picked up in Morocco, the elephant and the camel from the middle east, and a dark wooden basket filled with yummy smelling potpourri.  This is the one and only place in my house where I feel like it all matches itself, cat scratcher aside, but that’s because it’s one very small wall that has nothing else around it to display my inability to commit to one style.

I’ve been hoping that one of these decor blogs will inspire me to somehow get it together and be able to come up with something that makes sense.  It hasn’t happened so far, but hopefully when we move I’ll have a little more space to separate the things I like into their own spaces.  With that, I give you my blogs:

housemartin: I love her floral arrangements, her new brick & mortar store, and what she finds and posts from other places.  She’ll take you into a store and share great vignettes that make me envy everyone who lives near these kinds of places.

renovation voyeur: It’s not updated as often as I’d like, but who am I to talk, right?  At any rate, this site showcases renovation projects that take old, ugly rooms into wonderful spaces.  Inspires me to do some renovations myself, except for that whole bit about how I CAN’T.

Vintage Vavoom: Ignore the most recent post if it has anything to do with buttons, but please, do scroll down and see some of the projects that refinish old, or sometimes just ugly, items into pieces that fit into her style.  While a lot of her stuff isn’t exactly MY style, her blog reminds me that things can always be changed to fit individual tastes.  A dated brass lamp can be refinished into a custom lamp that fits perfectly into your mismatched living room.

small space style: Completely unattainable but really beautiful rooms in limited - though I wouldn’t go so far as to say “small” space.

haus maus: While Holly is better known for her other blog, decor8, I really like this one because it’s real decorating ideas that she’s putting together in her own renovated German apartment.  She’s got a lovely style that’s bright and charming, welcoming, and best of all, she has a very limited amount of space in which she can do this.  I can relate, except that I suck at decorating my small space.

I’m the first to admit that I’m relatively geeky.  It’s all good, though - it’s come in handy on many occasions.  I’m not nearly as talented as my brother Dan at fixing computers, but I’ve been able to bail myself and others out of situations involving lost files, broken email, webpage disasters, missing folders, etc.  And I can’t program much at all but I know enough HTML to have been able to get by with my webpage all these years.  The only problem is, HTML has been mostly replaced by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which I’m completely and totally unfamiliar with.

This has meant that I haven’t wanted to tackle any sort of modifying of my webpage for the last couple of years, as I just posted about yesterday.  But when I found this theme on Wordpress, I immediately saw the potential of it to be just what I had in mind.

So remember, I don’t know anything about CSS.  I managed to do quite a few things on my own but I was still struggling with making some minor changes that I wanted to do to really make the layout “my own”.  I went out on a limb and emailed the creator of the layout, Liane from Rose City Gardens, and what do you do know but she wrote back within a couple of hours and has provided me with so much help that I’ve almost got it where I want it now.  Thank you so much, Liane!

I think the thing I’m most excited about - because I’m a geek like that - is my new little icons.  I’m so proud of them!  It was what really made the layout feel like my own.

I changed the search icon from this: to this: ;

the bullet from this: to this: ;

the date icon from this: to this: ;

the comment icon from this: to this: ;

the edit icon from this: to this: ;

and the submit comment icon from this: to this: .

So - what do you think?  Do you have any suggestions for things I can improve?  Anything you’d like to see added?

In case you didn’t notice immediately - or if you read me via a Reader - I made some major changes to the website.  I hadn’t made many changes in the last 4 years I’ve been blogging because I’ve always been very happy with how things looked.

However, I have been wanting a 3-column layout for quite some time and finally found this pretty little layout courtesy of Rose City Gardens, and I’ve been fiddling with it all night trying to get it just right.  I have a few more things to work on in my sidebars but this is pretty much what it’s going to be.  I hope you enjoy the changes!

$2,700 for THIS??  I’m trying to figure out how to justify needing this one….

I’m sure it comes as a surprise to no one that I love reading blogs.  And I learned a while ago, thanks to Helen, about the beauty of a reader program, where you can subscribe to blogs and have one central location to check all of the blogs you’re interested.  My choice in service providers is Google, as it’s been for many years in other areas - search engine, image search, chat, email.  I’m sure Google Reader isn’t entirely that different than many of the other providers, but I’m such a fan of Google’s tactic of simplicity in everything they do that I’ve become brand-loyal, if that’s possible of an entity such as theirs.

At any rate, I love reading my blogs and my blogroll has increased over the years to its current size of 80+ blogs.  I won’t bore you with each and every single one of them, and I’d like to point out that it’s easy to keep up when I can view only the blogs that are updated (many are not frequently updated while some are constantly adding new items).  I went through a recent phase, however, where I added a bunch of new blogs and now whenever I login in the morning  or after work, I have triple-digit updates to wade through.  Some I just dismiss with a click of “Mark All as Read” (BBC, CNN, the “Overheard” blogs), clearing away most of the clutter, but there are some that I always take the time to read thoroughly.

And so I’d like to share with you some of my favorites.  Don’t worry, I won’t give you an itemized list of every blog I subscribe to, but hopefully I’ll turn you on to some interesting stuff to read when you’ve got a few extra minutes to yourself.

Today’s installment is the light and the fluffy, aka My Celebrity Fix:

Celebrity Baby Blog - all the news and photos on the cute kids in Hollywood.  Part of me feels guilty for reading, but since babies for me are out of the picture, I have to keep up on, you know, how babies these days grow and stuff.  Yeah.

Perez Hilton - so wrong, and yet so right.  Maybe if I saw E! television, I wouldn’t have to read Perez…but I do.  I’ll admit that lately, the gossip has been less than interesting and most of my time reading is less reading and more skimming.

Pink is the New Blog - the first gossip blog I read.  I recently rediscovered it after unsubscribing since I don’t do blogs that  only let you read a blurb in Reader - at least for non-(real) news items.  A little less catty and mean than Perez, Trent writes up a great gossip blog.

JohnMayer.com - John Mayer blogs!  When he’s not touring, he writes some good stuff.  B and I both love John Mayer’s music - the voice, the lyrics, the style.  I like getting a small glimpse into his head.

Next to come: It’s a good thing you don’t gain weight by reading blogs.

I know that I haven’t been posting all that much lately, because honestly there isn’t much to talk about.  I work, and I work, and I work some more, and then I come home and spend time between home and Alex’s since she’s been put on bedrest. 

I know there are a few of you left on here that read this, most probably via a RSS subscription but that’s OK since that’s the only way I have time to read any blogs anymore, myself.  To you who are left, thank you for still reading!  Thank you for your patience.  Someday - probably within the next 6 months or so - I’ll be having a lot more to post about.  In the meantime, I have a few ideas for things to post about - but unfortunately what I spend the majority of my time doing is work, and I can’t post about work stuff on here.  I’m a big fan of blog scheduling (this post was scheduled to post!) so hopefully I’ll find some time to sit down and write a few things all at once and post them over a few weeks.

(Don’t worry, they’re all back now in case you didn’t read my comments on my last post - Mozilla came to my rescue!)

How can you not mourn the loss of such links as these:

A Space Age Christmas
Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style
Daisuke Matsuzaka Rookie Card - I don’t know why, but there it is
Women’s Fragrances Perfume Notes
A Dutch website with pictures of people making çig köfte, a dish I had once made by Turkish friends
Fred Phelps Expose
Love at First Bite Bakery
Artists designer Rhonna Farrer loves
Carrot cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting
Beer and booze stickers
Wooden Memory Stick
Perpetual Kid
A completely impractical haircut that I could never have but that I love anyway
Lipstick is my Crack

There is so much more, the list seems to be unending but those are a few of the highlights. Of all of them, I’d have to say Perpetual Kid is the best shopping website out there. Who can pass up denture-shaped ice molds? Or Tic-Tac-Toast? Or a Lunchlady action figure? (Hoagies and grinders, hoagies and grinders)