A few commenters have noted the change in Mrs. Blanding's appearance. At his elegant home on Saturday night, David Jimenez mentioned Patricia van Essche's charming illustration that I use for the header of the blog. It made me realize I hadn't "seen" it in a while. I started Mrs. Blandings almost a year ago. For a while, her title was simply typed at the top of the page in red, then Patricia created the engaging illustration above just before I was headed to New York. Enchanted, I knew it must be my header, but blogger was a little trickier then and I couldn't quite figure out how to do it. Eventually, I created the old image in Word (it's funny how far you can come in a year), printed it, scanned it and posted it.
Courtney, at
Style Court, was gracious and noted that it had a vintage feel. OK, so it was a little fuzzy, I'd get back to it later. I wasn't thinking nine months later, but that is kind of how I work. After David's comment caused a mental nudge, I realized I could easily update the header, which lead to a little more tinkering. The template is the same, but I changed it to a wider version to expand the margins a bit. "Wordy," this keeps the text on Mrs. Blandings from looking quite so long.
I also changed the font. This is cleaner, I think, and I am a Arial user in "real life" so this is a better fit for me visually as well. And it's larger, which might be a little easier to read on screen. Overall, I think it's crisper. I initially changed the background color to white, and I must say I liked it, but I could not give up this gentle shade as I've grown so accustom to it.
I know it takes the eye a while to adjust to change. Hopefully, Mrs. Blandings just looks better and fresher, not different and strained as sometimes happens with cosmetic alterations. Or so I've heard.
Labels: blogs