Did She Have a Little Work Done?


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.

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