A new blog....and a new design!

Yesterday when I decided to start my blog up again I spent an insane amount of time trying to find just the right layout (I swear I have never seen so many adorable templates). When I woke up this morning, I saw a post on Thoughts of a Third Grade Teacher about blog templates. I thought I had it bad last night...I've been going through all of the template designs trying to find the perfect one. Even though I found some pretty amazing templates and designs, I decided that I would try my hand at creating my own. Hours and hours later....this is what I finished with! What do you think? I was pretty amazed at the many tutorials there were out there pertaining to designing your own template. I first found some adorable clipart at Just So Scrappy and at a great price. For 1.50 I got a set with over 200 images including background papers that coordinated. This is when the fun began...I spent most of my time designing my header. I would get it all finished and then wipe the slate clean and do it over. Another blogger suggested using picasa, a google program, to store my images. You just can't beat 1GB of free space, plus it is super easy to upload your pics. I love Google! (Just a little hint...for those images that you want to remain transparent around the edges, PNG files, you have to upload directly from the website and not using the picasa program on your computer. Also make sure that when you go to get the link of the photo - you click on the box "Image only (no link)". Otherwise your blog won't link up correctly. After I had all of my images set - it was just a matter of plugging the links in. I had a blast designing my blog - so much so that the thought crossed my mind to start designing them....but this will have to wait until after grad school.