Making Over Third Grade!: Learning to Make This Blog My Own
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Friday, July 18, 2014

Learning to Make This Blog My Own

Okay, so as I stated in a previous post, I am determined to make this attempt at blogging stick (unlike the two or three previous attempts) and in order to do that I want to make this blog my own. What I mean is, I want it CUTE with the clip art I like rather than just the general Google formats.  I have been lurking on some blogs for a while and they are super cute. There is no way I am going to be anywhere near that cute at the moment but one can aspire; right?  So in my constant quest to improve on what I have done I was reading several blogs over at bloglovin' (love that site) and happened upon this great new (to me) blog called I Teach What's Your Superpower? Let me just say that I am now OBSESSED with her blog! So anyway, she has a really cool summer series, Blog Baby Blog, explaining how to create or obtain the really cool things that all the other bloggers seem to have that I just don't know how to do yet.

So, if you have read the first two published entries (yes, I already have several "waiting" for pictures of my classroom) you will notice some distinct changes in the appearance of my blog. First, I figured out that by changing to the "simple" Google design template I had more control over what the page looked like.  Now if you know me well, then you know that I have A TON of clipart from ThistleGirl Designs and D. J. Inkers so you know just finding the "proper" background was challenging to say the least! It took over an hour, just to find the background.  Yes, I know I am crazy particular.  It was made harder by the fact that I really liked the stripes from the Google template, so just don't be shocked if it go back to those purple stripes soon.

Then thanks to Megan (the blogger I mentioned earlier in this post) I have learned how to grab the blog buttons of others and insert them into my page. Don't they look cool? Then I just had to follow the SIMPLE directions she wrote to create my own button. What do you think?

I hope you like it, it took me quite a bit more time than it should have to get it sized and in the proper place! I had to resize it several times to fit as a blog button and not be too large. I used a free resizing site to change the image until it fit. Then too of course I messed with the code and put it right into the HTML but couldn't add a title, tried to go through the code to add a title and it was impossible for me to figure out where to do so. Finally, I was able to get the button added as a gadget and find where it was in the code and removed it so the button didn't show up twice.  Thanks to the Grab My Button Code Generator I was able to finish the button.  I learned a lot, but am glad I will never have to do that again! 

Thanks to Megan I am getting more adept at this and I hope that by the end of the year I will be able to look back and think, "Wow, I can't believe how far I have come!" Not just in the appearance of my blog (though I do want that!) but also in my teaching practices. So, here is another step in that direction! 



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