Suzanne
I also have a side question: how did you create the tabs/links at the top of your blog for home, tutorials, cookbook, etc. I’m trying to organize my blog a bit more, and love how you’ve done this.

whitesilkpurse
Please include tutorials for the “How To…” questions others have about creating your blog. Your other tutorials are fantastic and these would be appreciated too.

And a question, what are you reading for fun right now?

Last May I wrote a tutorial for creating navigation links below your header in Blogger. You can find the tutorial here. At the end of that post is a link to another tutorial GIMPing up your blog by Keri from The Home Teacher telling how to put clickable links right in your header image. Those who have read my blog for over a year can remember when I had little images that looked like this under my header that were used for the navigation links.

Last fall I decided to redesign my blog, make it more streamlined and easier to click through. While searching the web looking for ideas I found templates I really liked with the navigation bar already part of the template. The best part….they were free! The basic template I used came from Simply Fabulous Blogger Templates (SFBT). Lena has really done an outstanding job designing the templates. Not only can you get ones with the navigation bar AND search tool but there are also templates that have three to five sidebars, or a split sidebar like mine. One word of warning, Lena’s templates are just that, html templates. They are not “skins” like those found on Cutest Blog on the Block or Shabby Blogs where just the background image is changed. If you use one of the templates from SFBT you will need to know basic html in order to fix the navigation bar links so they are linked to your blog. There are some tutorials that Lena provides to guide you.

Here’s what I did to create my blog look. I first browsed Simply Fabulous Blogger Templates until I found a template with the navigation bar that had the color I wanted. I also liked that the side column was a split one. I downloaded the template to my computer. Then I uploaded it to my “play or practice” blog. I went into the edit html screen and plugged in the header image I wanted, replacing the one that came with the template. I did the same for the background page color, color of the sidebar headers, and the image at the beginning of each post. I fixed the navigation links so they said and linked to what I wanted. By the time I was done I think I changed practically everything except for the navigation bar and the split side bar! It did take some time. I worked on it a little each day for over a week. Once I had the blog the way I wanted it I copied the html code and transferred it to my “real” blog.

Whenever you replace a template anything you have in your sidebar will be lost. Keep track of anything in the sidebar you want to keep by copying the code and pasting and saving it in Notebook. It’s easy to upload it again once your template is just how you want it.

And to answer Dana’s other question, I am currently reading Women of the Old Testament by Camille Fronk Olson. It is an insightful read! I enjoy how in depth it is about most of the women mentioned in the Old Testament, covering not only the story in the Bible but discussing customs of their time as well. The paintings done by Elspeth Young are beautiful. I hope to obtain a painting for each of my daughters who are named after a woman in the bible to hang in their rooms. For the two whose names aren’t derived from a bible name I am still going to get a painting of one of those “unnamed” women such as the Shunammite (2 Kings 4:13) or the Little Maid (2 Kings 5:1-4, 10, 14) or the Widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:15-16).

All this week I’m answering questions from my readers. Are you curious about something? Go here and ask away!

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