Moving Furniture, or The Format Changes

To those of you that actually check back frequently, to see what variety of mayhem is currently taking place at our house, you'll have noticed the frequent changes to the look of the blog.  To those of you that have left compliments, I thank you.  (Of course, you realize you're feeding my neurosis.)  The photo, btw, is from National Geographic.  To the rest of you, who may be surprised or confused when a whole different look pops up every few weeks, I offer this explanation, and a dim view into the dark recesses of my brain:

I like change.  I get tired of looking at the same thing, day after day.  So I move furniture, paint walls, and rotate blankets and pillows and decorations.

And I change the look of the blog.  You may remember these....

Thanksgiving...

Spring...

4th of July...

 

Winter...

When I started blogging, nearly two years ago, (seems like forever), I was really clueless.  Well, frankly, I still am.  I am NOT a tech person.  I don't even have a cel phone.  Really.  But I started a blog.

In all my brilliance, (sarcasm, okay?), I did not realize, that choosing a different template would change the formatting of previous posts.  I already had a hard time getting pictures to go where I wanted them.  Centered, right-justified, left-justified...  it took a ridiculous amount of fiddling to get the (pathetic) end product to look like it did in the little white box before I hit "publish."  And then everything would get screwed up.  Aaaack.

(I know, it's pathetic, really, because who looks at the old posts but me?!  And if I just left it alone, it wouldn't get boogered up, now would it?)

And - adding to my frustration - I was getting kind of bored with Blogger's template choices.

Then I made an amazing discovery.  Free Blog Templates! 
Ooooooooooooooooooo!

But most of them will only work with Minima.
Ewwwwwwwwwwww.

I like formats with a wider post area.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

But they're expandable, which means variable, and mess with my hard-won formatting.
Arrrggghhhhhhhhhhh.

So back I went to Minima.  Yes, it's narrow, but I consoled myself with the thought that my posts will keep their formatting and I can choose from all the fun, free templates at Aqua Poppy, and Delightful Dots, and That Blog Place.  Right?  But wait, Minima just isn't wide enough to even show the full width of some of the photos I'd already loaded.

And - of course - not only was I frustrated with my limited options, but with the ridiculous amount of time I was spending fussing about the look of the blog, vs. the content.  Hmmm.  But that's a thought for another day.

At that point something finally occurred to me:  Some of you geniuses are using a layout that looks suspiciously like Minima, but is wider, and... (aha!) not variable.  So, with all five brain cells firing wildly at the same time I threw a bunch of words at the Google search engine and - VOILA! - managed to come up with some very simple instructions for making the post area wider.

And, like the idiot I am, I began messing with the HTML without saving anything.  And by the grace of God I ended up with what you see.

And I'm hoping to be content with it for quite some time.

Oh, I'm sure I'll be changing the photo in the header, and the colors.  But I'm trying to discipline myself to leave the actual layout alone.

We'll see how long that lasts.