What about the New Look?

Soo..... notice anything new?

I was messing around one day last week on my blogger dashboard and decided to check out the new templates available. Guess what I found out?

It doesn't have a preview button and when I clicked on a template to see what it would look like, it changed the blogs template automatically!!!

Talk about panic mode! At least it didn't delete my widgets and sidebar elements. It took me a while to get everything straights, especially since the widgets didn't want to get along with the template elements and a post decided to make everything out of synch.

But, that's all in the past now, and my blog is back up. Not quite sure that I will stick with this template yet though. I like the clean lines, but it's kind of bland don't you think? I kind of miss my old header which I had forever.

The good thing is, I kind of cleaned up and updated some things around here. For one, I consolidated my blogroll and took some links out that are no longer working. I'm kind of sad to realize how many blogger that I started out with are no longer around.

I haven't figured out yet how to reconfigure this blog according to the new Blogger. I still have my old blogspot address. But in the meantime, here we go blogging again. Don't be surprised if the template changes a few more times before I'm happy with it.

Facebook Obsessed

Hey, I did good this week! I didn't post a status update on facebook for three days!

Stop laughing. That's quite an accomplishment considering how much time I have wasted on that site!

So much so that I've devoted several blog posts about it:

The start of my facebook diet

Pruning the facebook friend tree

Touched by someone I never met outside of facebook

You can get Facebook Cards from Moo! Did you know?

The facebook comment that made me go AWWW!

Would you rather be the sad-and-insecure or the stalker on facebook?

Have you ever thought how your life would look if you took all your status updates and made a movie out of them?

Do you have a dream kitchen?

I'm a food blogger and I take photos of everything that comes out of my kitchen. If you've ever taken photographs of food, you will know how difficult it could be to make it look appetizing or at the very least make it look real. Most people recommend that in natural light is the best way to photograph food. I agree. Some of my best photos happen when I either take the dish outside or take it by my only north facing kitchen window with great lighting.

That's great for weekends when I do most of my cooking early in the day, but I work full time during the day and usually by the time I get home and cook something for dinner, it's dark out and there goes my natural lighting. All I'm left with is the sucky fluorescent light in my kitchen and between that harsh blue light and shadows, it's almost hopeless to take food photos at night.

Now let me dream a bit...

Let me dream that kitchen in the photo is mine... where there is no garrishly bright and buzzing fluorescent bulb in sight.

What we have instead are strategically placed LED strip lighting that provide ample light but still makes everything soft and pretty and not overexposed and bluish. I am biding my time to hit up my husband for a kitchen re-do and one of the main features that will take priority will definitely be the lighting situation.

It is usually very expensive to hire an electrician or contractor to install elegant LED strip lights correctly but luckily, these LED lighting manufacturers have made it easy for Do-It-Yourselfers like us to install these systems.

You can buy a whole LED lighting kit with all the required parts already included and easy to follow instructions. All you need now is a handy husband and you'll be all set! LOL! I'm kidding. If you can read and follow instructions, they're pretty easy to install. I know because I've assisted my husband on a bathroom project, and most of it is pretty intuitive especially if you've done it before. But even if you haven't, just read the instructions carefully.

The best part? They are also not that expensive! You'd think you'd be spending hundreds of dollars on a lighing project for a kitchen, but based on what I've seen so far, I think it can be done quite cheaply! (keep in mind the FREE labor in the handy husband) :D