I liked the clean simplicity of this one, but I really wanted the cute date calendar graphic rather than the boring old “February 22nd” text.  It’s a visual thing, it snazzes up the site, and gives quick focal points for the eyes.

But, this theme didn’t have those.  So, I played with a theme that does, and messed around with the css stylesheet files until I figured out which lines did what, at least in regards to the dates.  I copied the image to the right folder, added the necessary lines to the main stylesheet, and added the necessary instructions to the main page template.  The worst trouble that I had was that the site’s file manager tool kept putting the image file in the wrong folder… I didn’t realize this at first and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t showing up.  Once I realized and fixed that issue, BAM suddenly there was my cute little calendar.

It then took some fiddling to get it in just the right place, and then to delete the former boring text date.  Along the way, though, I figured out quite a few things about how this script works.  And so I tweaked a few more things, like the space between posts on the main page (they were too squooshed).

I’m pretty pleased with myself here.  I learned html the same way, just by fiddling with existing web pages until I figured out what did what.  But I had no intentions of learning the css script.  Too little time, more important things to be working on.  But this wasn’t as tricky as I’d expected, and now I have the theme the way I like it!

Well, almost… Next I’ll just figure out… and then… hmm, and maybe…

We’ll see what I think of it in another week or so.

It’s, um, very pink.

But, it’s quite pretty.  I’m thinking of even keeping the tulips as the header rather than my ‘growing hands’ header.  It’s still “nature”, right?

It has most of the features I’m looking for, especially the little calendar icon for each post.  I’d prefer the block quote style that has the big punctuation marks (too cute!) but this one will do, until I can figure out how to build my OWN theme…  I’d also love three columns instead of two.

But, I think this one is kind of cool.  We’ll see if I still like it in a few days…

I know it’s still “the season”, as evidenced by the loud celebration of BOXING WEEK SALES in the stores (I’m such a hypocrite, I’m advertising on this blog for the amazon.ca boxing week sales lol)… but I’m ready to move on.

The Christmas theme was fun, but it’s time to return this blog to its more (ahem) ‘mature’ theme of green, growing serenity!  Peace.