General Housekeeping

Sara — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:38:45 +0000

Just as a general FYI, I’ve got big plans (grand plans!) to tinker with this blog over the next few days. I just upgraded to version 4 of ProPhoto, and it’s pretty snazzy. I haven’t even really had time to check out all of the new features, but they do look fancy. With the upgrade, I thought I’d change up the look of the blog as well. Once upon a time, I used to keep a personal blog that I’d update pretty much every day. My favorite part of having a blog like that was changing the layout, usually every month or two to suit whatever season it was. It was fun. It was also how I kind of fell into making computerized illustrations, so I suppose having a personal blog full of teenage-type angst was a good thing!

So yes, I’m planning to switch things up here and give the blog a face lift. If I’m really ambitious, I might give my entire website a face lift. So there may be moments over the next few days where this blog is either down or looks a little funky. Rest assured, I’ll do my best to get it back up and working as it should as soon as I can, and hopefully when I do, it will have a nifty new look to it as well. I’m excited. I even downloaded way too many new fonts for the occasion. Is anyone as hooked on fonts as I am? I feel this overwhelming need to collect as many as possible, because they’re all so fun and pretty, even if I never use them all. One can never have too many retro script fonts. At least I can’t.

And because blog posts are much more fun when they have pictures in them, here’s a completely unrelated photo of Pablo Sandoval:

I took it after the last Giants game of the season. It was kind of one of those bittersweet games, being the end of the baseball season, as well as the end of a season that didn’t turn out quite the way everyone had hoped it would, but it was fun to see Sandoval having a good ol’ time interacting with fans as he tossed baseballs into the stands. I’m enjoying watching the postseason, because most of the games so far have been close and exciting, but I really miss watching this guy play. He’s so much fun to watch.

Until next time!

A Fresh Start

Sara — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:20:17 +0000

With the start of a new year, I decided it was time to re-vamp my site, something that I hope should be finished within the next few days. Once I started re-vamping my site, I turned my attention to my poor, oft-neglected blog. When I first started this blog, I envisioned posting regular updates featuring some of my more recent photos (as well as old favorites) as well as the illustration projects I’m working on. However, looking at my archives for the last year, I think I could count the number of times I posted on this blog on one hand.

Pretty darn sad.

So with the site re-haul comes a blog makeover. I knew exactly what I wanted with a blog, something clean and easy to read that also incorporates large, eye-catching images. I spent hours pouring through various WordPress themes, and while there are some nice ones out there, there was nothing out there that fit what I had in mind, at least not without some tweaking. Now, I know HTML and CSS and a bit of PHP. I can mess with a WordPress theme if I want to, and I have before, but right now, honestly, I wanted something that I could install and use almost straight out of the box, so to speak, especially since my efforts at tweaking already existing themes never really resulted in a blog that I used on a regular basis. (Obviously.)

After a fair bit of research (and deliberation), I decided to take the plunge and purchase the new ProPhoto3 theme, and so far, I’m loving it. Easy to install, easy to customize, and it has all of the features I’d been looking for in a theme and then some.

So, welcome to my new blog. Here’s to a 2010 full of many posts full of fun photos and illustrations.

Sara Showalter » general housekeeping

General Housekeeping

A Fresh Start