It's like a fanny pack for my blog!

I've been doing a little spring cleaning around my house this end of spring break week and decided it was finally time to tackle some blog straightening issues I've been putting off, too!

It seems the changes didn't make things much prettier around here, but they are more functional, I hope. And now at the age of 33, I'm afraid function is beginning to trump attractiveness in nearly every facet of my life. I may even begin sporting a fanny pack! Okay, not really! But I did spend a good bit of my Friday night changing HTML code and I don't think it gets much dorkier than that!

So, you regulars, can you spot the changes? Pretend its Highlights magazine!

I added a Followers Gadget on the right sidebar because I've heard from a few different people that they wanted to follow but couldn't figure out how. As you may know, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to all the bloggy technical stuff, so for the life of me I have no idea what the difference is between subscribers and followers, but I do know that they must be different because my Google subscribers number is double my number of followers. But, I can appreciate that if you sign-up as a follower then I can see who you are and come visit you at your blog, so that is better than being just a subscriber!! Click that little "follow" button and you'll be sure not to miss a bit of the chaos and I can get to know you, too!

The other thing I've wanted to add forever but not made the time for before last night -- a navigation bar! Isn't it gorgeous? That brown and green bar with the words "home", "about", etc. under my title. Go ahead click on the words and see what happens! I'm not a good enough HTML code wizard to make it pretty, remember we're going for function. That was the best I could do and to do any more would surely have brought on the need for an Excedrin or Aleve or fake fingernails to replace the ones I would completely chew off if I had to revert back to my original blog template one more time!

I'm thankful I did not have to learn the lesson the hard way and now I will pass on this gem to anyone else who suffers from lack of bloggy technical knowledge -- you want to back-up your blog template before you do any messing with your code because if you break the whole thing you will have the option of reverting back to the original!

And if you want to know how to add a navigation bar to your site seeing as how it is so beautiful over here, this post is how I went about adding the navigation bar. Followed the instructions step-by-step.

I've even added a shopping feature to the blog, because the ability to shop makes everything better, right? Click on "shop" there in the shiny, new navigation bar and you'll enter the "It Feels Like Chaos store" powered by Amazon.com. I've put a few items in the store and will add more later, but rest assured, although I get a small portion of the proceeds from any sales, I will only put things in the store that I absolutely love and have truly used or read in my real life!

Feel free to impart any blog design/template changing knowledge you have, it should be painfully clear that I need it!