Tomorrow I am going to take a blog day off. It snowed a few more inches in the night and I can go nowhere anyway so I am going take the chance to spruce the look of The Kitchen’s Garden blog up a bit.
Up my game if you will. I think we all deserve some new curtains. You and I have been working hard all winter!
I am going to attempt to load a new theme, new backgrounds and layout, and clean up the widgets, the result will encourage me to take better more thoughtful images. Everyone needs a challenge. I hope it is a smooth transition and that you like it. Many of you are reading on your phones and tablets now and I have been wanting to have pages that can be viewed and read easily by these tiny devices. Though it will be framed with a little more jazz, in a crisper more image friendly format, basically everything will be as usual in our own very unusual way.
But still the same old blog, after all it is all about the animals, the food and living a simple invigorating life full of thought. The blog is just my way of documenting the life we choose to lead. Having you along for the ride means that my learning curve is well supported with trusses and good wide straps.
The calenders are being printed. They are big and glossy and gorgeous and will cost 19.00 each to print. I have ordered 10 to begin. In my blog page overhaul I shall add a paypal button (I am not sure how to do this yet either but google is a marvellous thing) and then when they arrive you can order one, paying through paypal, plus postage and add on whatever you would like to donate for Sheila’s feed and new summer housing. I think that will be best. I will order more when I have the numbers. Next I shall look about for the cheapest way to print really good ‘Sheila the Sassy’ T-shirts for us all. We want American cotton. Any ideas?
Sheila and I went for two very good walks yesterday. I always have a little snack ready at the end of the walk so she is trained to find her doorway home then she gets her reward. 
On the second walk she had to be discouraged gently from bringing her bowl with her. Just in case I might want to feed her somewhere along the way I suppose.
The glasshouse, which I should really call the Glass Room, is all enclosed. John’s work has been put off a few days due to the latest storm and ‘bitterly’ cold weather. So we may be able to move some plants in there soon. Which is just as well as Marcel has taken a liking to my big pot of thyme.
Good morning, off I go to work on our surprise, updating the look of the blog. If I make a serious error we will have to go back to smoke signals and pigeons.
Stay tuned.
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
58 responses to “Sprucing things up…”
You can do it! I need to do the same, but I have design-commitment issues. Can’t decide what I want to live with for a long time…So happy that the Sheila calendar will be big and glossy. Just what she deserves. Are you doing it through mac?
mixbook.. they have come highly recommended..and are middle of the range expense wise.. c
I look forward to seeing your new blog design. 🙂 Have a great Sunday! Love that picture of Sheila carrying her food bowl.
Loving the pictures of the lamb and dog together. And to add one more suggestion to the mix for t-shirts, although they are in NC. A really wonderful company called TS designs- http://tsdesigns.com/ .
thank you, I shall have a look, as i begin work on this project my lack of graphic design skill/tech savvy is fast becoming evident!
hmm, they do look good, do you think I can sell 72 Tshirts?
Yes!
Enjoy the ‘makeovering’ tomorrow, I finally got mine up and running last month. It gave me the lift to keep blogging.
any tips? I am just changing the theme.. hoping it is not too difficult.. c
My old Grannymar.com theme was obsolete and modern plugins were not compatible, so I had to avail of the help from my Toyboy geeks. It was a majot job so I moved to (dot) wordpress(dot)com in the interim. Pulling everything from there over to the resurrected site was easy. I chose Twenty Eleven theme and it seems to automatically update as changes occur. One of my geeks added Jetpack https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/
Might be worth taking a look at that.
Good luck with your theme changeover. I need to do that, too, as I have recently learned that my theme (Twenty Eleven) isn’t truly responsive on iPhone. I’m in the process of learning web design, so am hoping to wait until I can customize myself and self host. Do make sure the theme you choose, weather staying with free WordPress.com, or switching to WordPress.org, is a responsive design, that way it will automatically resize and look good on mobile devices. Can’t wait to see your new look and the calendars and t-shirts!
Okay, so since earlier in the week, WP has changed something and now it appears that my theme IS responsive. I just checked it after posting this comment. I think they must be going through and recoding all themes to be that way…so looks like you can preview your theme to see how it looks…sorry for the long comment!
yes, that is one of my reasons and the one I chose should adjust automatically.. fingers crossed.. c
Right before Spring is a great time to Spruce up things. I am doing a bit of that around here at Food on Fifth as well. So I look forward to seeing your updated, spruced up site in a few days. Sheila is beautiful! As is your home. See you soon.
Sheila is simply the most photogenic of pigs out there.
Long time lurker here…LOVE the new look! We buy our blank t-shirts from Dharma Trading Company (Google it, LOL!). Gildan is a nice brand, and made in the USA. Trish x
Nice new look and we get to see your picture with every comment reply! I like the gentle earthy background colour.
Looking very good, darling! As is the house – what great shape it’s in! 🙂 Stay warm.. xxx
just awfully cold today.. four more days I think, then it might start a warming trend! That’s what I have decided anyway! c
Ha ha, I hope the superstardom doesn’t go to Sheila’s head 😉
Your glass room is looking wonderful – just love the blog and now look forward to reading it every day and see how things are going out on the farm. Do you have many other followers from Australia?
morning pippa, YES, I have lots of aussie and nz followers so as you get to know the fellowship you will discover your neighbours. Welcome! c
Love the new look!
There is still a bit of work to do, I need to wriggle about a bit and get it comfy, but I like it so far too.. thank you.. c
Wow! I have what looks like the new format having just clicked on now Monday am Down Under! Very neat and modern and easy to read and all ‘Sassy Sheila’!! Thought I could not access some of the prior info from the top [previous posts, no of readers etc] but when local workload allows a little more ‘familiarization’ I think most can be found in the two lines above our commentaries. Loved the old version but this is a wonderful new take: congratulations!!
all the old info is now below the comments.. I hope people can find it.. like you I quite like the lack of clutter.. I am still working on it though and will see what i can do.. c
Marcel and thyme – redolent of rocky Greek hillsides! Bless him. 🙂