It has almost been a year since starting sophistimom, and I have been wanting to redesign the look and feel of the site for awhile, now. I worked hard on the original look, and really liked it, but it was time to start expanding.

With the help of my brother, Josh, I redesigned the look (Josh was THE brains behind anything I did with sophistimom in the past, and I literally could have done nothing without his help).  Once the designs were ready, I took them to a friend, the amazing Heather Abbott (who doesn’t have a website of her own, strangely enough) to program all the HTML for me.  She worked very hard and did a fantastic job.

Now sophistimom.com will be divided into three categories: well-read, well-bred, and well-fed. All you have to do is click on the link for each name, and it will bring you to the specific blog for each area of interest.

well-read

This category will be about books my family and I have enjoyed, and we will soon add a monthly featured called the “Reading as a Family Series,” in which I will interview various families to share their own experiences in reading together.

We’ll also start doing some fun posts on books and corresponding recipes. For example, we may just have to do a little feature on Anne of Green Gables and a recipe for raspberry cordial (not currant wine, of course!)

well-bred

Mostly this category will feature posts on etiquette, art, education, travel, and anything worthwhile we all want to provide for our children as we raise them.

However, I am still ironing out kinks in this category. Most posts about me show up there, though really, I would be more suited to the well-fed category.

I have decided to let things go, and have this category more encompass everything about me, my family, thoughts I may have on growing up, my struggles, etc. It will be more of where to find a blog journal, so to speak. Right now my blog really isn’t in that style, but I imagine it will develop into that more as events in my life unfold.

and finally, well-fed

This one is the favorite category of most of my readers, I think. So I’ll just keep cooking and posting.

a little quirk about the site

One thing I’d like to say about the little gallery on the home page. It is very fun, I thought, though it was truly not the most fantastic plugin. I am still searching for one that’s simpler. If you have trouble using it, just know that there are a few things coded into it that we wanted to get rid of, but couldn’t.

So, here is a tip for making your life easier with it: if you see a featured post that you want to learn more about, click right in the middle of the picture, not off to the right or the left, or heaven forbid, in the top right corner above the picture. That little gallery feature is supposed to do a lot more, like show descriptions, display little thumbnails, etc., but darn it, I didn’t want all of that. So, for now, just stick to the middle of the picture, until I can have someone build me a gallery from the ground up.

Incidentally, if you do click on the right or the left of the pictures, it will take you forward or backward in the gallery, just incase you don’t want to wait around for 9 seconds until it fades to the next one.

thank you

So many of you have been such faithful readers, and to you all I’d like to say a big thank you. Sometimes when you keep a blog, you just feel like giving it all up because it’s so much work. But the readers help me keep going.

Oh, yes, and one more thing. That picture of me was taken by my oldest son. And it was touched up by me on Photoshop, heavily touched up. Since when did I get all these wrinkles?