Just a short preface – everyone, please give a big welcome to my friend and the newest contributer to Farmgirl Writes, Laura! She’ll be popping by every so often with lots of tips for you on how to make your blog look awesome…

Your blog. The first thing people will notice about your blog is the way it looks. Does the background take away from the content? Is the sidebar cluttered with unnecessary widgets and gadgets? Does music start playing as soon as someone clicks on your blog? Here’s a few tips that can help shape up your blog and make it look fantastic.

1. Choose a design that doesn’t distract. Whether you choose a blogger template from a site you found on Google, or a cute background you copy and paste into a little gadget on Blogger, make sure your background doesn’t distract from the rest of the blog. Make the design compliment the rest of the blog. If you’ve got a blog about flowers, find a flower background. Are you a writer? Find one that’s about writing (but good luck on that one, I’ve never seen a premade background for writers that looks good).

2. Keep it simple.

Amanda has done a great job with keeping her blog simple, but interesting at the same time. More and more I’m seeing people ditch that background and going with a white, simple background. It lets the material stand on it’s own.  White is just a classy kind of background. Everything looks great against it.

3.  Don’t add all the fancy gadgets.

Sure, you have a facebook page for your blog? I do, and that’s fine. But, instead of adding link after link to your facebook page, your email, your twitter account…. why not try the little social media icons? You can find them anywhere and link your pages to the images, and they’ll take up less space than linking with words. Plus, they look good. So, it’s a win-win situation, right?

4. The Music Debate

Should you have music on your blog? Sure, it’s your blog. Should you have it on autoplay? No! Autoplaying music is a quick way to lose traffic. I’m sorry, but my Sara Evans music does not go along with your Justin Bieber. It’s just annoying and not everyone is going to like the music you’ve got playing. It’s best just to steer away from this, and besides, I’ve yet to find a music player from those freebie websites that actually looks good on a blog.

5. Choose widgets and gadgets that apply to your site.

For a while, on my blog, Lala Land, I had a writing tip of the day widget. Worked well since it was a blog about writing.  If you’ve got a news app on your blog, but you never talk about the news, what’s the point? Make sure everything on your blog is related to something else.

That’s all my tips for now, but I’ll be back with more.

I’m Laura (also known as Lala) and my blog is Lala Land. I write mystery books, act, sing, and love designing blogs.
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 They say that the moments you have in highschool will be the things you think upon fondly the most later in life. Those moments are made with those closest to you. Those moments are made with your friends.

Being homeschooled I’m not in a public school enviroment.  My families main activity is… chruch. So the friends that I have would be made there. But we go to a small church, so I dont’ have an abundance of friends.

I’m sure you’d be shocked to hear that the majoriy of my friends I have never met before… they’re people I’ve met via blog. A few of them I just e-mail, others write letters, some talk on the phone, and I recently had the opportunity to meet one in person.

I’m sure this venture can be dangerous. So I would advice involving your parents before getting penpals.

Amanda is one of these penpals. I love the way she packs my letters. In cute little envelopes, her handwritting is adorable, and her words are always uplifting and make me feel as though she actually cares.

So today, I’ve decided to share some “penpaling tips”:

• Write often

Don’t just write to your penpal every other month… it’s kind of rude and makes the other person feel as though you don’t really care and aren’t really interested in them.

• Write in decent length

20 page letters can be overwhelming but five sentences can be frusterating. When your letter is 20 pages, the person can’t really allow everything to sink in, and they get a bit stressed. But when you barely write anything at all, as said before, it can also make the other person feel as if you don’t care about them.

• Personalize

Add stickers to the ourside, and bobbles to the inside. Whether it’s simply using special stationary and securing the note with ribbon, or adding a couple silly bands, or a handmade paper craft… the more personal, the more special.

Those are just a few tips. I suppose the main thing is…

treat others– write to others the way you’d like to be written to. If you want people to have nice handwritting, or write often, or give you a little something extra. Do that for someone else and they’re most likely to do that for you.

I must say Amanda has mastered penpaling. I am very blessed to receive mail from her.

My name is Bleah Briann… and I call ~With Love and Kisses~ my internet home. Thank you so much Amanda for asking me to write for you!

God Bless.