Blog Features Tour and Some Blog Recs, too . . .

I wanted to point out some things I added to the blog recently, mostly because I am experimenting with them more and realizing how awesome they are! Sorry to the computer savvy, I have a wide range of technological mastery in my readership . . .

- Starting on the top left, my pages. I'm going to be continually updating these. Next to add is a natural birth page

- Beneath that, I now have a search engine! This is one of my fav new features. If someone asks me about something I have posted about (or if I'm looking for old pages to link in new posts), I can easily find it here just by searching some words that I used in the title or body of the post! It's so easy!

- Next, I have a Facebook page now! You can "like" it by clicking the button to the left, there. This can help you stay updated if you don't generally read a lot of blogs but you want to know when I post a new update and "reminders" to come read.

- You are now able to follow the blog by Email. Enter your Email here and I think you will either get Emailed the post or you will get an Email update that there's a new post? I'm actually not sure but if anyone knows or has tried it, feel free to leave a comment with full details, haha.

- You can also subscribe--have my posts and/or comments added to your RSS feed (if you don't know what this is, don't worry about it--I'm actually not 100% sure myself!)

- Next, the good ole blog archive. Hopefully you know what this is--it's a list of all my blog posts organized by year and month and in order.

- And, the last thing on the left, my page view counter--24,818 at the time of this writing!

(Okay, now I'm wanting to redo the whole blog setup! But I will resist and persevere with my little blog tour.)

And . . . to the right!

> The first thing on the top right is my profile/family history info.

> Next, a picture of our family that we'll have to update soon--it's crazy how fast babies change and how fast my hubby's hair grows, LOL.

> Next, my label web. I have spent way too much time and energy labeling and honestly about to overhaul my entire labeling system but here it is now! Currently organized from most frequent to least frequently discussed topics.

> And last but FAR from least, my blog roll. Recently while looking at this I have really appreciated what interesting people my friends are! As just a few examples, Liz is doing a series on cloth diapers, and Alyssa is doing a series about her meetings with a style expert (which is fascinating and sounds like a must for people starting a new job that they want to keep, in this economy!). Additionally I have things like Unicorns to make me smile, or people like Allie who are just too hilarious for words, and then those like Kris and Kelle, who have opened their lives and hearts to me and many others . . . and friends struggling with TTC, IVF--friends getting into the adoption process, food blogs, humor blogs, green blogs, painters, writers, and just a great bunch of parents and women and men and friends and acquaintances. I (heart) my blogroll!

This is the long way of saying, if you usually just visit my blog and don't look much at the blog roll, you might want to! There is something for everyone there, I think. Except maybe conservative fox-news watchers who don't believe in gay marriage, extended breastfeeding, or the education and empowerment of women. And who knows I've got some religious friends maybe there is even something here for you (but most of them believe in extended breastfeeding and the education and empowerment of women, too, so just warning you, hahah).

So that's what the blog looks like right now! I have a lot of changes planned but changes tend to come slow, so wanted to post this anyway! ;D