You are stuck in the doctors office waiting for them to call you back. Sure they charge you an arm and a leg for their time but disregard yours. Don’t waste this chance to find some blogging inspiration. You are stuck in a room with a great tool at your fingertips: magazines.

A magazine can be filled with 100s of ideas for you and your blog, even if it’s on a completely different subject. You can use magazines to find great color schemes, learn more about layouts, find out about what people are wanting to learn, and best of all find great headlines and post ideas!

If you have never tried using a magazine for inspiration. Grab a magazine, a pen and paper or I like me your phone or tablet. (Don’t have a magazine check out magazine covers on Amazon.com.)

You are going to start creating headline formulas and build a list of post ideas.

Use Eye Catching Keywords

Original Headline: Have a Stress Free Summer (Good Housekeeping)

Basically Stress Free is your keywords here. So your formula will be Have a Stress Free ________. When I write my ideas down on my tablet if I don’t have an idea instantly I will leave blanks.

My Examples:

• Blogging twist: Have a Stress Free Editorial Calendar
• Kids twist: Have a Stress Free Play Date
• Weight loss twist: Have a Stress Free Date Night on a Diet

Create a List Formula

Original Headling: 285 No-Fail Ideas to Scrapbook (Creative Keepsakes)

Quickly create your formula: # No-Fail Ideas to ________. I don’t actually add the numbers until I start brainstorming and come up with how many items I will have in my list.

My Examples:

• Blogging twist: 10 No-Fail Ideas to Blog Posts
• Weight loss twist: 5 No-Fail Ideas to Get Your Exercise
• Social media twist: 8 No-Fail Ways to get Followers

Great Phrases

See how quickly and easily you can start building ideas and creating great eye catching headlines? The best part of this is you can do this in a few minutes or for a half an hour. It’s quick to pick up and put down.

What’s your favorite way to find blogging inspiration? Have you used a magazine for inspiration before?

As I’m building my toolbox for success I decided I need to make this list. A list of things to do instead of snacking. Hopefully it will grow larger than 10 but let’s just start with that.

1. Do quick strength training routine
2. Take a walk
3. Read a book to my boys
4. Go outside and play with the boys
5. Write a blog post about weight loss/being healthy
6. Read a book or your google reader
7. Drink a glass of water
8. Paint my fingernails and toes
9. Play a game on Android tab
10. Write out recipes and organize them

I could keep going but I wanted to share the start of my list and challenge you to make one for yourself. If it helps you may want to put this on your fridge to look at each time you open the door.

Another suggestion that I thought was fun was to make a chart and put a sticker on the chart each time you don’t end up snacking. I’m considering doing this and have a set reward for when I fill up the chart. Maybe something like a new nail polish or lipstick. Or maybe a new kindle book.

I am excited to share this week I have lost a couple pounds so hopefully my plateau is over. We will see!

What do you do when the munchies strike?

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Your header is the second most important design element of your blog, #1 being your logo.  You want to catch your readers attention and tell them something about your site within the first few seconds of loading. Your header is the best area to do this. What kind of header do you have? What kind of header should you have?

Changing Trends

I have talked before about how header trends are changing. Headers used to be large and take up at least half of the screen, but now you will find all kinds of styles. Everything from the traditional to just the simple logo. These changes started because people started using the Above the Fold Theory.

Above the Fold

This is a theory from the newspaper age: that the top half of the paper that is visible when folded should hold your most important story and photography. When this started transferring into web design people started squishing as much stuff as possible in the top of their site. All this did was to make things cluttered and destroy the beauty of the design.

Current thought has started changing. Designers realized people are getting used to scrolling and will look at the whole site. Why should we not start spreading out the elements of the design to make them easier to see and make them eye catching.

From this evolution of design we have gotten tons of new header trends. Let’s take a look at the seven I found.

Traditional Header

The traditional header is still in use, it may not be half a page anymore but it’s still here. This is a great way to either tell a story, showcase your style, show off photography talent, or as above display an artistic ability.

The Small Header

The small header is a hybrid of the traditional header. People loved the space to showcase their photos and personality, but they wanted their visitors to be able to get straight to the content. Creating a smaller, half-sized, header will give you the best of both worlds. This is also a very popular style.

Logo Only

The extreme opposite of the large headers is just placing a logo at the top of your site. This gives lots of space for ads, call to action and content. The content is right at the top so visitors can jump right in and read. One nice feature of the logo only header is that it creates a clean and simple feel.

Featured Section

With all the added space that web designers got from loosing the large headers they realized they could create new elements. One of these elements was a section to feature the newest blog posts, favorite article, or a product (as Darren is doing on his site).

Slider

Another element created to fill up the space from the age old headers was j Query sliders. Sliders are very similar to feature sections but more dynamic and interactive. Usually you will find three to six slides that either slide automatically or by the press of a button. A slider can feature the same posts, articles, and products as a feature section, but adds more content in the same amount of space.

Instant Call to Action

One of the newer trends is to create an instant call to action area. You can use this section to invite your visitors to learn more about you, to buy your book, or to try out a product. You don’t see call to action sectionss on blogs as much as you do on basic web sites.

Typography

The amazing things you are now able to do with fonts in web design has created a new trend: typography. The art of typography is a big trend this year and it will be interesting to see if it continues as more fonts become available. This is also not something you see as much on blogs.

Conclusion

Those are the 7 trends I have seen in web design for headers. Do you have any good examples of headers that fall into these categories? Or do you have a trend that I missed?

What is your favorite header style as a reader? What is your favorite style as a web site owner?

Ingredients:

• 2 Oz Softened Cream Cheese – Cream Cheese 1/3 Less Fat
• 1 Tbsp Kraft – Mayonaise Light
• 1 Sprig Dill Weed (Fresh) or other fresh herb
• 1 Cup Cucumber – peeled & chopped
• 10 Slices Land o’ Lakes Thin Deli Ham

Instructions:

1. Mix cream cheese, mayonnaise, dill, & cucumber in a bowl (best if chilled to let flavors mix)
2. Spread the ham out 5 slices at a time make sure and overlap like in picture
3. Spoon the cucumber mix into the center of the ham and roll up

Two years ago something happened in my life that would change it forever. Not for the good. My world was turned upside down. We had been fighting it for years but it finely came to an end I never expected.

I know this makes you curious on what it could have been, but the fact is that I don’t write about it online. I talk to friends, family and other sisters in Christ. Writing it online is very permanent and putting it up here could make it hurtful and dangerous.

The fact is that the result of the situation made it so that everything had to be revealed to friends and family. I made the choice that to keep going on the lies had to come out. Secrets that had been hiding for so long needed to be told to everyone. Upon the confession to friends and family I came upon a problem.

What do you say to someone who asks “How are you?” If you are like me over two years ago, you always just said “fine”. But I realized this was a lie. My friends knew this was a lie at this point in my life, I was struggling for every day.

Why do we lie to our friends?

I really started thinking about this question and realizing that I needed to take it more serious. I needed my friends to know that I was not okay. I needed their support, their love, their prayers and sometimes a hug.

I asked myself why I always automatically say “Fine”.

Was I afraid that friends would not understand? Was I trying avoid talking about what was going on? Was I trying to not waste their time?

After really thinking about these reasons I realized they were ridiculous.

If these people were my friends why would they not understand? Avoiding the subject was not going to make it go away.  If they were really my friends they would want to take the time to listen to me.

If it was the other way around I would want my friends to feel like they can tell me that they are struggling, that they are sad, that they need prayer.

The Challenge

I made a challenge to myself. Every time someone asked me “How are you?” I would stop, think, and answer honestly. I challenged myself to do it for a year. After that year was over I continued because I realized it was helpful and it was truthful. None of my friends stopped asking and they were always supportive.

So this is my challenge to you also, I dare you to answer honestly every time someone asks you how you are. Do it for a week, a month, 6 months, your choice, but try it!

Are you lying to your friends?

What do you do when someone asks you how you are? When things are lousy and life is falling apart around you do you tell them the truth?

Why do you avoid telling people what is really on your heart? Do you have some friends that you tell the truth but others you don’t? Why?

Have you ever come across a blog you loved what they were saying but just trying to read it exhausted you?

You have 3 seconds to impress your readers. Even if you have caught them by your web design and your headlines if you haven’t take these 5 simple steps in improving your blog posts your readers are going to leave.

1. White Space
In art and design there is a term called white space. This does not mean literally the color white. But just empty space, with nothing in it. This gives the eye a place to rest.Make sure that your blog design has space between each line (aka line-height). You also want to have a good amount of space between your paragraphs. Putting space around even your images will make a difference fo your readers when looking at your blog.

2. Short Paragraphs, Short Sentences.
When someone looks at your blog and see a wall of words, they become overwhelmed and tired just thinking about reading your blog post. Most readers only skim posts but if they see the wall of words they may just skip it all together. Use short sentences.

Make your paragraphs are short. They should only be a few sentences each. You cannot overdo paragraph breaks!

You can even make a paragraph just one sentence.

3. Edit, Edit, Edit
Make sure and edit your posts. Read your posts out loud and really listen to what you are saying. Can you write your sentences shorter? Can you use less words to make the same point? Less is always more and in blogging this is even more true.

4. Use Your Tools!
Use the edit tools in your blogging control panel. Make the key point in a paragraph bold. If you want to emphasize a point put it in italics. Most readers only skim text on websites. These emphasized points may catch their eye and encourage them to read more.

5. Lists
Use lists whenever you can. If you are joining in on the 31 days to Build a Better Blog then you have just learned that lists are great blog posts. But make sure even your lists are easy to follow. Try using bullet points or number your list. Make sure each item has its own line! Even when making a list and then expanding on each point your list item should have it’s own line.

Your Turn