Inspiration

I've been struggling to find a color scheme that I'm happy with on this latest site redesign. For anyone who has visited in the last week or so, that's been obvious.

That's when I remembered a fundamental trick that had been forgotten: when in doubt, find a picture that you love the colors in and use some of those colors. This picture of Wiley and our Christmas tree -- while not "springy" -- is easily one of my favorites. As I look back on our home at 348 North Line Street, it makes me sad sometimes. That house had a real warmth to it. I think it's obvious by looking at this picture that it did.

Anyway, back on track: I opened the picture up in the GIMP and started searching for just the right colors. The Palette Editor and the teardrop color-picker make the process easy. The card below shows you what I came up with.

I ended up with 8 colors after picking and clicking for about 5 minutes. I think these will serve us well. I want to use more accent colors, so that's why there are so many. We'll see how it works.

As for the site itself, the floating box in the middle of the page is just not where my heart is. So, in the next few days you'll see things move back toward a more left-side aligned layout. The new menu at the top of the pages will have to stay, though, for obvious reasons. It is really handy.

Thanks for sticking around to see what it turns out like!

UPDATE: Here's a picture of what the website looks like after the colors were integrated. I like the look a lot.