I need a spoon to gouge out my eyes

Good lord, this is beyond a shadow of the doubt the FUGLIEST template I've ever seen. God help us all. I'm not even sure I can get beyond this to evaluate the blog itself. May need more coffee.

....

Dear Lady Blogger:

Change this background IMMEDIATELY. If you can manage to create this visual atrocity, you can manage to fix it. The colors are HIDEOUS and not complementary.

Standard blogging rule: Light-colored background, dark text. Preferably (in my considered opinion) black on white or pale gray, tan, etc., for the content area at the VERY LEAST. See how the middle color in this example is the lightest of all? This is the color that should fall UNDERNEATH your main blog posts. Or, you can go in the opposite direction, and have a very dark background with EXTREMELY BRIGHT or WHITE lettering.

Links can be dark or bright colored, highly visul against whatever background you use. The most important thing is that they should COMPLEMENT the background and other colors. I.e., if you use any of these color scheme generators, you should use the VERY LIGHTEST color as the background, and only 2-3 of the other colors in the ENTIRE DESIGN. Four at the most.

Why don't you start here. Or here. See how in that last one, the link color matches the green of the header and stands out against the gray? very nice. Would match your doggy theme, too. See how clean and uncluttered it is, in comparison to your blog? Consider using it. I found it just for you.

Get rid of the large description of your blog (put it in the "about me" section). Get rid of all the pics in the sidebar (create a post and link to it in the sidebar). Get rid of all the extraneous crap that distracts from your words. The template is there to FRAME YOUR WORDS, to fit your voice, to add something to what you are doing. It isn't there to make your words impossible to read because of a horrid color clash.

Okay, content. Andrew Keen commented today that:

Enough of blogs and enough of bloggers! It's bad enough that there are 70 million of them out there, littering the Internet with fast breaking news about what their authors ate for breakfast. But blogs are just one piece in the digital media revolution. They are boring to write (yawn), boring to read (yawn) and boring to discuss (yawn).

(Irony, thy name is Andrew Keen--what is more boring than a blogger opining ad nauseum about how boring bloggers are?)

Nonetheless, more people who submit their blogs for review here should consider this particular paragraph. What are you hoping to accomplish by writing your blog? What is new or different that should compel people to read what you are writing? How are you *not-boring*? What does YOUR VOICE contribute to the blogosphere? WHO ARE YOU?

In short, why are you here, in this blogosphere? Why did you submit your blog to us? What is the fucking point of it all?

Your blog is inocuous but boring. And yet, I suspect your life is not boring at all. Why the juxtaposition? I don't hate your blog. It's hard to hate on someone who clearly seems like such a nice person and who has such adorable dogs. And yet your blog is lacking some indefinable zest that would make me want to read it often.

Think about it.

I give it no snaps.

A short bus for the template.

And a star for the dog.

Further, a required reading assignment:

Hahn at Home
Drunken Housewife
Some Pig

Don't post again until you've spent a couple of hours reading these blogs and fixed your template. Notice how each of these bloggers has her own distinctive voice? You need to find yours. And you need to purge the following words from your vocabulary: ramblings, musings, and collection. Those words are the words of doom.

p.s. because the reviewee thinks I'm a mean horrible man. And here I thought I was being so nice. :(