What you’re looking at is a brand-spanking new design for FSI. From here on (unless there’s a massive revolt), all posts will live in one convenient place — on the main page. Here’s a quick list of things that are new and receiving some ongoing thought…

• Thumbnails (or no thumbnails) for Picture of the Day posts. For now I’m going to try no thumbnails to see how it feels and what it buys us. I think it’ll allow more long-form posts to evolve out of PODs — no longer should we need to decide if a picture is strictly a POD, or a regular post. The hope is that they can all live in harmony without having to push Lauren’s writing too far off the page. (to counter that, I’ve also increased the amount of posts that fit on a page from 5 to 15)
• Speaking of Lauren’s writing, the blog should be more readable than ever with an increased font size and comfortable line length.
• Twitter, at last. Up there on top of the sidebar column, you’ll see a place to catch up on the latest Nora quotes (one day Quinny!) and the rest of us. Integrating that wasn’t easy, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it over the next few days. It’s not perfect in my eyes, but it’s close enough for now.
• Post comments. Right now they’re pretty tucked away visually. I’ll find a way to elevate them. In the meantime, you can always see the latest comments on the sidebar.
• I haven’t tested the design in all browsers yet, but it works great in Chrome, Safari, and decently enough in Firefox. I’ll make sure it works perfectly in each of them soon enough.

Redesigns generally aren’t fun for site visitors, so I hope you’re able to give it some time, settle in, and see how it feels! Please send me feedback if you’ve got ideas that’ll make it better. Lastly, many thanks are due to Lauren for putting up with my endless second guessing, tweaking, and multiple restarts that went into this redesign.

Okay. All done. Now keep scrolling to enjoy today’s Picture of the Day. :)

Today we’re launching a long-awaited new design for our blog. Besides the visual changes, we’ve added a few new features we think will keep you reading throughout 2009 and beyond. Among the top new features is a Picture of the Day area in the sidebar where we’ll daily link (Monday-Friday) to a recent photo from our own library. This was, of course, inspired by A Teague of Their Own who have faithfully been posting a new image daily for the last three and a half years. Below the Picture of the Day thumbnail, you’ll find an enhanced “Recent Comments” section that offers an excerpt from recent comments around the site.

There will probably be a few kinks along the way in the launch — for instance, right now there’s no way to go Back to view a previous Picture of the Day. Hopefully by the time the new year rolls around we’ll have that worked out. Until then, the ice-skating image alone will carry us through.

Please let me know if you find anything odd around the site that isn’t working. I haven’t cross-browser tested this, so it’ll probably be totally busted in Internet Explorer.

Merry Christmas to you all, and a happy new year!

Hello faithful readers:

Just wanted to let you in on the latest addition in the sidebar over to the right. We’ve added a “Recent Comments” area so you can follow comment dialogue in a much easier fashion. Of course, if you want to continue to check comment updates in your own way, that is still possible. Thanks again for reading, even though our posts have become a bit more erratic. We’re working to improve that. =)

This post is also an attempt to get that beautiful toilet photograph further down and ultimately off the front page.

Quick technical update. For those who subscribe to this site through an RSS reader, please update the location of the feed to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thefairskinneditalians

If you’re not sure what all that means, don’t worry about it… But if you read a lot of blogs and sites, RSS might be helpful to you in keeping up with sites without having to reload them every day to see if there’s updates.

10 measly days. Wow!

So Lauren prepped you for a story that she wanted me to relate . . . but before I begin that I must attempt to explain Lauren’s deeper motives. Those motives: Visitors. Stats. Hits. PEOPLE. Lauren should really just come clean with you all.

Alright, so we have this little stat counter down at the bottom of The Aisle that tracks you each time as you visit. Creeped out yet? It tells us how you got here, what search terms strangers may have used to get here, where you’re from, etc. We don’t know your name or anything, but it does provide us a good way to track our regular visitors.

Lauren watches that thing like a hawk.

Just about every day, I watch her as she anxiously clicks on that graphic to see how many hits we got for the day. Her tiny head moves in closer to the monitor as the page loads. Scrolls down . . . “only 20 hits!! . . . (scrolls down more . . . .smiling to see the regulars) . . . Josh? Do you know anybody from Madagascar?”

“Nope.”

Lauren – “Oh . . . Ok.”

Then I see the all-too-familiar look on her face after such a finding such a disappointment. That face is referencing the time months ago when I placed our little blog onto a design website in order to get people’s feedback, input, etc . . . and quite honestly to get “hits” for Miss Lauren.

I just didn’t think it through . . . and little did I realize the aftershocks that would wreak havoc.

That day we got close to 300 unique visitors to TFSI. On an average day now we get around 35 or so.

I text Lauren while she’s at work: “We’re getting about 25-30 hits an hour now.” She knew what I was talking about . . .

Text reply from Lauren: “What? What is going on?”

That day at work I was fairly useless just because I was watching the stats roll their way up the charts all day. It was amusing to see where people were from and to watch our little site go internationale.

I guess I just completely forgot that the site is a personal site . . . not a portfolio site or something that you’d usually put up on that design blog where I posted.

Lauren’s great at creating suspense. She’s great at keeping me listening to her . . . she’s just a fun girl to converse with. But I’m afraid this time she could be using it for personal gain.

And don’t even get me started on the whole Comments thing. She used to kind of joke with me when I got excited at my humble little blog’s gaining of a comment or two. So so sad, I know. But she’s nuts about getting comments.

She’s really become quite the little geek with TFSI. And though I’m eating it up, I thought others should know what she’s up to behind the scenes here. Keep visiting. Keep reading (as long as we’re posting stuff).

Bring it.

What you may be thinking: “But Italians are not (usually) fair skinned.” *

. . . Which is the irony of what is going to happen to my last name in a few months. My current last name (some call it ‘maiden’) is Petrella, which is my heritage from my Italian father. Technically, I’m half-Italian. But you’d never know it, since my complexion is dark enough that in elementary school, my teacher thought I fit into the Eskimo/Native American demographic.

Meanwhile, Josh’s last name -that I will soon be happily taking on- is Teague and translates as “fair-skinned.” Thus, to celebrate the wonder of God’s sense of humor, Josh and I thought it would be fun to give this site the name you now understand. The Fair Skinned Italians. (.com)

*The makers of this site are well aware of the value of cultural diversity and the need to avoid stereotypes. One of us had to write several papers about Cultural Diversity in the Classroom, in fact. It is not our desire to reinforce the idea that race=color. However, in this case it worked for us and we ask that you respect that.

Ta-da! We finally got our act together, pooled our skills and came up with something we think we can show off to our family and friends. We proudly present our own wedding website. Welcome to thefairskinneditalians.com. (Yay!!)

We thought the best way to begin a site dedicated to us and our love (awww) would be to first recognize those who have already done so much to make this whole thing possible.

Roll the tape . . .

• Mandy, Bryan, Jeanine and Beau – thanks for taking the risk of playing match-maker, you are thus far 1-2. Not too shabby.
• Mrs. P / Mom – thank you for taking on the role of unofficial wedding planner extraordinaire. Without your hard work and dedication we would not have a church, reception site or the moolah to pull this off. You could do this for a living now!
• Mother & Daddy – Thank you for supplying the get-a-way vehicle, even though we haven’t officially asked you for it yet. We love you! And also for the coming family get-together. Many, many other thanks to come.
• Mandy, Bryan, Jeanine, Beau (again), Mrs. Spitler, Meredith, Mr. and Mrs. Sandlin, Katie and John, Mrs. Robinson, and Cluster B girls- thank you, thank you, thank you for your generous offers to throw showers for us.
• Tiffany and Mother- The ribbon will be fabulous! Who knew I would be receiving fashion assistance all the way from Paris?!
• To the Bridal Party- thank you all for being willing to stand next to us on our big day. We would like to especially thank….
• ANNIE, ANNIE, ANNIE- We love you, ANNIE. We acknowledge that without your name in this post, we may never have seen tomorrow. So here you go- everyone, ANNIE MARIA PETRELLA of Tucker, Georgia, is a wonder, a doll, and a dream.
• Mike, Will, Ashley, Christie, and Tay for putting up with constant wedding talk. Let’s hear it for the roomies!
• Finally, big thanks to God for allowing us to do this and for all of the wonderful people He’s placed in our lives.

Please do not consider this to be your final thank you from us. You were on our minds as we racked our brains for our first post, so we thought we should indulge ourselves.

Be on the look-out for future posts, including such topics as Bridal Party featurettes, updates on the planning, and all the ways we can squeeze the life out of our brown and blue color combo. See you soon!