hello.

i’ve been busy reading “The Power of Less” by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and thoroughly enjoying it. most of the advice are things you’d think, “well, of course!”, but for some reason aren’t things i put into practice in every day life. i’m slowly making some changes, and hopefully creating some new (better) habits. one thing it has made me realise is that i need to focus. i have a lot of interests – design, photography, illustration, interiors, cooking etc. – and i enjoy a lot of different creative outlets, but the truth is that when i do too much, i spread myself too thin.

so, now i need to make a plan to focus. part of starting to focus includes decluttering and minimising. this past weekend i spent most of the time going through the apartment and getting rid of things we just don’t need, use or want. we now have two huge bags of clothes and two bags of books to donate to oxfam, and we have cleared away a lot of additional stuff we just don’t need. it feels good to have less clutter around, especially since our apartment is pretty small.

next, i will be “decluttering” my online life: emails, feeds i read, people i follow on twitter and projects i am involved in. this is actually where the hard part starts. it’s difficult to let go of projects that you have invested a lot of time and effort, and love. all things girl is one of those projects. i started it in 2001 and it’s been going strong, but when i sit down and honestly look at it, it no longer holds the same interest for me. i need to let go, hand it over to others who can really work with it, and move on. i don’t really like change much, i don’t like to let go of things i guess but i am hoping i’m moving in the right direction. change can be good. right?

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recently a client needed to insert a google docs form on their site. they had already selected the basic template and set-up the form, but the basic template had a white background and this form needed to be embedded on a site with a dark grey background. not very aesthetically pleasing at all. you can style the forms though, by adding a few parameters to the form URL that google provides you. here are some options:

to remove the title of the form add: &ttl=0 (fyi: &ttl=1 would insert the title)

to change the font add: &f=font_name

to change the text colour add: &tc=hex_value

to change the background colour add: &bc=hex_value

to change the link colour of the “help links” at the bottom add: &c=hex_value

pretty nice and easy and allows you some control and flexibility over the form.