Jersey Love and Cloth Habit 2.0

My sister and I saw Illegally Blonde in this theater.

I am feelin the Jersey shore today. I have so many childhood memories of funnel cakes and salt-water taffy, of tacky jewelry and pinball machines. I’m from Michigan, but nearly every summer, my mother packed us kids up in the green station wagon and we went to visit grandma and many of my 30-some-odd cousins in New Jersey (my mom is one of 10). There was always a trip to the shore. I cherished the boardwalk memories so much that when I was in college, I spent a couple summers working crazy waitressing hours morning and night during the tourist season in Ocean City. (Good way to make college money!) Some very late nights after work, a bunch of us would drive up to Atlantic City to blow our tips on slot machines. During the calm midweek, we’d take a drive down to North Beach Island to watch the surfers or Sea Isle City for a coffee. For my 27th birthday, I drove out to Asbury Park to visit Bruce Springsteen’s old haunts. For my 30th birthday, my roommate and I drove all night from Ohio through the Pennsylvania turnpike to do some vintage shopping in Philadelphia and then straight to the beach just in time for sunset. (I had to have a slice! Sorry New York and Chicago, there is no pizza like Jersey pizza.)

Anyway, I hope those in the storm are staying peaceful and dry.

In other news, I’ve done a bit of site redesign. Whenever I get a new creative bug or project going on, I turn my house inside out. I have to re-arrange everything. I’ve dragged 300-lb furniture between rooms. I want new things on the walls. If I had time and money I’d re-paint the entire house and replace all my cat-destroyed chairs. This time, I went at my blog. I wanted to re-do my blog design a year ago but the project sat on a shelf while my headers and other little designed navigations slowly started to go wonky as I continued to upgrade my WordPress theme. I got most of the new look up today and I hope you like it!

On a very important tech note, if you subscribe to my blog, you might need to resubscribe. I am no longer using Feedreader so my subscription links have changed.

If you use Google Reader, you can either go into your account, click the big red “Subscribe” button and add my website name. That’s it. (An even easier way to subscribe to blogs in Google reader is to add their bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, which is in the “Goodies” tab of your Google Reader account. Any time I’m at a website I want to follow, I just hit that button and bam! it’s in my Reader.)

If you use Bloglovin, you shouldn’t need to do anything, but I’ll keep checking on it to make sure it’s working. FYI, here is my site’s feed on Bloglovin.

Annnd, if you use something else like an email program to read blogs, you will have to re-enter the feed address, which is https://clothhabit.com/feed/

And alright, while I was at it, I made a Facebook page. A little birdie told me that more people are reading blogs through Facebook, so I thought I’d shoot my feed through FB, too.

6 comments

  1. Heather Lou says:

    I always really loved your design (you were one of my inspirations for changing up the old CCF) so at first I was like NOOOOOOOO! But it looks great! Love your sketchy graphics.

    • Amy says:

      Oh thanks Heather! It’s pretty much the same layout but I was still using some of the default type and really wanted to tweak all that.

  2. I love your new header and the spiffy social network tabs. I’m reading on my iPad right now, so I will have to check it out on a regular screen, too. Looking good! I love your memories of the shore. My husband and I have been thinking next summer we’ll explore that area, since it’s easier to get to now that we are on the west side of Manhattan.

    • Amy says:

      Thanks! I tried to make it adapt for ipad and iphone, too. (I’m reading more blogs that way now so…) You guys should definitely do a Jersey shore drive! I recommend some of the quieter boardwalk towns. They’re like mini Coney Islands. Ocean City is my fave, but that’s where we always went. Best pancakes!

  3. Sallie says:

    The new design looks great! I really need to do the same over in my corner of the internet…
    Love your memories of Jersey. I’m feeling pretty nostalgic for the Jersey shore right now too. Growing up, we spent every summer in a pink house that had seen better days right off the boardwalk in Wildwood. My grandma and great aunt would rent the place and then all the cousins would pile in. Our feet were always sandy. I thought it was the greatest place ever! When I was in grad school in Philadelphia I used to just get in my car and drive down to the shore by myself to escape the city and the stress of school. My heart breaks a little bit that some of the places from my childhood memories may no longer be there. But right now I’m living in a beach town that was destroyed by a hurricane only 4 years ago, and I’ve seen first hand how these things come back. Sandy can’t lick the Jersey shore!

    • Amy says:

      Ahh, I can see those places now. We have such similar memories! My aunt owned a little home in Cape May until about 8 years ago and that was one of the places we usually went. One summer we rented a house in Ocean Grove. Our feet were permanently sandy! (Did you have those outdoor showers, too?) I so know that drive out of Philadelphia, the exact moment you start to smell the ocean… and do the roundabout off the turnpike.

Comments are closed.