Great blogs

I   t's funny how my opinion of blogging has changed in the last year or so. I used to think that blogging was the ultimate in self-indulgence. I guess I assumed that most people were using blogs as an online journal. I couldn't have been more wrong. Blogging has opened up a forum for creative people who I would never otherwise know about. I learn something from a blog every day. It is the perfect place to steal borrow ideas and frankly, most bloggers are people like you and me: regular old folks who were looking for an answer to a question or solution to a problem, found it and posted about it in case someone else has the same question (and believe me, they do.)

I hesitate to encourage blogging because there's no doubt it poses a real threat to newspapers and magazines (and as a product of both and one of the lucky few who continues to make my living from words printed on paper I feel a certain obligation to the great printed word), but the fact of the matter is that not everyone will pitch their great story idea to a magazine, not every editor will be smart enough to recognize that it's a great story and not every blogger even wants to be published on a piece of paper.

I've been so impressed with the blogs I've found. These blogs are created by people who truly care about what they are blogging about. They are not, as you might say, phoning it in.

So I thought it might be appropriate to occasionally feature a great blog that I've found. I won't be held to any particular genre of blog (and I follow everything from gardening to home design to blogs written by dogs), so it'll always be a surprise.

And the first blog to be featured in this space is one I've just recently found. It's called Colour me Happy and it's written by Maria Killam, an interior designer and color expert. I don't know about you, but color really confuses me. I love it, but never really know WHY I like a particular color or why it works in a particular space (or even if it does at all), as evidenced by my ongoing saga with whites (here and here). Maria has studied color so she's one of those people who can tell you about undertones and when she explains it, it all makes sense (like in this post which talks about my current obsession: gray). I only offer you this warning: Once you discover Colour me Happy, you'll be obsessed with plowing through as many fascinating posts as you can.

If you know of a great blog that I should make sure to check out, including yours, if I'm not already a follower, let me know!