My blog layout/design

Boy, I’m having the toughest of time figuring out how to redesign/layout my blog.

I’ve been toying with a number of ideas over the last few months and still haven’t found anything that I really like.

mimbo3

I keep leaning towards something like a magazine layout where the page is layed out more online magazine/newspaper style (something like the Mimbo theme) but I’m realizing that with 4000+ posts on my blog (with many of them posted under numerous categories) it’s going to be hard to get everything looking right.

I think a magazine style blog goes well with the Kingdom Journalist title I’ve borrowed and adopted from Steve Knight — but I’m still working through how that might look on a blog.

vintage

I’ve also looked at some fun ones like Vintage and Blues from Smashing Magazine but I quickly realized I’d need to do a lot of customization on my individual posts to get them to show up right. They’re both still on the drawing board though and I go back to them from time to time and piddle with them as well.

something

I’ve also thought about bringing the something beautiful theme over to my blog as well. But the way its been setup (before I added a few tweeks to it this weekend) was it only shows the two latest posts on the front page. That’s fine – except some days I tend to write numerous posts.

And to top it all off, I’m still thinking through what all I want this blog to be. Should this blog be an aggregator of all things Jonathan Blundell (think Facebook News Feed or Friendfeed – or the My Life in RSS feed).

Those closest to me say they really want more “reflective” posts where I talk about me, what I’m doing, what I’ve been up to etc. They’re not typically big fans of the “faith” or “political” or “I like this video” posts.

I guess to me I write those posts, because they’re a reflection of who I am. That’s part of who I am. But don’t worry, I see their (your) point as well.

Perhaps rather than trying to share videos, links and the like on my blog – I can just relegate those to the sites I share them on in the first place – like delicious, Google Reader, YouTube, Vimeo and the like – or just let everyone who wants to see these random things subscribe to my FriendFeed?

So, many questions, many ideas – just not one particular one really standing out to me.

What say you?

Oh, and by the way… I purchased jdblundell.com with some birthday money money from a bit of freelance work. So that might be another option for future use. Currently it’ll point you to this blog – but in the future I may decide on some other use for it.

January Happenings

I started off this year wanting to follow Brandi’s monthly list of great things that happen throughout the month. Well, January came and went and I didn’t get anything posted. February has not come and gone as well and now its March.

I’ll see if what I can recall from my Flickr 365 stream and hopefully keep better track of things in March.

So here’s a list of things I did/learned/thought about each day of the month.

Jan
1. New Years – we celebrated Dan and Bob’s birthday at our house
2. We watched Hancock tonight. Good fun Will Smith movie.
3. Trans Siberian Orchestra! And dinner with Jed and Jen and then gelato from Patrizios.
4. Sunday afternoon nap!
5. It was 30 degrees outside, but I was reminded I had a nice home to keep me warm.
6. Started Tubby Tuesday – need to be better keeping up.
7. Learned that I have what it takes to be the GOP National Convention Chair.
8. Published a new podcast interview with Steve Knight.
9. Ikea!
10. Took down the Christmas lights and took some “stuff” to the thrift store and dump.
11. encounter challenge to walk by faith – and face the giants in our lives :: fully surrender, intentional relationships, caring for others, personal responsibility, leadership
12. I am not for sale. You are not for sale. No one should be for sale.
13. Tubby Tuesday – down 3.8lbs since the last week.
14. Apparently the 14th was a pretty uneventful day.
15. I realized I’m no good at jumping rope.
16. We had Kara and Tim over for dinner for Cafe de Blundell.
17. God’s grace is beyond our imagination.
18. For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard… (Matt 20:1)
19. MLK Jr Day – U2’s Get On Your Boots was released today.
20. Barack Obama sworn in as our 44th President!
21. Swam 400 yards in the (heated) pool. Wore me out!
22. “a fairly uneventful day today. a meeting in the morning at work, an hour or so at the gym riding a bike, weights and a .5 mile around the track.”
23. Winter allergies – YUCK!
24. Reflecting on Ephesians 2:14-18, “may we overcome. may we tear down walls we’ve built in the past and build bridges towards a New Humanity instead.”
25. We celebrated my grandmother’s 90th birthday today! And found out my cousin Brian and his wife Amanda are having a baby! (I’m betting it will be a girl).
26. Laurie made her magical strawberry cake cookies!
27. Tubby Tuesday – I gained 2.8 lbs over the week! GRIPES!
28. Ice day! No work!
29. I was Mr Grumpy Pants on the 29th. Didn’t get my way and couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much.
30. A fairly uneventful day – frost on the truck on my way to work.
31. African American Read-In at the Majestic Theatre.

Jesus People

header

I’m not even sure how I found this now, but the web-isodes of Jesus People have been cracking me up today. It’s a mockumentary (think Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman) based on an up and coming Christian Pop group, Cross My Heart.

“Jesus People” started as a webseries on FunnyorDie.com with the description of “Spinal Tap” set in the world of Christian dance-pop. The web series found 1/2 million fans, thanks to a cast including Kate Flannery (“The Office”), Deborah Theaker (“Waiting for Guffman”), & Stephnie Weir (“Mad TV”).

They’ve now completed a full movie based around the webisodes that’s due in the theaters this fall. Should be quite funny from the trailer and the current webisodes ::

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Movie trailer
Movie Clip

Bachelor Dinner

bachelor dinner

bachelor dinner
Originally uploaded by Jonathan D. Blundell


A strange thing tends to occur when I’m left to eat dinner on my own — I think its something I picked up from my dad — I tend to come up with some different creations.

I usually take advantage of knowing Laurie won’t have to eat what I fix, so I tend to pull things out we might have left over that I know she won’t likely eat later as well.

Tonight was no different. As she rushed off to St. Arbucks I cooked up some turkey meatballs we got from Costco and made a super tasty sauce to go with them.

The sauce was made of canned jalapenos, sliced green onions, HEB BBQ sauce and a bit of water to thin it out.

Topped the meatballs and sauce with cheese and I had quite a tasty meal (and lunch left over for tomorrow).

I also made some homemade chips with some left over corn tortillas. I basically cut the tortillas into quarters, splashed some EVOO on them, added some salt and cajun seasoning and baked them at 350 for 10 minutes.

They tasted great but the texture wasn’t quite right on most of the chips. But some of them got just the right heat, oil and everything else and were superb. Now if only I remember what I did differently with those chips :-).

NOTE: The tortillas in this picture were only stand-ins for the real tortilla chips. The real ones were still “getting their tanning on” when this picture was taken.

Leaders – are your followers stuck?

Sent this out to our community group leaders today. Wanted to share and get feedback here as well.

As a leader, are your group members stuck?

Are they stuck thinking they need you for the group to grow, mature, to meet?

Are they dependent upon you for their faith and their walk with God?

I heard a great quote this week from Peter Rollins.

He was asked about being a leader and he said, “The role of the leader is to shun that title. Just like the role of a priest is to shun the title so that all believers will take up the priesthood of the believers.”

If we’re not preparing people, who will lead when you’re gone?

Thoughts? Questions? Ideas?