Help with a new blog

I got this email last night.

Hello Keith,

My name is Peter Little and I live down the road, so to speak, at San Miguel de Salinas. I very much enjoy your blog, and would like to create my own, but am having trouble getting the elements right.

Could you possibly help me? My blog is called 'the view from san miguel' because my house has a nice view out across almonds and oranges, and as a retired advertising copywriter and freelance journalist I have a lot to say about Spain and the world, but so far I've only managed two posts because I'm unhappy with the layout.

Help! I hope you can.

Best wishes,

Peter Little

First off, I am by no means an expert on blogging, far from it. There are blogs out there which are way better than mine.

I took the easy way out when setting up my blog and used one of Blogger’s ‘off the shelf’ templates – Harbour by Douglas Bowman, made a few tweeks to the lettering sizes and colours and added a couple of boxes into the sidebar. Nothing too complicated.

When you visit other’s blogs you can see they have hand crafted their layouts with pictures and elements not available from Blogger. I've had a go at mine. Not sure about the result yet.

One good tip that I can offer is to use Microsoft Live Writer to compose your posts. It is WYSIWYG which makes it a lot easier to get the posts as you would want them. You can get is as a free download from Microsoft’s site.

Peter, I look forward to seeing your blog once you have it sorted. Please send me the address and I’ll make a link in my sidebar. Oh and best of luck.