So I spent the past couple of days revamping my template. I think all that wasted time on the computer was worthwhile. I didn't get dinner made and I didn't take down my Christmas decorations. If you stopped by my house, my Christmas tree is still lit up.

Oh well the important thing is I learned how to set up this uber cool "Notepad Chaos" template . Here are the steps that I went through - (with out all the stomping and yelling) for the benefit of you template newbies...

Step 1 Find a template you like. I like this site http://btemplates.com/ because it has quite a few nice templates, you can download them directly from that site and most of all it's FREE! The other thing that I like about it is I was able to glean a lot of help from the comments sections.

There are a lot of other sites on the web and if you search for "blogger templates" on Google, you'll come up with a ton of them.

Go ahead and download your fav, download a bunch of them...

Step 2 Login to your Blogger Dashboard and go to the "Layout > Page Elements" tab. Write down which widgets you have and want to keep then head on over to "Edit HTML" tab.

Step 3 BACK UP your template by clicking the "Download Full Template" link. This will download your current template - and you have it just in case you really mess up. Then all you have to do is upload the backup file from your computer and you're in business again!

Step 4 This is the fun part. Browse to the new template file that you've just downloaded and upload it. DO NOT at this point click "Preview" button. All that will do is show you the old template and navigate you away from the Edit HTML page (I know, I've done it a couple hundred times!) Just click the "Save Template" (and if you're like me) you'll probably get this warning:

Widgets are about to be deleted!

What I do at this point is click OK! because it's a lot easier to reinstall the widgets (from the list you made in Step 2) through the Page Elements tab than it is for me to fool around with the html code.

That's it! NOW you can click the Preview button. It'll show you your new template with all the cool bells and whistles but not all the elements are really working until you actually hit the "View Blog" link at the top of the page. (I don't know why!)

Now go out and wow your "Followers" with your uber techno cool template!