Thinking about blog changes

I was up quite late last night playing around with blogger's new drag and drop editor.
It's quite interesting.

Here are some changes, I'm considering that might make the blog more readable:

1. Collapsing / better managing the numerous labels - I have too many - Is there a better way? In the absence of a better way, I'll recategorize everything into a smaller number of labels. Anyone have any ideas? Is there a label cloud widget?
2. I plan to add a bookshelf of recommended reading. I might add other more static references from the main page. The idea is to have several posts perm. marked from the home page in order to make them available for easy access. Candidates might be: retirement plan contribution limits, bookshelf, etc.... Any recommendations or favourite posts will be considered.
3. I'd like to add delicious scripts to the post, but am uncertain how to do it - any advice? $2M provided some help, but I'm still playing with it.
4. I've thrown in some advertisements, but have tried to keep them inobtrusive. Please let me know. My goal is not to achieve financial independence through blogging - I don't think the top side is that strong, but rather to have it generate some supporting income to allow me to invest in commercial tools, etc....

Have a wonderful day, makingourway

What does blogger's new template editor kill

I desperately want to restructure my blog's layout. Frankly it's clunky and sub-optimally organized. I'm looking forward to trying blogger's new template editor to clean it up.
However I'm put off a bit by Blogger's warning that template changes may be lost.
My customizations are:
Link to a more detailed about me posting
A few rented text links (3)
Custom links and blogroll
Pfblogger.org link
Two program referal ads (I'll probably delete them)
Blog counter
Adsense
My goals progress bars and static link

I can't remember much else that's custom.

Has anyone tried converting to the new blogger template?

What was your experience?

Regards, makingourway