What do you think about my new design?

This posts covers my first design. I have redesigned my site and hopefully this will have its own post very soon.

During this days, being very busy on my freelance web and blog design tasks, I have dedicated some hours to my new design for my blog too. I tried to have something neat and working. What you can see now is what I managed to do. I know very well that this is not a perfect theme, so I need your much appreciated suggestions and help to get it as near as possible to being a perfect theme i terms of design and accessibility.

Color Combination: I would like to be discussed is the color combination. How do you find it? Is it eye-friendly? What about the background, do you think it should have a color, or it is alright?

Images: What do you thing about the images? Is there something that needs to be removed or something that needs to be there and is not? what about the actual images design, how do you like them?

Sidebar: I do not like the sidebar myself, however I need some suggestion how to get it better as I cannot do much now that I am tired. A good question would be: what needs to be there and what needs to be removed? but this is not the only topic to suggest about.

Monetization: As you can see a have monetized the blog. How do you find the placement of the ads? Do you have any suggestion?

This is all. Any suggestion would be very much appreciated. Thanks to all.