A couple of Im
portant Announcements that I’d appreciate you reading. I’m not normally that bossy, telling you what to read and all, but these are worth your time.
1. I changed my blog feed. I would never in a million years do this, but I had no choice. For now, everything seems to be redirecting correctly and my posts are going out as always. But there’s an off chance that the internet will reboot itself or something and the old feed will no longer work. If you notice I haven’t posted in a while, it may be because you need to resubscribe to my blog. You can do this by going directly to my blog, where you will find at least 2 links to subscribe. One is at the very top of the page, on the right. The other is the very last thing on my sidebar. Or you can click this link right here: Subscribe to The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.
2. What is a feed? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me explain. If you have more than about 5 blogs that you like to read, you should be subscribing to them. You do this by looking for something on the blog that says “subscribe to…” and clicking on it. Then all new posts will be sent to the feed reader of your choice, just like email. I use Google Reader. If you only read a couple of blogs, you may also have the choice of having new posts delivered to your email. You can do that on my blog by following the subscription links described above and you will be given the choice of subscribing by email.
3. Speaking of email…I now have a very handy contact form. See over there in my sidebar, the little guy with a slingshot and envelope? Click him to shoot me an email, if you want to say more than a normal comment will allow.
4. Which brings me to comments. I now have the ability to respond to your comments both right there with the rest of the comments and send my response to you through email. Isn’t that cool?
5. Gravatars – if you don’t have one, get one! Those are the little pictures that appear next to a comment you leave on someone’s blog. It can be anything, a picture of yourself or something else that represents you. Whenever you comment on a blog with gravatars enabled, your little picture will show up. They are free and easy to create here: Globally Recognized Avatars. PS – I used to have random little monsters appear in my comments for those without gravatars, but everyone seemed to be getting a frowning monster, so I disabled that feature.
6. Printer friendly pages. My posts are now printer friendly! If my words so move you that you have to print them out and tuck them under your pillow or otherwise save them for posterity, you can now save time and ink by using the printer friendly option. You can also save a page to a PDF file or share it through email. First, click on the title of the post. That will bring you to a page with only that one, single post. At the end of the post will be a little printer icon. Click on that to bring up the printer-friendly screen. You will have the option to cut out paragraphs where I babble on about nothing, you can choose not to have the pictures print, and several other options. I think this feature will be especially nice if you want to print out any of the recipes I share.
7. Streamlined look – I’ve got a new, streamlined look. Come by and check it out!
If you are using Firefox or IE, my blog looks great. Tis a thing of beauty. (Though mysteriously, in IE, there is a small smiley face next to my picture in the side bar. It’s not there in Firefox.)
However, if you’re using Safari, the posts are messed up. Being the secret mad CSS coder that I am, I know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. I’m missing a slash or a semicolon somewhere…it’s just the “where” that is the problem.
Never fear, you crazy Mac users, I’m about to run my code through a validator and see where the error is. Hopefully that’ll be fixed by today.
Updated update: It’s fixed. Some browsers can just be so picky about having perfectly valid code.
Well, sort of. I’ve got an updated blog code, but I’ve still got some CSS code to tweak. Which means, if you have a gravatar, it’ll now show up when you leave a comment. If you don’t have one, the code gnomes will generate a silly monster for you. I’m hoping that whatever quirk was not letting my centered pictures be centered is fixed. I also need to update my favicon (it’s that little graphic next to my URL). Plus,I don’t know why my calendar in my sidebar doesn’t fit, or has little squares around the days of the week and I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe I can figure it out, but as my friend JennG would say, “Not today, Zurg.” (I wonder if her secret identity is Buzz Lightyear?)
What I would really, really like to know is how to get graphics in my sidebar to replace the text headings. It can be done on other platforms, like Blogger but since I own my domain name and use WordPress, I’m on my own in figuring these things out.
But since my head is swimming in code and I really need some lunch, it’ll have to be good enough for now.
But that chocolate bunny in the grass is back in my header!
I’ve got way too much on my plate at the moment. I need to take a break from the ol’ blog for 10 days or so. When I return, I need to update my blog design (but come on, how cute is that big, fat snowman?) and then I’ve got some posts lined up for you.
So until then, have a blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter!
I first encountered the phrase “seasons of life” a few years ago. Before then it just wasn’t something used by the people I knew. Maybe it’s a regional thing. But once I heard it, I liked how nicely it fit with so many things.
In many ways, it gave me permission to prioritize my life in a way that would best suit my family. For example, I have been a Girl Scout leader for three straight years. Pumpkin Girl really likes me being a leader and I like it, too. But now, in this season of my life, I need a break. I need to focus on other things. It is OK for me not to be a GS leader (I say to myself) because what Pumpkin needs from me right now is to be a ballet mom. (That’s like a soccer mom, but you know, with miniature ballerinas with buns and pink tights in the back of the minivan, not sweaty soccer players.)
Sometimes life seasons are long, other seasons are short.
Funny enough, blogging seems to be seasonal for me, too. I’d love to be one of those bloggers who blog daily (or more!), but that never seems to work out for me. I don’t know where my time goes every day – it’s like I wake up, eat lunch, then go to bed. The days fly by. It just hasn’t been a season for blogging lately. I haven’t even gotten around to changing my blog header to one more…seasonally appropriate.
But the good news is, I feel a change of seasons coming on…
Well, I guess it’s time. Time to change my picture that appears in my sidebar. Afterall, the old picture is 5 years old and I’m approaching a Major Milestone Birthday this month.
I like the old picture. You can read the story behind it here: The Haircut. But I guess it’s time to let it go.
So I had a little photo session with myself in the bathroom mirror and behold…the me that is me today.
Hmm? What? Oh, hello. What are you doing here? Waiting for me to remember that I have a blog?
Sorry, I got completely overwhelmed by many things, some are moving related, some are personal, then we had house guests again and Pumpkin Girl made her First Communion. But I’ve got it all straightened out now, mostly, so I’m ready to tell you the highlights. Tomorrow though, because it’s 9:30 PM and our bed just broke. Of course it did.
I love getting comments on my blog, but I find myself in a conundrum of how to handle them. If someone asks a question, should I reply in the comments or through email or both? All comments to my blog arrive to me through email and I’m supposed to be able to hit reply and it goes right to the commenter. But I don’t think it’s working right. I wrote out this nice lengthy reply to someone and right as I hit “send” I saw that it was going to my blog’s inbox. So I have no idea if my replies are even getting through.
So I’m going to answer some questions here.
Tami asked why she wasn’t able to make smilies appear in her comments anymore. It’s because you need to leave a space between the sentence punctuation and the punctuation for the smiley.
Nancy wanted to know which colorway of Noro Silk Garden I’m using for my scarf. It’s number 87, which is mostly jewel tones. The scarf I’m making calls for 4 skeins. By the way, the pattern I’m using is free. I think it’s well written and is a good way to learn entrelac. You can find it here: Entrelac Scarf.
Janice was wondering if it’s all one skein of yarn. Yes, it is! It’s handpainted varigated yarn. I have seen other people’s entrelac projects where they used 2 different skeins to get a very specific set of color changes, but that’s a lot of work and I like the way the yarn does all that work for me.
JennG was wondering if I learned all these fun knitting techniques from books or from other people. A little of both, but mostly I’m self taught. I learn best from reading (what kind of learner does that make me?), so I can usually muddle along well enough to get by. Part of the fun of knitting, for me at least, is trying something new. I’ve managed to infect several people in my neighborhood with the knitting bug and having all these new and quickly learning knitting friends has inspired me to try all the fun things I’ve seen others do.
Angoraknitter (a fellow Army wife who just moved to our area) mentioned that she can hardly wait until her yarn arrives (I’m assuming in her household goods). Angora – can I call you Ang? – you don’t have to wait! There’s a fun knitting store in Old Town Alexandria. Head north on Hwy 1, after you pass the Beltway, turn right. It doesn’t matter which street, but I turn at the gas station. When you get to Washington, turn left. When you pass the statue in the middle of an intersection, Knit Happens will be on your right. I think the cross street is King.
She also asked me about my ottoman and chairs seen in my messy living room. They are indeed from IKEA. Both have removable, washable slip covers – a must in a house with children! We put sliders under the ottoman feet so we could move it around the living room easily, but that was a mistake. Pushing the ottoman around caused the knobs under the lid to break off, so the lid slides off when bumped into. That was our fault, though, since it was designed to really stay in one place. The chairs are comfy and have enough room under them to store a basket full of Wii paraphenalia under one and the WiiFit board under another. I had to wash one of the slip covers during our last round of stomach virus and it washed up wonderfully. No fading and the wrinkles disappeared once the slip cover was back in place. I spot clean the ottoman at least weekly and it’s holding up well, too.
OK, I think I got all the recent questions. Now I’m off to try to figure out how to get my emailed replies sent to the commenter.
I’ve been meaning to tell you all that I updated my blog to a winter scape. If you’re reading through a feed reader or through email, come on over and admire my handiwork.
Also, I put up 2 posts at The Homeschool Classroom on quick and easy crafts to make. Even though Christmas is quickly approaching and you probably have all your gifts all figured out, these two projects make nice gifts from your children to their various teachers, coaches, and family members.
The first one is a God’s Eye ornament, which our Catholic home school group made for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They were such a hit that Philip had his Cub Scouts make them and then I had my Girl Scouts make them, too.
The second craft is a candle made from a recycled jar. This one is also very fast to make. Pumpkin Girl made a similar one as a school art project last year. Philip needed another fast project for his scouts, so they made these, too.
November 11th is the feast of St. Martin of Tours, also known as Martinmas. To read more about St. Martin, some of the traditions associated with Martinmas, including a tutorial on how to make Martinmas lanterns, visit me at the Homeschool Classroom: Celebrating Martinmas.
portant Announcements that I’d appreciate you reading. I’m not normally that bossy, telling you what to read and all, but these are worth your time.
Shoot me an email.
