Category - Blogging Away

Have you seen the movie “Frozen”?  I haven’t.  I know, I know!  But I’ve got it on pre-order and the DVD will arrive tomorrow.  My little boys and I are planning our own personal viewing night, complete with popcorn and hot chocolate.

Speaking of which…

If you haven’t seen “Frozen”, but most especially if you have and you LOVE it and you’re planning on getting the DVD – hold on just one second.  The Mac and Cheese Chronicles is a proud sponsor of this amazing giveaway.

Check it out! The “Frozen” DVD and the soundtrack,  a Movie Enhancement Package of Yum (I made that up) that includes hot chocolate, marshmallows, popcorn AND an Olaf mug, a Mickey and Minnie Poster and a $100 Disney Gift Card.

I’m dying here because I can’t enter.  But you can, and it’s really simple.  Behold – here’s a Rafflecopter Contest Whatchamahoozit.

And, for those of you who are entirely sick of being Frozen (I’m looking at you, Maryland, with your 8 1/2 feet of snow) – how about a vacation in sunny Florida or California?  Go over there on my sidebar and scroll down until you see my affiliate link.  My friend Jennifer will hook you up with some sweet Disney vacation deals.  She can help you with either FL or CA. She’s the one who put this whole giveaway together.

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Happy New Year!  I’ve made some cosmetic changes to the blog over the last few months, but I haven’t mentioned them.  If you haven’t stopped by in person, come on over and take a look.

I changed the color scheme and my blog header, as well as my picture over there on the sidebar.

I made a nice little recipe index for all my quick and easy recipes.  There’s a link in my sidebar as well as tab on the top of the page.

My free planner pages are on their own page now, too.  The link is also in the sidebar, but for some reason, it doesn’t want to add itself to the tabs on the top.  Whatever.  I’m not going to go crazy trying to make it work.

Another new addition to my sidebar is a widget for my most popular posts.  It’ll change all by itself and it’s supposed to add little thumbnail pictures, but right now they are so tiny that it’s not too effective.  I’ll work on it later.

I’m going to keep up my two blog series – Pinterest Wins and Disneyland Tips.  I’m also going to start another series which will show you my craft room makeover – from crap room to craft room!

So a Happy New Year to all of you, and thank you for sticking with me all these years.

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So yeah, Google Reader is going away. I find that to be super annoying because I don’t like change when things are going well. But this being a rather minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of life , I will adapt.

Actually, I already have. I’m using Feedly now, which has an app for my mobile devices or I can read on the big computer by logging into their site.  If you are using Google Reader, you need to find another way to get your blogs before July 1. Feedly is nice and easy and will import your Google Reader feeds without much fuss.

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Every so often I get obsessed with my blog stats. I track which posts are the most popular, what Google searches lead people to me, and what sites are linking to me. It’s fun for a couple of weeks and then I get distracted by something else.

One of the most popular Google searches that leads to my blog is “Boy Scout uniform”. The picture associated with that search is of Boo, grinning at the camera on the night he bridged over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

It’s always bugged me just a little bit. I don’t know why. Maybe because it was more of a portrait type picture, rather than an action shot. Honestly, I’ve always struggled over the kinds of pictures to post of my children. I’ll go for long periods of time without posting pictures at all, but that gets boring. Then I’ll just post pictures in profile, or somehow not showing their whole face. But that gets tricky and involves a lot of staging pictures. Eventually I just go back to posting whatever picture suits my posts the best.

A couple of days ago, I discovered that someone had pinned that picture of Boo, the one of him in his Cub Scout uniform, on to Pinterest. That just did not sit right with me. I can’t even put into words why. In my head, someone searching for a picture of a BSA uniform would realize that this picture isn’t really what they were looking for, so they would move on. But seeing it on Pinterest, that’s more of a deliberate action. More “I want to remember this picture and refer back to it as often as I want”. Plus there is the social aspect of Pinterest, the sharing with your followers and the repinning of things over and over. Somehow, pinning a mom’s snapshot of her child just wasn’t what I wanted.

I left a comment under the picture, asking the person to remove it. After a day and a half it was still there, so I invoked my copyright and used the official form to have Pinterest remove it. They did so within just a few hours! I also deleted the picture from my blog.

So now I have to give quite a bit more thought to the kinds of pictures I put on my blog. This was never intended to be a family update kind of blog. It was always a way for me to tell my stories, as if I was sitting over coffee or knitting with you. Most of my stories are about my childrend and pictures enhance the story telling. But now I’ve had a wake-up call that others may use my pictures any way they want.

If you have a blog, do you post pictures of your kids? Of their faces, or in profile or somehow concealing their faces? How would you feel if you discovered your child’s picture on Pinterest?

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If you’ve actually stopped by blog lately (as opposed to reading through email or a reader), you might have noticed my social media buttons over there in my sidebar. If you can’t get enough of me, come follow me on Pinterest, Facebook and the knitting/crocheting site Ravelry. Here, I’ll give you links to make it easier.

Lorri on Pinterest.

 
The Mac and Cheese Chronicles on Facebook.

Lorri on Ravelry

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Happy New Year!  Is anybody still out there?  I hope so and I thank you for sticking with me.

In writing this post I realized just how little blogging I did last year.  Hopefully I can remedy that this year.  I’m making some changes in our home that should make things go a little more smoothly and free up a little more of my time.

I tried to write a 2012 wrap-up post but there were many months when I only blogged twice.  Not too exciting and nothing to look back on.  Part of the problem is that as my children have gotten older, they started reading my blog.  I feel the burden of censoring now that they are part of the audience.  There are also a couple of people who like to let me know that they expect me to have something new on my blog all the time and are disappointed when I don’t.  Nothing kills my creativity more than people pointing out how I’ve let them down.

So here I am, not looking back at 2012.  Hoping I can recapture some time and creativity and funnel that back into my blog.

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We have a winner! (Please note that comments #1 and #2 weren’t entries into the give-away.)  Comment #6 – midwestmom!  You may choose any item at Pumpkin Girl Designs.  I do have some new flowers that I need to add, but we lost power last night and I couldn’t get to it.

Thank you to everyone who entered and shared on Facebook.  Everything on our site except the ribbon sculptures will be on sale until Friday, so now is a good time to place an order. And speaking of Facebook, when I have coupon codes to offer, I will be posting them to our Facebook page.  That’s also where I’ll preview our new items.  So if you aren’t already a fan, you should head over to our page and “like” us: Pumpkin Girl Designs on Facebook.

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Last Wednesday I blew up my blog.

It was gone, completely.  A fatal error message was all that was left.  Not only that, I could no longer access my control panel to fix things.  The whole thing was lost to the ages.

I was just tinkering a bit, and I messed with the code.  I can write both HTML and CSS so usually this is OK, but in this case I was pasting from someone else and it didn’t work.

So I went to my web host page and found their customer service number and called it. I was barely on hold for a few seconds and in five minutes my blog was restored to workable order.  Their customer service guy set my blog back to the default template which allowed me access.  I could take it from there.

After deleting and reinstalling the corrupted theme, all was fine in blogland again.

So, who is this Wonder Web Host?  BlueHost!  They have 24 customer support, either over the phone or live chat.  They have one-click installation for WordPress and a bunch of other blogging platforms.  They have a very easy to understand file uploading system (FTP). AND I am able to add additional domains under this one. (In other words, our personal family-only blog with a separate name is also hosted there for no additional fee.)

They brought my blog back from oblivion in just minutes.  You can imagine how relieved I was!  And even though I blew the thing up right before Bip’s birthday dinner, I was able to join the family with my blog already completely restored.

So if you’re looking for a new web host- definitely consider BlueHost.  They’ll treat you right.

(I was totally not compensated for this glowing report.)

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So…I’m on Twitter now. Look over there in my sidebar – you can click on the Follow button and be one of my minions, er, followers. You never know when I’ll say something pithy or funny or have a great stock tip*, so go ahead and follow me. You know you want to!

And if you’re reading this on your feed reader – THANK YOU for subscribing, I love you more than you know – here’s my Twitter name or handle or whatever, so you don’t have to click over to my blog first and find the button: @justlorri That’s 2 rs, no e.

Of course, if you’d like to click over to my blog, that’s fine, too.

*no actual stock tips will be given

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