Apartment Therapy featured my Invisible Floating bookshelves the other day (and so did Lifehacker and Austin Kim) and sent literally thousands of new visitors over here.
If you've come in from one of those sites, Welcome! I hope you'll take a good look around, maybe say hello.
And, y'know, check back for other ideas you might like.
Hope you're having a great weekend!
Boy, when I told you posting would be sporadic, I didn't expect it to be quite this bad!
I do feel like I'm starting to get used to the new routine and might be able to re-establish some sort of decent posting schedule soon.
But I've also realized that maintaining FOUR blogs is going to be impossible. So I've decided to consolidate a bit. Please make some room for the lovely readers of Pannifer's, my food blog. They're really very nice and always happy to share.
At some point, I'll redesign this blog so that it can reflect its new designation as May December Home and Food. There won't be a lot of recipes, but I will be sharing ideas for enjoying life, food and friends. I think it ties in well with what I've been doing here already. I hope you'll agree.
I'll be re-publishing some of my favourite Pannifer's posts over the next little while, to help with the tie-in. I apologize for the repetition to those of you who have been following both blogs. The transition won't take too long, I hope, and then we can get back to the good stuff - enjoying life with the people who matter to us.
I had fully planned to post this week.
But then the shovelling took over my life.
I'll be taking a blogging break over the holidays (but I will be checking in on my favourites - I have some catching up to do!). See you back here on January 5.
Hope you all have a lovely couple of weeks!
Is it Friday already? Ooops!
Well, I've been sick. It's nothing serious, and I put the whole story over here (minus the more graphic details).
I'll be back on Monday. Hope you all have a happy, healthy weekend!
Hi! Things are a bit busy around here today (I know, so what else is new?).
I have a post up on Vintage Indie, though. Click on over and say hi to Gabreial for me while you're there!
I cannot quite believe that it's taken me so long to get back here, or that the most difficult part of the entire three-part move would be getting internet service. I'd've bet real money on it being those ovens that did us in. But no, it was the technology. We finally got a connection last night.
I've spent much of today looking through my favourite blogs, soaking in all the wonderfulness like a dried-out sponge.
I will get back to my regularly scheduled posting tomorrow. I just wanted to let anyone who may still be checking in here know that I'm back.
I've missed you all so much!
Sorry for the lack of postage yesterday. I was too busy admiring myself on the internet.
Thanks to Grace at Design*Sponge for posting my Before and After Dresser (even though it stirred up a bit of controversy!). And to Gabreial at Vintage Indie for posting my Ceiling Tile Memo Board.
But enough about me (for now). I had such a good time with my beach-themed photos on Wednesday, that I've decided to do it again. White rooms this time.
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So please let me know - are you enjoying these colour-themed pictures? Should I do more? Do you have a favourite colour you'd like me to round up for you?
The partnership continues.
I have a new project up on Vintage Indie. Guess what? I'm designing clothes now!
If you haven't already downloaded this month's Inspiration e-Zine from Design for Mankind, you can do so here. Don't know about the e-Zines? Every month, Erin puts together an amazing, downloadable, FREE, pdf, packed with gorgeous photos, essays and inspiration.
The theme this month is Inspiration in Nature. And I'm very honoured to be included as one of the contributors. Thanks Erin!
And, since this seems to be "All About Me Wednesday" (don't worry, I won't make it a regular feature), I'll direct you to my first post for Vintage Indie. It's a brand-new project, never featured here! Hope you enjoy it!
Well, I'm just all over the place today!
Gabreial featured my kitchen table re-vamp on her very cool site, Vintage Indie today.
I hope you'll all head over, check it out and say hi to Gabreial for me!
It's time to open this blog up a bit.
I know you all love house tours and so do I. So here's your chance to show off a little. Do you have a home that you're proud of? Done some cool recycling projects? Have a few family heirlooms in daily use?
We'd love to see what you've done!
Send in your photos, explanations and stories. I would love to make Reader's Homes a regular feature!
I put this off as long as I could, but I've had to enable comment moderation and disallow anonymous comments on this site.
Oh, yes, I've been spammed....
I'm not fond of comment moderation. I like to see conversations develop between readers in the comments and that will really be slowed down with the moderation.
And I'm really sorry for the "no anonymous comments" thing. My niece, Kathleen, holds the land speed record for forgetting passwords, so she's left me some very sweet comments anonymously.
But when it came down to it, I had to ask myself. Do my readers really want to click here to see busty beauties?
Photo from Benny Yap's flickrstream
I want to send out a special thank you to the lovely folks at Unclutterer for choosing my home office as their Workspace of the Week. It's such a thrill to see my space on your great site!
And if you've come over here from there - Welcome! I hope you'll take a look around, test out the links, leave me a friendly comment and introduce yourself!
Other than that, have a great weekend, everyone!
Awhile ago, Steve from It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit tagged me to tell six things about myself that you might not already know. And, while I like to maintain a certain air of mystery, I also like to have a bit of fun on Fridays.
So....
1) Ever since I saw the movie Million Dollar Baby, I've been a huge Clint Eastwood fan. This surprises me.
2) I'm also a huge fan of the Bridget Jones's Diary novels. Though not much of a surprise there.
3) I don't have a university degree, but I am qualified to teach English as a Second Language.
4) I have fallen in love with almost every single house I've ever looked at. The same cannot be said of men. Alan was the first one to make it past the second date. We'll be celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary this month.
5) In that time we've lived in thirteen different places. One of them for eight years. And we're getting ready to move again soon. Hopefully.
6) I have absolutely no sense of direction. Seriously. I've been known to get lost in my own house. Though #5 could help to explain some of that...
Now, the rules say that I'm supposed to tag six people to carry on the fun. But I'm going to bend that rule just a little bit.
I think tagging is a great way for new bloggers to introduce themselves. So if you have a new blog, or just want to meet some new readers, leave a comment after this post and let me know when your list is up and we'll come over and see you!
One of the questions that came up during the New Bloggers series was - is it OK to use photos from Flickr?
I researched it as best I could, but wasn't able to find a satisfactory answer. Then I found this article on Skelliewag that sets it all out perfectly.
Basically, what it says is that you should be looking for photos listed under the Creative Commons agreement in the "Attribution" category.
If you find a photo that is copywrited, you need written permission to use it. Under the Creative Commons agreement, you are allowed to use photos without written permission, as long as you credit the photographer and give a link back to the source. In this case, their Flickr page.
There are six separate categories under the Creative Commons agreement, so you'll want to read the whole article. She also tells you how to find photos that are offered in those categories.
Hope this helps all of you looking for images!
Hi everyone. I'm doing a little more updating on the site.
It's occurred to me that some of you like to cook. And since I also have a food blog, maybe you'd like a heads-up when I post a yummy recipe over there?
Every week, we have Comfort Food Monday. Yummy, easy, make-a-bad-day-better recipes, like this one for Braised Short Ribs. I want to let you in on the fun, but I don't want to lose the decor focus of this blog.
So I've added a little link over in the side bar. It says Recipes @ Pannifer's Food and Such and links to that portion of the Pannifer's archives. And whenever I post another recipe, I'll just make a little note of it here.
How does that sound?
Categories.........
Well, I'm very excited about this week's post.
I finally figured out how to configure my archives into categories!
It's something I've been wanting to do for quite some time now, but just didn't know how. The few searches I conducted gave me instructions that looked like:
//????>blahblahblah[\\!!!!^^this is way too hard for you====give up now!!!!!]//
So I did.
But then I read this article on Skelliewag and thought, "Darn it, she's right!"
I found her instructions to be a bit convoluted and knew there had to be an easier way.
I'd seen a few Blogger blogs that had categories, most notably, More Ways to Waste Time. Thinking I'd be clever, I sent Leah an e-mail asking her how she did it. Unfortunately, my computer chose that moment to throw a hissy fit and send out total gibberish. Sorry if I scared you, Leah!
In the meantime, I kept looking and found, right there in the Blogger Help Centre, perfectly easy instructions for how to set up a categories list. Amazing what happens when you look!
Going back into all your old posts and adding the relevant labels would be a tedious process. Fortunately, there are instructions for doing it in batches.
Crazy helpful! Any of you working with Blogger, that little helpdesk feature is a goldmine of information. You just have to know what questions to ask - and I think that comes from reading other peoples' blogs and wondering "How did they...?" - and also, how to ask the questions. It's a bit like looking things up in the yellow pages. If "doctors" doesn't work, try "physicians" or "health care".
From looking at Typepad and Wordpress blogs, I get the sense that setting up a categories list is really straightforward. If it's not, and if you've learned a few tricks, please share them with us!
And now to answer readers' questions...
The first one was about using Flickr photos on your blog. I've read all the rules and regulations and it looks like, if they're in the public portion of the site, and you give due credit with a link, it's OK.
Sending an email to tell someone that you're using their pictures and where is a nice touch, but not, as I read it, strictly necessary.
The second question was whether or not there is an app like Windows Live Writer for Mac users.
I looked and I looked and I looked. I could not find a single thing that was free, or nearly as exciting as Windows Live. Sorry!
If anyone knows of anything, please leave a comment and let us know!
And I think I've come to the end of cool and exciting things that I can share in this series.
Does anyone have any questions? Does someone have something they'd like to share next week that we haven't covered yet? Let me know and we'll keep this series rolling!
A final note on the Blogger instructions - when you've added a label to a whole batch of posts, click on the "None" option at the top of the page afterwards. Otherwise you'll keep adding labels to that batch of posts.
I found this over on Juliet's lovely blog, Musings From a Muddy Island.
Those of you who are feeling slightly stupid about all of this (I know I am!) can comfort yourselves that at least you've mastered that wacky new technology known as The Book.
Thank you Juliet!
And holy cow! There's sooo much I need to learn! Which will take hours and hours of my time. Which I don't really have, what with renovations and a marriage and all.
Do the rest of you feel guilty spending time on the computer, researching? How do you manage it all? Or am I the only person in Blogland who actually sleeps?
Anyway, nifty little badge over to the right. Click the title to get to my page.....
Happy Saturday, everyone!
It's been an exciting week for me, trying to source out the best tools for you to manage your blogs.
Of course, Paola at Mirror Mirror did most of my homework for me with this post.
I read it, I downloaded the software and I've been a very happy blogger ever since!
It seems to take care of all of the problems most of us have been having, like photo size. With this software, you can size photos small,
medium,
or large,
with a single click, or choose the original size option and by dragging on a diagonal from the top left-hand corner, you can size the pic to exactly fit your page.
All without counting pixels or dealing with the dreaded HTML!
Then there's the tables! You can do tables easily!!! Just insert a table (you can choose how many cells it has) and then insert a photo into each cell. Again, sizing is easy and up to you.
Just Some of the Fun You Can Have With Photos and Tables
and... Fonts!!!!
Hyperlink - simple point and click and the option to have it open in a new window is a simple check mark. NOoooo HTML!!
Now, I know you're wondering, will this work for MY blog, on MY computer?
Well, it interacts with the big blogging platforms, Typepad, Wordpress, and Blogger. And, AND! It allows you to see your post as it will actually appear on your blog BEFORE you publish it.
I don't know about you, but the preview option on Blogger doesn't actually give you the full sense of how it will all look. I've had a few surprises....
As for the system requirements, it's all explained on the website, before you try to download.
Cool, no?
Oh! I forgot to mention the price. It's FREEEEE!!!!!!
