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blogging

I’m Featured

by beth on March 9, 2010

in in life

I think Heather over at ThetaMom.com is really awe­some, we started blog­ging around the same time & she’s a really sup­port­ive per­son to have in your blog­ging cor­ner. How­ever, she may have lost her mind because she is hav­ing me as the first fea­tured blog­ger for her new community.

See, Heather recently started a totally rad Theta­Mom Com­mu­nity as a place for blog­gers & those who enjoy read­ing blogs to make new friends. And yep, I described TMC as rad & yes it’s 1985 in my mind. I’m writ­ing this while wear­ing neon, stone washed jeans & a giant set of ban­gles. Stop judg­ing me you know you love stone wash.

Any­way, I love the idea & when she announced it was open­ing I was right on that. Like white on rice or some­thing maybe soy sauce on rice since I also like brown rice but I digress. I swear I think I have a point. Point is (see I had one) the com­mu­nity is open & when she con­tacted me to be the first fea­tured blog­ger I fell outta my chair squeal­ing with excite­ment like a school­girl, which tech­ni­cally I just stopped being, so what if I’m old I can still squeal because I’m really thank­ful for the oppor­tu­nity to meet new folks. If have never been over to Heathers, take the time to visit Heather’s blog, you’ll enjoy the visit.

And now I’m rolling out the wel­come mat to those who are mak­ing their way over here. I fig­ure I while doing that I should also intro­duce myself.

I’m Beth.

I blog about my life, fam­ily, par­ent­ing, food, and home­mak­ing design.

I have four kids. My chil­dren are the rabble-rousing sort. On occa­sion they do things like chase each other around with poop made of play­doh, laugh as I leak breast-milk on myself even as inno­cent infants they know pure comic gold when they see it & all around they are the best human beings I’ve ever come into con­tact with. I am in awe of the fact I get to be their mother.

I’m also mar­ried. He is my best friend, I know how sick. Next thing you know I’m going to tell you he’s great or some­thing. Which he is because he is a cute nerd with a wicked sense of humor who is also great in the kitchen. It’s an ongo­ing story here that is con­tin­u­ing to be updated reg­u­larly because I had some­one ask how we got together, why didn’t we ever move & who has kids dur­ing grad school (mean­ing ARE YOU CRAZY?!). So I fig­ured I’d explain some of these things with the story of our lives, because hey WHO NEEDS PRIVACY? The How I Met Your Father series attempts to explain the back story of how two col­lege kids fell in love, never moved, and man­aged to build a life together.

I also fin­ished grad­u­ate school last year, I teach part-time sav­ing stu­dents from stab­bing pen­cils in their eyes and work on var­i­ous projects. Dur­ing my last year I thought why not write a blog? Because you know I didn’t have enough going on!!

Well, turns out the blog has been a HUGE life­saver. See, I was diag­nosed with post­par­tum depres­sion over the sum­mer. We’ve since bro­ken up, but some­times PPD tries to get me to take him back but I’m not falling for it. With­out the sup­port that comes from the peo­ple I’ve meet here & those who I’ve been so greatly blessed with in my every­day life I might have con­tin­ued to fall down the rab­bit hole.

So, um, yeah, if you made it through that you deserve a big drink because I got dis­tracted by line 4 & I wrote it. Feel free to make one even if it’s 6 in the morn­ing because accord­ing to many peo­ple Bailey’s Irish Creamer isn’t really alco­hol it’s just creamer; in fact, many things aren’t.  Pretty much any­thing that is alco­hol appar­ently might not really be alco­hol under the right con­di­tions. Although if you get arrested don’t try to use this as a legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count.

And again wel­come to casa de con­fu­sion & thank you for every­one who comes here on a reg­u­lar basis to read. I love that I have got­ten the oppor­tu­nity to meet you all & get met new peo­ple every­day.  You have no idea how awe­some I think you all are & how totally thank­ful I am to you all.  I mean really, truly, you are all AWESOME SAUCE, which is like the best kind of awe­some EVER & I KNOW these things even if I still think it’s 1985.

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(color scheme photo from WebsiteTips.Com)

I noticed that some folks com­mented either directly on my post about Mak­ing Over My Blog or asked me some­where else (e.g. email) about how I choose color schemes that go together. Sim­i­larly to how I answered the ques­tion on LinkWithin I thought it would be good to offer another post for those look­ing to fig­ure out color schemes for their own blogs. Because I know I had to find a lot of these things out by Googling all day long & hon­estly for a while there I was doing it haphazardly.

Then I dis­cov­ered a very sim­ple and easy way to choose a color scheme.

I thought shar­ing it might help oth­ers. I used the resources for Free Online Color Tools from WebsiteTips.Com and it helped TREMENDOUSLY for fig­ur­ing out what I liked & what I didn’t like. The site has tools for pro­duc­ing a palette of col­ors that work together ver­sus against each other. Also, it takes the has­sle of you hav­ing to play with dif­fer­ent CSS or HTML color codes try­ing to wing it on your own all the while you’re think­ing of throw­ing your com­puter out the win­dow because that would JUST BE EASIER. Save the com­puter & use a color gen­er­a­tor to help reduce some of the stress.

It also helped to have a sec­ond pair of eyes give me some feedback.

While Hubby can some­times give me TOO MUCH feed­back (NO, I don’t need to know that you think I shouldn’t have men­tioned in ALL CAPITAL let­ters that I bore all your chil­dren, CAPITALS were REQUIRED MISTER) but over­all he gives a good crit­i­cal sec­ond eye to what­ever I’m doing, be it blog­ging or writ­ing in another forum. He is also will­ing to help me if I need it on the lay­out or design of the blog in gen­eral, even if he thinks I can be a tad bit too obses­sive (which is true I can be but how dare he point out the OBVIOUS?!). Anyway…if you have the pos­si­bil­ity to have some­one give you a sec­ond opin­ion before you make a change to your color scheme on the col­ors you are select­ing it can save you a lot of time & effort.

For those who already have their color scheme locked down on their blogs or wbe­sites, how did you make your decisions?

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I wanted to answer the fol­low­ing ques­tion that was asked when I wrote about my blog Makeover in a sep­a­rate post. My rea­son is that I thought it was a ques­tion that many peo­ple might have when perus­ing the blo­gos­phere & one I had pre­vi­ously before find­ing out how peo­ple cre­ated a “You Might Also Like” sec­tion under their posts. Also, I love that Coryanne at house­wifeb­liss used the word snazzy. I think Mad Men is amaz­ing as well, not just because my gor­geous best friend was once on the show. (Although, I do think she should end up with a reoc­cur­ring role!)

Alright here’s the question:

Coryanne:
02/12/2010 at 2:08 pm (Edit)

Sepia is always more flat­ter­ing than colour! I have all my pics 1960’d in pic­nic now — we all look so healthy. And I did notice all the changes, try­ing to fig­ure out myself how to do every­thing, but I am sure that your hubby is right. By the way, how do you do that snazzy ‘you might also like’.…

not sure why I keep using snazzy, per­haps I have been watch­ing to much madmen

Ok, now for the answer…I use LinkWithin to get the “You Might Also Like” if you are on Blog­ger you can cre­ate a wid­get (LinkWithin takes you through the steps) and on Word­Press there is a Plu­gin designed for this you can add it from the Plu­g­ins sec­tion of your Word­Press dashboard.

Now, go add this to your blog. It’s easy & doesn’t cre­ate a bunch of clutter.

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A Makeover

by beth February 12, 2010

As you may have noticed I’ve been unable to restrain myself when it has come to play­ing with the lay­out here on my blog. I couldn’t help it. I’m try­ing to be bet­ter, I swear, and not make you all want to jab pen­cils in your eyes when you come here.  So I’m going to […]

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My Ghost Writer

by beth January 27, 2010

Hubby says D-man is like his mother. I think Hubby is just jeal­ous that I have so many back-up writ­ers to help me, because it’s not just D-man who has my back, but if I need it I can always get the elder chil­dren to bust out some mad writ­ing skills. They are my back-ups […]

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