Updates

I wanted to update you on a few things today and the best way I can think of to do that is in list form. Here we go...

1. I'm sure you've noticed that I've changed my blog template. I also took out the Intense Debate comment form which means a couple of things...It means that all your old comments are gone which isn't cool but I can live with it and it means that you can't leave comments on older posts now. You can't do that because when I had the I.D. form on here, I had to have the settings say "Don't allow, show existing" and unless I go back and edit each individual post to "Allow comments" then new comments aren't allowed. I honestly don't have the time to change each individual post so that's why it will tell you that new comments are not allowed. You can, however, post comments on my new posts including this one.

2. Speaking of time, I still don't have a lot of time to post new tips but the 50+ tips that I have already posted are still under the tab **BLOG TIPS** at the top of this page. If you design your own blog, there are a lot of good things there that will help you. Please remember that Blogger has changed their "Layout" button to "Design" so anywhere that I have told you to go to "Layout" just go to "Design" instead.

3. I do have the time to work on your blog for you though. If that's something you are interested in, then just go to the tab Kats Kreations at the top of this page for all the information. I'd love to help you out!

4. I have been slacking on picking up my awards lately. I'm sorry about that. Life has just been downright hectic. If you gave me any awards then thank you so much! I really appreciate the recognition and love ♥

5. Finally, I'd like to thank those of you that follow me here and on my other blogs. I enjoy the friendship, the comments, the emails and the encouragement. You mean the world to me and I wouldn't want to be here without you!

Have a great day everyone!  

Introducing Kats Kreations

I am pleased to introduce you to Kat's Kreations, my home business that was made specifically to help you! If you need any type of help with your blog, then this offer is made for you. Just click on the picture above, the tab that says Kats Kreations at the top of this page or here to get all the information on what I have to offer you. I can't wait to hear from you!

Here's what I'm thinking...

So apparently I'm not going to get any kind of spare time to speak of...which bites but what can I do, ya know? So...

Here's what I'm thinking...

I'll post here when there is something that YOU want to know how to do. You just let me know and I'll write a post just for you on the subject you want to learn about, k? :)

Meanwhile there are over 50 tips that you can find by clicking on the **BLOG TIPS** tab at the top of this page.



Have a wonderful night everyone :)

New Blogger Template Designer: Backgrounds

I told you about the new Blogger Template Designer the other day. I talked then about Templates. Today I'm going to tell you about the Backgrounds they have available. 

Using the new Designer you can pretty much make your blog look any way you'd like. After you have chosen which Template you want to use, you can spruce it up with a background image. There are TONS of images to choose from under the following categories:

• Abstract
• The Arts
• Business
• Celebrations
• Entertainment
• Family
• Food & Drink
• Health & Beauty
• Hobbies & Crafts
• Home & Garden
• Nature
• Patterns
• Recreation
• Science
• Shopping
• Technology
• Textures
• Transparent
• Travel

For example, this blog is using the hearts that can be found under both Celebrations and under Transparent and my cookbook is using a background that can be found under Food & Drink (click here to view my cookbook).

Once you've found the background image that you'd like to use, simply click on Apply To Blog in the upper right hand corner. Simple as that! Next time I'll tell you about the Layout options. Have a great day everyone!

Zemanta gadget

I was reading about a new gadget on Blogger Buzz this morning called Zemanta. It looked really interesting so I thought I'd try it out. I installed it on my Crazy Life blog since that's the blog that I use the most outgoing links on. I think it's pretty awesome stuff.

You can add pictures that they offer, links to related information and a link at the bottom of your post to related stories. And the gadget does all the work for you, adding things in a sidebar next to your create post editor as you type. It finds items related to what you are typing about and lets you choose which ones to use in your post.

You can read all about Zemanta here and see it in action on my post here. If you write an entertainment blog, a news blog or a current events blog, this would be the perfect gadget for you! 

New Blogger Template Designer: Templates

I told you that I would talk to you about the new Template Designer feature that Blogger has added. I thought the best way to do that would be to break it down into sections. Today I'm going to talk to you about Templates.

To get to the new Template Designer, from your Dashboard select Design. Then select Template Designer. 

There are several different basic template designs that you can start with: Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc., Watermark, Ethereal and Travel. Under each template design there are different designs using the same basic template. For example, this blog is using the Simple template in red (which is the fourth design under Simple). 

You can click on the design and see how it looks on your blog without ever changing anything on your actual blog which I think is cool. When you find a design that you like, go to the top right hand corner and click on APPLY TO BLOG.  Don't hit that until you are sure that's the design you want to keep though because once you do, that's your template. Of course it's really simple to change if you just don't like it at all. 

Next time I'll talk to you about the Background feature. Have a great day everyone! 

Dear Blog Love,

I realize that I have been neglecting you, my sweet blog, the most out of all of my blogs. I'm sorry blog. I didn't mean to ignore you. It's just that I don't have a lot to tell you about right now. But when I do have something to say, you'll be the first to read it dear blog. Now, jump over to Blogger Buzz and read the newest, neatest things available on Blogger k? Thanks blog. You know I love you. I promise I'll use you again soon!

Just for fun

Did you ever want to play around and have something written ǝpısdn uʍop? Hehehe just for fun, go here, type in the text you want upside down and hit flip :) 


Or, if you wanted a unique look to your blog title, you could simply put in whatever you wanted upside down and then copy and paste it under Settings, Basic, Blog Title...

Blog Loʌǝ

Use your imagination! Oh, by the way, I worked in restaurants for over two decades and they would always have us flip one letter either backwards or upside down on our sign outside. It attracted attention and made people remember it. Just something to think about ;-)

Blogger changes

Blogger is always making changes to improve your blogging experience. The newest changes I noticed a couple of days ago but I haven't really explored them yet. I HAVE looked at them though, so today I thought I'd just give you a quick summary of what I've found.

On your dashboard where it used to say Layout, it now says Design. When you click on it, it still takes you to Page Elements where you can add gadgets and rearrange your page elements. Edit HTML is also still there.

The new part is Template Designer. Here you can change your template, add a background image, choose your main color theme, tweak your layout and add advanced CSS. 

As I explore these options, I'll tell you all about them. 

I've also noticed that when you select Preview under your post, it opens your preview in a new page so that you can see the whole page and not just preview the post in a little window. I think that's pretty cool.


Have a great weekend everyone and I'll see you soon!

How to toggle the navigation bar

I received an email asking how to toggle the navigation bar (have it only show up when your mouse is over it), so that is what I'm going to tell you about today.

I told you before how to hide the navigation bar completely but some people want it to be there so that the 'next blog' option is available still. They also like to show that they are a Blogger blog, have the search form available up there and be able to sign in from it. They don't, however, want it there all the time because they believe it interferes with their blog look. I understand that line of thought. I don't like it up there all the time either.

One more thought before I tell you how to do this... A lot of new blog templates have the nav bar hidden in the HTML so when you use their template, the bar is automatically hidden. This code will help that too.

1. Go to your dashboard and find the blog you want to toggle the nav bar on

2. Select Layout


3. Select Edit HTML


You may want to download your full template if you're afraid you are going to mess up. That's up to you. I live dangerously and never do this but it's a good idea if you're unsure of what you are doing ;)


4. Find the following code:

#navbar-iframe {

There should be more code following it. More than likely it will say something about 'hidden'. Highlight all the code between the # and the } (notice that that symbol is backwards from the one above..it's the closing symbol)

5. Replace it with the following code:

/* Blogger Navigation Bar */
#navbar-iframe {
opacity:0.0;
height: 10px;
filter:alpha(Opacity=0)
}
#navbar-iframe:hover {
opacity:1.0;
height: 30px;
filter:alpha(Opacity=100, FinishedOpacity=100)
border: 2px;
}

6. Preview your blog to make sure it looks right

7. Save your template

You can also go to Page Elements under Layout and change the look of the nav bar. I have this blogs set to Transparent Light. That allows my original blog colors to show through the nav bar. You can hover your mouse towards the top of this page to see how it looks. I hope this helped! Be sure to let me know anything you want to know how to do! Have a great Thursday everyone and I'll see you soon :) 

Tell me what you want to know

As of today I've given 50 different tips (you can find them under **BLOG TIPS** at the top of this page) on things you can do to improve your blog. Ok, some of them were just for fun, some were technical tips, some were suggestions and some were improvements but you get my point :)

Now I'm asking you once again what you'd like to know how to do. If you'd like any kind of tip at all on things for your blog, please leave me a comment here and let me know and then I'll let you know how to do it! 

I hope you all have had a great weekend and I'll see you soon.

p.s. I'm thinking about coming back to blogland on a more regular basis. Thinking being the key word. It all depends on what life throws at me :)

Turn your blog into a book

Have you ever thought that you'd like to have your blog made into a book? Maybe you'd like to have it printed out to give to family members as a keepsake or maybe you write a technical blog and would like to make it into a book to sell. It's completely possible!

Blog2Print and Blogger work together to make your blog into a book. 

YOU PICK

• Cover
• Images
• Number and Order of Posts
• Comments

You can edit your book, add/remove comments, and add or remove pictures.

---

A 20-page softcover
Blog Book is just $14.95
Hardcover only $24.95. And extra pages are only 35 cents!

---

NEW! Get a PDF of your
Blog Book for only $7.95.

And for those of you that have photo blogs you can now have up to 1500 photos in your book! How awesome is that?! 

If you've ever dreamed of making your blog into a book then this is the best deal I've found. And if you do decide to make your blog a book, send me a copy LOL Have a great day, a great weekend and a great Memorial Day everyone and I'll see you next week!

Wow

I just thought I'd share this video with y'all today. It's just crazy if you ask me! I post under my own name though and not anonymous so I guess if someone wanted to sue me for my opinion it'd be easy to find me :)

Things I love and things I don't love

I told you yesterday that something had made me very unhappy but I wasn't going to get into it on my daughter's birthday. Today, however, you will hear about it.

If you read my Happy At Home blog then you already know why I'm upset. Aggravated is a much better word. Here's the deal...

My fish is very sick. More than likely she's going to die. I spent all of my free time yesterday and last night trying to research what is wrong with her. The key word there is trying.

Most of the sites Google sent me to were no help at all. That really makes me mad. Why did Google say they were good sites for the answers I so desperately needed? Because of the tags that were put on people's posts. They added tags that had NOTHING to do with the actual post that they wrote. That is so wrong to me.

Google has no idea that their search results are wrong. As far as I know they don't anyway. Their robots search the site and the labels aka tags that the site administrator added to their posts lies to the robots and makes them think there is something about that thing on the site when there really isn't. (Does that make sense?)

So today I'd like to suggest to you...to BEG YOU...PLEASE DO NOT ADD TAGS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR POST! I wasted a lot of time going to sites that did not contain what they claimed to contain. 

Ok, I feel better now. To feel EVEN better, I'm moving on to the things I love :)


My friends Amy @ Keeping Up With The Schultz Family and Ji @ Jingle have both given me several awards. I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to post them ladies!


From Amy:

From Ji:

Thank you so much Amy & Ji ♥ I love them and y'all!

I hope all of you reading this have a wonderful day! See you soon!

BlogHer

I'm only talking to women today. Sorry guys. You'll have to come back a different day.

If you've been in the blogging world for long I'm sure you've heard of BlogHer. BlogHer is a community just for women bloggers. Here's just a little of what they say...

At BlogHer.com, you’ll find the best conversations led by women in social media. A curated selection of authentic voices. Life well said.

 

BlogHer is a community and media company created in partnership with women in social media. 

Today, BlogHer is the largest community of women who blog: 20+ million unique visitors per month (Nielsen Netratings). Engaged, influential and info-savvy, these women come to BlogHer to seek and share advice, opinions and recommendations. BlogHer’s team works hard to bring you the best and brightest conversations, writers and speakers – online and in person.

I created my profile there today and can't wait to get involved in all that they offer! It's pretty exciting to me!

Just click here to get there :) Sign up and join all the women who are a part of this great site! It's free...that's always awesome!

Want to hear more before you go? Ok. Here's Katie Couric talking both about BlogHer and with some of The Mommy Bloggers...

Awards and A How To video featuring lil ol' me

First of all I have some awards from the lovely and talented Jingle to share with you. She is the sweetest girl and the Queen of Awards if you ask me :) Here they are:

If you don't visit Ji already you are really missing out on a true angel. She is a wonderful poet and a beautiful person. Click here to visit her. 

Thank you so much for all my awards Ji! They are beautiful and I am honored ♥ 



Now, about the how to video I mentioned. I've talked quite a bit about memes and some of you know that I host my own meme on Saturday's on my blog Me & My Memes called Hooray for Saturday! that I've been posting every single Saturday for over a year now.

I really don't have any rules for my meme except one. That you link back to my blog. The blog that I post the meme on. There would be no point whatsoever to link back to one of my other blogs because the meme is only posted on the one I mentioned above. 


I only ask you to link back to me IF you are going to post your link in my MckLinky. I've even made it easy for you by posting the code for my button which AUTOMATICALLY links back to my blog for you on the Hooray for Saturday! post each week.

I really don't think it's too much to ask that you link back properly to me if you're going to add your link to my post. Truly I don't. 


I do understand that some of you may not understand how to get that code and put it into your post. That's what my video is of. Me showing you just how to do that :) 


I apologize in advance for the shaky video quality. I've been quite sick and my hands were, well, shaky. I still think it's good enough to share with you and hope it helps those of you with questions on how to add my button to your posts. 







I hope everyone has a great day...see you soon :)

Can you make money from your blog?

Beth asked me about making money from your blog. It is possible but it's slow, slow, slow. In other words, you can't get rich and even if you do slip through and get rich, it won't happen overnight. I've put together some sites that can help you learn how to make money with your blog. They are all good sites that I've gone through personally. I hope they help!

1. Ways to Make Money Blog

2. eHow

3. HomeBIZgalaxy

4. EduBook

Print this page

In some cases you might want people to be able to print your posts. Like in the case of my cookbook. I imagine some people would like to print the recipes. I know I like to print recipes when I find one I really like.

So I've added a Print Friendly Button to my cookbook and now there is a print button on each individual post. You can click here to see what that looks like. Go to the bottom of the post and look for the green button. I'll wait...

Back? Cool. Do you want one? Even cooler :) Here's what you do:

Go here


Follow their instructions. You can add the button to your personal website, a Wordpress blog or a Blogger blog. They have very easy to follow instructions. Be sure to save your template after you add the code. 


The neatest thing to me about this button is it allows you to customize what you print. You can remove pictures or sections of the post so that it only prints what you want. For example you might not want to include my cost section on my recipes and only print the recipe section. No problem with this button. It also allows you to view the post in PDF. Cool again :)


Now go get you one! Have a nice day everyone.

How to block people from your blog

Do you want somebody to just go away? Are they spamming you and making your blog life crazy? How about this...are they someone you know that is being awful to you about your blog content and leaving nasty comments? And you just. want. them. to. go. away. Right?

Well, if you want new, random readers then I'm sorry, you can't block them from your blog. If new people aren't a concern to you then yes, you can keep someone off your blog. This is what you do:

1. Go to your Blogger dashboard

2. Go to Settings for the blog you want to make private

3. Go to Permissions

4. Where it says Blog Readers - Who Can View This Blog?, choose the option that says Only People I Choose 

5. A box will open up that says invite some people to read your blog. Enter the email addresses of the people you'd like to invite separated by commas. You can invite up to 100 people.

Now your blog is private and only people that were invited to read it can view it. If someone that has not been invited goes to your blog URL they will get a statement saying "We're sorry, it doesn't look like you have permission to view this blog".

Now, if you're like me and love visitors even if you have no idea who they are, that option will not work. You can, however, block someone by IP address. First you'll need their IP address for this to work.

It's really easy to get someone's IP address if you are using Site Meter. Click here to learn more about Site Meter. It's partway down the page after my prizes.. 


Once you have their IP address, go here


Follow the instructions they give and then that person will be blocked.


Another interesting deal about blocking people by IP address is that my new comment form has that built right in. When someone leaves a comment, I have the ability as administrator to block their IP address directly from their comment. It's just another plus I think :) You can click here to learn more about the IntenseDebate comment form.


I would suggest a few of things before you go through all of the above though.


1. If the offending person is someone who comments often and you are just irritated by them, just talk to them directly. More than likely you can resolve the problem by being open and honest if both people act reasonably. Don't be hateful about it. There's no reason to hurt anyone's feelings but tell them, hey, this is bothering me...If they still don't want to cooperate then block them.


2. Post a Blogger's Disclaimer on your blog and write a post explaining it. You can post the Read Me disclaimer or write your own or do both like I did for my Happy At Home blog. If people don't respect them, block them.


3. If the person is someone you know personally, again, talk to them. Tell them that their comments are hurtful for you and that your blog is your place to express yourself and that you would appreciate either respectful comments or no comments at all. This is covered under the Read Me disclaimer in #2.


4. If the person is an out and out spammer like the oriental "each dot = a porn site" spammer that is making their way around Blogger, report them using the report button at the top of their site or by copying their profile address or comment with username and going to Blogger help. Then block them.

Following blogs through an RSS feed

A while back Joni asked me to talk about RSS feeds and following blogs in a reader. I'm finally getting to that. I'm sorry it's taken me so long!

To follow a blog in a reader is very easy. 

First, find the RSS button. Sometimes it's on the blog itself somewhere but it's always in the address bar if there is a RSS feed for a page. This is what that looks like:

Do you see the orange button in the corner? It might be too small. Just look up at the address bar. Now do you see it? Click it. A menu opens up that looks like this:

Click on the option that says "Subscribe to whatever blog it is - RSS". That will take you the feed subscription page. That looks like this:

On the right hand side it says "Subscribe Now!"  and gives you choices on what reader to use it in. I use My Yahoo because that's what my homepage is set up as and that's where I want to view the feeds I subscribe to. Click on the reader you want to use. It will take you to your homepage and should give you an option to keep or remove the feed from your reader. Here's what mine looked like:

Choose keep it. Now you are going to set up your options. Click on the word "options" in the right hand corner of your reader and a menu will open up that looks like this:

Click on "settings". Here's what that should look like:

You can choose to show anywhere from 1 post at a time to 10 posts at a time. 

You can also choose which dates to show posts from ranging from the last 24 hours to any date which shows the last posts no matter when they were posted. 

Under display, the headline summary and image shows a thumbnail picture from the post if one is available, a short summary of the content and the title of the post; image only shows just a thumbnail; headline only shows just the title and headline and short summary shows the title of the post with a short excerpt.

Once you have the settings the way you want them, click on save. Now the feed is set up in your reader. 

If you have a blog and want to see your reader subscription stats just go to your Feedburner page to view them. You have Feedburner set up because I told you about it a long time ago right? If you don't then click here to find out how to set it up :)

This is what that page looks like:

Look at all my readers ♥ If I ever get depressed thinking no one is reading my blog then this page always cheers me up :-D

I hope this helped you Joni...and the rest of you as well! If you need to know anything else just ask. I'll be happy to tell you all about it! Happy Sunday everyone!