Changes

Well I've been playing around with the new Template Designer that Blogger has added. Can you tell? It's really pretty cool. I'm still checking stuff out but I'll be here soon to tell you all about it!

New blogs

I know I've been neglecting this blog lately and I'm sorry about that. Life has just been a little too crazy and I'm super tired and pretty blah. I thought today I'd tell you about the newest blogs I'm following. I think you'll like them too so give them a visit when you can...

• Stacy Uncorked
• The Todd Blog
• ~Where Memories Are Made~

And don't forget to go enter my giveaway on my cookbook and have a chance to win a Monkey Bread Kit! Only 4 days left!!

A blatent advertisement for myself

I'm having a giveaway on my cookbook this week! You can click here to enter to win an awesome Monkey Bread kit :) I promise I'll be back to this blog soon, soon, soon!

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 :)

A guest post

(Instead of being a guest writer today I am more of a hostage takeover writer.  I wanted to speak to all of Kathy’s friends and this was the best way.  I had to twist her arm because she would never ask for help for herself.  But if it were someone else needing help she would be the leader of the brigade.)

 

 

Hello everyone.  I wanted to talk to you about our friend Kathy.  As you know her husband is going through some very serious health issues.  Kathy is taking care of him full time while dealing with her own health issues.  Kathy and Tim are a very loving, sweet and generous couple.  I know that if you needed something and she had it she would give it to you.  Due to the economy they have had a string of bad luck and misadventures along with the health issues.  I wanted to ask you, her friends, for help. 

 

I sent some of you an email about this but I don’t know that all of them were received. Also some of you didn’t have a link back to a site or email for me to contact you.  I am asking for any help that you can give to this very special couple.  No amount is too small.  Anything is very appreciated.  Some of you have already responded and it has made a tremendous difference.  Kathy was able to purchase a blood pressure device that Tim’s doctor said was a must have.  That is so wonderful to me.  It fills my heart with love for people that care about others.  Everyone is having harder times these days so that makes it that much more meaningful. 

 

I have a PayPal Donation button on both of my blogs.  It is labeled “Donations for Kathy” and is on the right sidebar.  The donations received go directly into Kathy’s PayPal account.  Even the smallest amounts can make a big difference.  Reposting or linking to this will also be a big help.  There are posts on both about this named “Helping Friends”. 

 

Thank you all so much for your time and for being such great friends to a wonderful person. 

 

Links to the Donate button are at www.screamingforchocolate.com and www.banksprings.com.  

 

Love Joni/Coco

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!

I'm back!

I have successfully rearranged my schedule that makes it possible for me to be here...at least a little :)

I will be here in blogland two days a week until things slow down around here. Friday's to read your blogs and Saturday's to write mine. That's the best that I can do right now. Hopefully it won't last too long and I'll be able to start posting and reading again on a regular basis. 

That means a couple things: 1. I get to write again! Yay! That's one thing that I love to do and I've really been missing it. 2. You better make your Friday posts rock!! LOL just playing. Your posts always rock :-)

For today's post I'm just going to catch up a little bit...

Prizes

I won $20 from Kathy's blog Reflections!!! I was so excited to get it in the mail that you would have thought I'd won a million dollars. It came at a time that I really needed the money and thanks to Kathy my cats and fish got food that week :) Thank you so much Kathy!!

I won a giveaway from Blueviolet's blog A Nut In A Nutshell. I'll let you know as soon as it arrives! I keep telling y'all that she has giveaways ALL. THE. TIME. so you should really visit her and win some stuff yourself!

Awards 


I got several awards from the beautiful Ji @ Jingle and the beautiful Shakira @ You Are Never Alone...


I'd love to show them to you but I'm a total goober and can't find the ones that were given to me :( Thank you anyway for awarding them to me ladies! You know I love you both!

New Blogs

I found a couple new blogs..

First, Katdish has gotten her own site so Hey look, a chicken! is now, drumroll please, Katdish.net and let me tell you, it looks GREAT! You still get the wonderful Katdish and now she's all moved into her new home. Visit her if you don't already...you'll love her!

I think I told you that Katdish sent me an excellent book called I Became A Christian And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. Wait, I think I told you that on my Happy At Home blog and not here. Dang. Ok, well, she sent me this awesome book that I fell in love with on the first page and have now read three times. True story.

Anyway, sorry, I know I ramble a lot. She pointed me to the author Vince Antonucci's blog. It rocks just as much as his book does. Visit him.

And finally, I received an email that was basically a hey-follow-my-blog email which I usually ignore BUT they said they read one of the blogs I follow and saw me in a comment there and wanted me to just check out their blog so I couldn't resist. I am so glad I didn't resist. The blog is called Workforced and it is so funny!! You should get over there too!

That's all I have for today. I hope all of you are doing well! I'll be by to read you all next Friday and I'll see you here next Saturday. Have a great week everyone!

Break time

I'm taking an internet break. Click here if you'd like to read the details. Feel free to leave me any suggestions for tips that you'd like and I'll get back to them when I return :)

Updating myself

I am the first one to admit that I am terrible about updating my own stuff. I'm all for fixing up other people's stuff and having it perfectly up to date, but when it comes to MY blogs, I'm super slow. Sorry about that. I don't think I'm lazy...I just think I get distracted easily and forget stuff. Soooo...

Today I went through my posts and updated both my **BLOG TIPS** and my Awards and Prizes tabs that you can find at the top of this page.

Then I went through y'alls blogs looking for buttons and found lots of them that I needed to share. Some of them, like blueviolet @ A Nut in a Nutshell, I've followed for a long time but they've been busy updating and I haven't caught up with them until now. Not that I haven't read them. I read everyone all the time. I just haven't posted their new stuff yet. 

You can get to each of these blogs simply by clicking on their buttons (including blueviolet's pretty new purple button....by the way, she has LOTS and LOTS of giveaways so you should really visit her if you like getting free stuff!). Their sites will open in a new tab so don't worry about clicking like crazy and losing me. You'll still have me and you'll get them so CLICK AWAY!! 

I've also started following a new cooking blog, Laurie Holcombe aka Laurie's Kitchen. You can click here to visit her and also get to know her on my cookbook today where she is my Featured Chef by clicking here. She is pretty awesome and I think you'll like her!


And last but not least, the beautiful Ji @ Jingle has given me some awards that I need to share with you...

Thank you so much Ji!! You are so sweet ♥ I'd like to share all of these awards with all of you reading this so please take them and proudly post them or whatever you want to do :)

Have a great day everyone!

Grrr

Grrr is right. I'm mad at my comment form...again. For some reason it's not letting anyone comment. On any of my blogs. It won't even let ME comment. I tried. Grrr. 

I've emailed ID to ask for help. If they don't get it straightened out, I'm going to remove it. I like it but it's not worth me missing out on comments. 

*Update: I think the issue was my comment luv plugin. You can try to use my comment form or email me. Whichever you prefer :) Thanks*

Happy Birthday Shakira ♥

Put your party hats on and get ready for some cake! Today is a very special day! It's the beautiful and sweet Shakira's birthday!! Yay! I won't tell you how old she is (she can if she wants too) but I wanted to take this moment to tell her Happy Birthday and I love you!!

Click here to go to her blog and tell her Happy Birthday :)