a man who’s manly enough to go clean up snake chunks from my “photography area” behind our house. (see, the mowers were here today and — well, that’s enough.)
I love you, honey.
Archive of posts filed under the Miscellaneous category.
Blogging Change
Have you ever gone to Google Images? I go there from time to time, especially when I’m trying to identify a bird or bug or butterfly.
Have you ever gone to Google Images and typed in your web address or blog name? They are out there “harvesting” our photos. They do say the photo MAY be subject to copyright but, nonetheless, there they are. When I typed in Featherstone Quiltworks, I got 450 photos. My photos.
This isn’t new to me. I’ve noticed it for some time. That’s why, on my favorite nature photos, I add a watermark of “(c) www.suehecker.com” across the photo. It’s really too bad, because I feel it spoils the photo for my blog readers, and I know I probably have as many reading for the birds as for the quilts.
THE CHANGE: I’m posting my photos, even my favorites, without a watermark. Then after three or four days, I will swap out the “clean” photo for a watermarked photo. As in the example above, I’m not that concerned that the whole watermark is readable, as the photo does link back to my blog. I just want something across the face of it.
This will affect you if you’re someone who stops by once a week to catch up on what’s new. If it’s important to you to see the clean photos, you might want to sign up for Google Reader or whatever notification service works for you. With my new “theme”, I have the orange FEED button in the upper right. Click on the orange FEED button and that will help you sign up for notification of new content on this blog.
I use Google Reader and I love it. I am notified when there’s new content on the 45 or so blogs that I follow. (Compared to Vicki W, that’s a pretty small number!!!) Let me know if you need help or have questions, either through a comment or the Contact Me button at the top of the page. I’m not an expert, but I’ll do the best I can.
–Sue
Creating Blog Badges/Buttons/Chicklets
In the past, whenever I wanted to add a badge (see the brightly colored boxes on the right side of this site), I would have to ask my DS#1 (he does have a name, and it is Dave) to do it for me. I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t do it until I researched it the other day (I mean, it looked like it should just be a matter of copying and pasting some code in the proper spot). Turns out, my old theme design on my blog didn’t have the capability of using “widgets”, and so it was quite cumbersome and more than a little frightening for a non-code-writing person like myself because that little patch of code had to have “something” done to it first, then go “somewhere” in a big bunch of other code.
I feel there’s probably no need to explain to you at this point that I’m not a computer programmer or techie in any way! I turn the computer on/it works.
So that is what motivated me to update to a newer theme, and my #1 requirement for that new theme is that it accommodates widgets! This new Choco theme is a whiz with widgets. And that got me to thinking, I sure could use a badge/button for my give-away next week…I wonder how scary THAT would be??? Turns out, not scary at all.
Now, this isn’t a tutorial because I’m going to refer you to a site that walks you right through it. I made one, and it worked on the first try!!! Here is the link. I will continue through the steps I took, just because I’m dying to tell somebody that I did this successfully.
First you need the “artwork”. I went to my photo editor on my computer, selected a butterfly photo because there was an expanse of orange that would be a good background for text. I cropped it, re-sized it to about 90 x 120 pixels, then increased the viewing percentage to 100% so I could see what I had. Then I added the text. It looked a little flat, so I tried for a beveled edge look by darkening the edges with the drawing tool with an opaque setting. You can put as much or little effort into the artwork part as you want, and of course you could also use a drawing program instead of a photo. I’m just more of a photo person!
Then I went to the Squidoo site and followed their directions. Some things to know before you start. You need a place to put this little picture on the internet. I put it on Flikr (a free photo album site), but putting it in a blog post or any other on-line spot will do. You will need to get the location of that photo, plus the location where you want the button to send people. At this point you are just swapping out text, per the detailed instructions. You can also replace mouseover words with a message that people will see when their mouse/cursor hovers over the button.
Then *poof* you have the code for the button. In my (new theme) case, I could paste it into a widget and it was good to go! You could also make a button and paste the code right into your blog post (under the HTML tab). Anyway, I’m so proud of my new little baby:
–Sue
Ugh!
As you can see, I’m kind of in the middle of changing the look of my site. I’ve “auditioned” three new themes that I’ve liked, but they all have “issues” of one kind or another — no drop-down menu at the top to navigate to other pages plus I hate how the date and post title look on this one a previous one (but I really like the yellow), a column that’s too wide on another theme that’s a nice tan, and a third theme I liked real well but it has a dark background (really dark) and the little icons by the comments weren’t working quite right (and that’s this one). I’ll probably go with #3, but I need to play around with it some more tomorrow.
DS#1 who’s the real web master of this site (I just know enough to get into trouble) said he can change some things to customize it for me, so I’ll have check things out a bit more and see which one I like the best. This much thinking can’t be good for me!
–Sue
Self Portrait
Today Mary asked the question, can you take a good self portrait? Last month, I was experimenting with my camera, getting it ready because I knew that night I would want to take a self-timed photo of a group of neighbors we were having over for coffee and dessert. I ended up taking a picture of myself in the mirror as a test. It’s kind of grainy because I didn’t turn any lights on or use my flash.
I actually like this picture, but I think it’s because it’s how I look in the mirror, and that’s the “me” I’m accustomed to seeing. I kind of have my “mirror face” on. The picture of the neighbors? It came out nicely, and I’m saving it for a “Thankful” post in the near future.
So how about you, have you tried a self portrait lately?
–Sue
Farmers’ Market Report
Here’s what $10 bought at our local farmers’ market today:
2 Kohlrabi (for snacking)
Dill (will go on the potatoes)
Mint (in a Mojito…as diet permits :>(
Onions (in everything)
Yukon Gold Potatoes (mmmmm)
New Red Potatoes (see dill above)
Green Beans (with our 4th of July dinner today — “kids” are coming, gotta get cooking!)
And to all of us in the USA, Happy Independence Day! We sang “God Bless America” in church this morning, such a beautiful song. Have a wonderful day, where ever you live!
–Sue
PS: Because a specific spammer has been so persistent in bombarding me with junk (you don’t see it — it gets held in moderation), I’m closing comments on posts after 3-4 days. They like to “hide” their spam in older posts, so I’ve gone through and closed all the comments on my older posts. I probably deleted over 500 spam comments that have come in in the last 3-4 days. Note to Spammers: Get a real job that doesn’t hurt anybody, and make your momma proud!!!
Gratitude Post #2
A couple of weeks ago, or so, I posted a comment on Vicky’s blog to be eligible for a giveaway she was having. She gave away a tower of 40 (FORTY!!!) fat quarters, all coordinated, in lovely Moda fabric. And I WON!!! I thought I would photograph the fabric next to this cool pelican sister-in-law Grace sent to us a while back. (We love the pelicans at the Texas Gulf, and doesn’t your heart ache when you see the harm done to all the Gulf Coast wildlife by the oil? Anyway, this pelican is safe and sound!)
The fabric arrived last week, but I’ve been a little slow (and a lot busy) and haven’t taken the time to take a photo and properly thank Vicky. So thank you very much, Vicky! This was such a beautiful and generous gift, and it will make a very special quilt some day. (I just bought the book/CD “The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt“, and I think Vicky’s fabrics would be great in that quilt.
And I’m also grateful for all my blog readers out there. I’ve never met most of you, but there are a lot of you that I feel like I do really know. I appreciate every single one of you, but especially Bert in Alabama and Eileen in Illinois. If I haven’t blogged for a while, I’m likely to get an e-mail from one of them saying, “Are you okay?” It’s kind of nice to be missed!
Hope you’re having a wonderful summer day.
–Sue
Fat Tuesday
Week 2: Lost 2 pounds, for a total of 5. It feels good to be heading in the right direction.
I’ve been very faithful about recording everything I eat and drink into the Food Log on www.Fitday.com. The exception was the Wine Party Saturday night. I knew that would be tough, so I tried to sample things in moderation, totally skipped the dessert table, and I think I came out all right. There was no way for me to figure out the calories of all the appetizers, wine samples, and dinner. Just believe me when I say, it wasn’t an evening aimed at losing weight. It was an evening aimed at having fun, and so it was a success!
–Sue
It started with mushrooms…
I planned on fixing pork chops with mushroom gravy for dinner. The last time I made them, I added a big package of fresh mushrooms (saute’d in butter first; this time they’d get a quick spray of PAM), and it was wonderful! Don’t you hate running to the store for one little item? And this wasn’t even necessary, but it would be nice. Two days ago I did my best “living in Europe/walking to market” impression and hiked one mile each way to Target. That seemed like such a good solution again today, except the rain kept turning off and on, off and on, all day long.
The sidewalk was almost dry, so it seemed like a fairly safe bet. DH stayed home and agreed to come and get me if I got caught in a downpour. It was a pretty uneventful trip, and I just got sprinkled on a little bit the last ten minutes or so of my walk.
I learned some things today:
- You don’t buy very much when you know you have to carry it a mile. This practice will be good for the budget, as well as for the waistline. I bought a package of mushrooms and a French baguette (I just couldn’t resist).
- Target deducts 5 cents from your bill when you bring your own bag.
- I walked pretty hard, with an eye on the dark clouds. You don’t notice how hilly it is between here and Target when you’re driving. As I was huffing and puffing, the thought occurred to me, “this is just like the program on a treadmill”. No, Sue, the program on the treadmill is just like walking up and down real hills!
- I need to get outside more. And I need to remember to take my camera next time!
–Sue
Farmers’ Market
Today was the first day of the year for our farmers’ market to be open for business. It’s very convenient for us, as they set up on Sundays throughout the summer, and it’s only blocks from our church.
If I’m not careful, I’ll come home with way too much produce. I can’t help it — it all looks so enticing, and being locally grown, you just know it’s extra good. My solution has been to pull out a $10 bill, and that’s it. I make my choices by walking the length of the market (it’s not very long), then by the time I turn around to come back, I know what I want to get. Here’s what ten bucks bought this week:
$4 for fresh locally grown asparagus, $3 for a quart of shell peas, $2 for four kohlrabi (we ate two already, so just imagine there are four in the bowl…), and $1 for some HUGE radishes. I almost didn’t buy the radishes because they were so big, I was afraid they would be too hot. They were perfect!
–Sue
