LOOK AT THAT!!! ^ I made that! Holy cow. I never thought I'd figure it out but I did! It's still got to be resized a little and tweaked a bit but I DID IT! Thanks to a very easy tutorial found at Clover Lane.

I don't love it yet. Too many pictures, the text is too small and it needs to be resized. It will have to be wonky for a while. The babies are awake and it's time to make dinner. I'll try to get it fixed as soon as possible. It's really gonna bug me til I do. Meanwhile, I figured out how to resize it and made a few changes and now I really like it. I'm so proud! I'm doing the happy dance because I DID IT! I made my own photo header! :)

OK, OK, I know what you're thinking. Lately I've changed the look of this blog more often than I change my clothes and you're probably getting kinda tired of it. Sorry! What can I say? I'm fickle. I am ready for SPRING and if I can't have spring-like weather, I just had to get a little dose of that here on my blog. Don't worry. If you don't like this one, stick around. I'm sure I'll change it in a day or two.

Want to know how to change the look of your blog?

For some great free layouts and instructions, go to:

Hot Bloggity Blog
or
Shabby Blogs
or
The Cutest Blog on The Block

Have fun!

How to "Follow" your favorite blog

Ok first let me just say, I am probably gonna mess this up because I totally do not know all of the right technical lingo. But my sweet cousin asked a good question about this topic and I thought I would attempt to help. Please excuse me if I call something by the wrong name…I'd LOVE if anyone sees something wrong, please let me know so I can correct this post. Thank you!

Some blogs (a lot of those on Blogger) have the "follow with Google Friend Connect" application. To follow a blog all you have to do is click the button that says "follow". Then you will be asked to sign in. I have a Google account so I click that and then I type in my email address and password. Then a box pops up that says "follow this blog" and allows you to choose from 2 options:
1) follow publicly - which I do so that the blog owner knows I'm following their blog
or
2) follow privately - which I guess anyone can do if they want to but feels a little stalker-ish and creepy to me because I am keeping up with a blog but not telling anyone about it.

Now other blogs (like my Aunt Lynna's over at Okie Sister) don't have the "follow" button because they use a different type of application. She has a button on her blog that says "subscribe" and if you want to subscribe to her blog feed you type in your email address and click subscribe. When you do that, it brings up an email subscription request. Just type in the verification code and click on the button that says "complete subscription request". Then you are done. Now you will receive email updates when their is a new post on her blog.

BUT if you're like me, you probably get about a bazillion emails a day. And while I definitely want to know when my favorite blogs are updated, I would prefer to check my favorite blogs on my own instead of receiving an email about new content.

In that case, if you have a blog then you can customize your blog template and add a section kind of links to your favorite blogs (like in the right column here that say "Friends and Family's Blogs"). This is where it gets a little tricky. Right now I have a little one that is saying "Wants to pick you up please Mama". I'm guessing he needs my attention.  I'll do a post next about how to make simple modifications to your Blogger template.
Hope this helps, Sara. Stay tuned.

Comments fixed. If you've been having trouble leaving a comment, I think I've fixed that. I love all of your comments, so if anyone ever has a problem, let me know!

Thanks, Mandy! :)

We're in the process of getting our new computer set up. Looks like it might be a while before I can do a real post. But I've got LOTS of good stuff to blog about when I can. :)

Gonna have to turn on comment moderation for a while because I keep getting weird stuff instead of actual comments. Please feel free to leave me a comment just like usual though. The only changes will be that the comments don't show up right away like they used to. Thanks! :)

My links (to the right) are working again...I think. I'm sure you've noticed by now that I also have a new look. It's a cute one I found at www.thecutestblogontheblock.com and it will work out nicely until I can get everything the way I want. Boy, I'm picky!

I've not been doing much blogging lately because looking at my messed up blog template makes me very cranky. I tried (again) unsuccessfully to change my template and lost a lot of features of my blog. You'd think I would have learned my lesson the last time. I hate computers.

Also, today I defrosted a whole chicken to make beer-butt chicken. (Gross sounding name but it's delicious!) When I unwrapped it and took the disgusting gizzards out, I found what looks like a huge WORM inside! I am too grossed out for words. It could be part of the innards of the chicken but it looks like a huge earthworm. Gag!

Should I scrap the whole thing? I don't feel much "like chicken tonight" after this gross discovery. I was tempted to take a picture and add it to this post but even thinking about it makes me almost gag. I didn't think you wanted me to share that with you.

Now what am I going to have for dinner? I think maybe a bowl of cereal sounds good. No bugs or worms, I hope! GROSS!!!

Update: Jason came home and looked at the disgusting thing in my kitchen sink and said "Eww gross. Yep. That looks like a worm." NASTY!! We threw it out and had soup. I don't think I can ever EVER buy another whole chicken ever again. They grossed me out before this but now? BLEH!!!

STILL working on my blog layout. I am determined to figure out how to create tabs for different subjects at the top. That way you don't have to see my menu plans or my recipes or whatever unless you want to. I'm determined to figure out how to do this myself because I can't afford to pay someone else to do it for me. I'd love to be able to turn my blog over to a web designer who actually knows what they're doing instead of slogging through endless tutorials on the web and spending hours in front of this computer! But since we're on a majorly tight budget, looks like I'll be doing the designing myself. Bear with me...if things look wonky here once in a while, you can bet I've been messing around with my template again. Hopefully I don't get myself in over my head and lose anything! Wish me luck! Any hints or free advice about this would be GREATLY appreciated!
For an idea of what I'm trying to do, check out the layout at these websites:
Organizing Junkie http://orgjunkie.com/
Sisterly Savings http://www.sisterlysavings.net/
BeCentsAble http://www.becentsable.net/

No, my little devil-girl header isn't gone for good. I thought it was time for a change for a bit. She'll be back some day when I get tired of the dots. Don't expect this layout to stay the same very long. I'm so tired of the same old look but couldn't figure out how to keep the old header (devil-girl) and still have all the other things I want on my page. Expect things to be a little wonky looking around here for a bit. Boy, if I only knew someone who could give my blog a makeover for free???!!! I've spent hours on this silly thing and still don't have it the way I want. I want tabs at the top so I can add a recipes page, an about page, a books I'm reading page, a printables page (where I'll have lots of goodies for you to be able to print...labels for recycling, the coupon stacker and organizer images, etc). Keep your fingers crossed. I'll keep working on it but MAN, it is frustrating! Can anybody help me out?

Still having trouble getting Blogger to recognize my template with the changes I've made. I'm thinking seriously about switching to WordPress. Will be sure to let you know when/if I change but for now I'll still be blogging here. This template thing is about to drive me crazy though. If I can get WordPress to work more easily, I'm switching! Stay tuned.

Oh my stinkin' heck! (I found a website of that same name over at http://www.ohmystinkinheck.com and hopefully they don't mind that I'm borrowing that phrase. It's much better than some of the others I'm thinking of right now!)

I'm trying to make some changes to my template. Ya'll know what happened LAST time I tried that...I lost my pretty little devil-girl template! I'm a little leery of trying again but there are a few changes I'd like to make here so I will save and double-save and keep my fingers crossed that all goes well. I know absolutely NO html so I'm learning along the way. Half the time I don't even know if I'm using the right phrases, I just keep using the preview function and copying and pasting and editing until it looks like I want. It is a long, slow process but keep checking back and maybe some time my Crafty Lil Devil site will lhave an update. IF and only if I can ever figure out what the heck I'm doing! I love learning new things but this is taking FOREVER! But man, once I figure this out, I'll be able to change it whenever I want and add new things. It will be cool. I hope.

OK, I know I promised videos but haven't uploaded them yet. Cut me some slack folks! I've been having issues w/the downloading. Err...uploading or whatever. I finally gave up on getting the ones from my camcorder on here and decided to post videos I took w/my still camera. Then I proceeded to take about 10 videos (ok more like 6 or 7) of my little munchkin and still haven't gotten around to uploading. Maybe tomorrow? One can hope. But don't hold me to that. I've got company and we may go shopping tomorrow. Easton's Nanny and Papa are here from OK and we've been having a pretty good time. Today we went to Old Town Winchester and walked around and also stopped into the Winchester's Office Museum and checked it out. It was pretty interesting. I've walked by there a bizillion times and never gone in so I'm glad I finally had a chance to check it out. Tomorrow we may go to Winchester and get little man some size 12 month clothes. He's almost outgrown his 6-9 month clothes now so we're planning on hitting the sales some time this week to get him some bigger stuff for this summer. So I may or may not have a chance to get those videos uploaded tomorrow but I will try. :)

You know another cool thing about the Prizey website that I didn't mention in that previous post? The amazing blogs and websites behind the giveaways. I have found some new favorites just by being referred by Prizey. Some of my new favorite blogs and sites:
Now What Baby Check out their product reviews. Great stuff!

Another one of my favorite places to visit isRocks in My Dryer. Check out the Works For Me Wednesday (WFMW) posts for TONS of great tips, recipes, helpful hints. Love this one!

I also love Money Saving Mom. The Crafty family is ALWAYS on a tight budget so any hints about ways to cut costs or save money are GREATLY appreciated!

So go check out these sites! And let me know what you think. :)

Check back soon for videos. I'm working all day today trying to get videos uploaded to my computer, then to YouTube and finally to my blog. Wish I knew an easier way to do this! It takes forever!

No way! I think I might have figured out what was wrong with my blog template all by myself! Don't ask me how I did it. I just copied and pasted parts of my saved template into blogger and crossed my fingers it would work and it looks like it did! Woohoo! Hello, lovely pink and black layout! I've missed you! :) How weird...some of the comments are here and some are missing. Very strange. But so glad to have my devil-girl back.

Oh no! I was playing around with the layout of my blog and totally lost my pretty pink CraftyLilDevil template! And the awful thing is I had TWO backups of the template! But when I tried to copy and paste into blogger, it says there is an error. Actually here is what the error says: "Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: Scanner State 24 not Recognized."
CRAP! What the heck does that mean?! I don't have time (or even know how really) to wade through all those lines of code to figure it out and probably wouldn't even know it if I saw it. AARRGGHH!! I am so frustrated! I'll play with it some more until I get it back (hopefully) but for now here's a plain old boring one. :(

It's Christmas Eve and I'm blogging from the couch. I'm feeling much better (thanks for all the well-wishes). Today, Jason spent all day trying to get my laptop online. He finally had to call tech support and they had to give us some special IP address. After that, the details escape me, but it has something to do with a router, a wireless card and blah blah blah. All I know is that I can finally use my laptop to do my lesson planning, blog, check my email, etc. Yay! Thanks, honey for working so hard to get my Christmas present working! :) Love you!

Other than that, we've been pretty lazy today. It's been nice. We're just waiting til time to go to bed so we can get up tomorrow and open presents. We each have a large box under the tree that have been driving us crazy trying to figure out what's inside. Hmm...I know what his big gift is from me, but I'm not saying a word until tomorrow. I think tonight we'll just watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and hang out on the couch.