hello wall

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Wall meet friends, friends meet wall.  We finally did it - actually hung our pictures!  Ya see up till this point we had a few spots with picture around the house - but i always felt compelled to leave some pictures out because there was never really enough space to hang them all.  It was sad.  Until now!  I did tons of research trying to figure out exactly how i wanted to hang the pictures, chose a wall and went for it!  Did i mention, we decided to paint the chosen photo wall a "pop" color to make it even more spectacular.  

I seriously love it.  Turned out every bit as good as i hoped!

And by the way - my frugal purchase of the day:

Target printable - free $10gc with $50 purchases.

$50 included:

2 sweaters (1 on clearance/1 not) - totaling 18 - used 2/ $4 off coupon printed at target coupons 

hamper - 11

organic wolfgang puck tomato soup (a must try if you haven't!) - 3 cans - $6

yankee candle  - $2

2 pairs of jeans (1 on clearance/1 not) - totaling $20 - had 5/ off 20 or more printed out from previous purchase

bread - $2.50 - .50 off printed from previous purchase

total ~little over $50 - $10 target gc!


Happy Frugal Friday ladies!

xo-steph


Dec 9, 2011

reunion with the college room-mate

Oh the agony of realizing your getting old, time is passing, and you get further and further away from your glory days of college.  Thats what i have been up the last couple days.  Thinkin of how much time has passed since i last saw my room-mate Autumn from college.  Oh you couldn't tell we are 7 years out, well thats sweet…we dont look a day over 21, well i will go ahead and agree wth you for the sake of not wanting to hide in a room and sob!  

Nooo, actually - quite the opposite.  I mean really - its like approaching 30, theres this ah ha moment when you finally realize who you are.  (maybe not what you want to do with your life per say) but that you understand yourself.  Very different than college.  Your comfertable with you.  You accept the things that you used to hate.  Least i do.  Maybe its growing older, wisdom possibly.  Who knows, all i know is as much as i am comfertable with myself, i absolutly loved the reunion with, as it brought me back to the carefree days of lack of a million responsibilities.  


It was nice.  Thanks Autumn.  We need to do it again.

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Dec 4, 2011

our thanksgiving 

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Ours was event jam packed and wonderful!  Family, friends, and our yearly tradition of the Macy's Parade.  See i work it.  Every year (past 3) and we make it a whole big thing.  Take the kiddos, make some memories, and always a member of our family has joined which makes the experience that much better. (husband rocks, he cares for them while i work it) 

My dad came up this year, words cant explain how appreciative i am of him.  His help that day and pretty much always.  He is so full of caringness (word? - yup i make em up sometimes)


Anyways to sum it up, our weekend was awesome.  Hope yours was too!  

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             {the boys}

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              {porter and his favorite balloon}


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              {grandpa and blake}

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xo-steph

Dec 3, 2011

designing a blog button - on a mac and more

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I stumbled upon a new blog which i find a very good read.  In Every Season  - and she offered her readers the chance to advertise for free on her site.  Simply the nicest.  Especially for a newbie as myself.  So i jumped at the chance, natuarally.  Her requests were an email describng your blog and a button.  A button... she says.  What the heck is a button???  I did a search and came across a bunch of different methods to use, and none worked quite right.  ugh!  So my awesome husband came to my rescue. (after i tried and tried to follow all directions i found, even though im sure lots of fellow bloggers are way savvier then muah)  eh.  I gave in let him do some tinkering with the codes and magically (or at least it seemed so) it worked! Wahooo!

1. Create your button picture: Begin with a picture or your logo, no larger than 150 pixels wide. Include the title of your blog, as the point is to help increase your blog traffic, right?. I made my button picture in a free photo editing software for Mac's called Seashore.  Most websites i found were geared towards blogger/wordpress type blogs as well as PC editing software.  All good but none i could really use being as i use a mac.  

2. Host your picture:  Find a place to host your picture. I use Photobucket. I made a new account and it was quick and simple. I uploaded my button to Photobucket.  If you go into albums, you'll find your button photo.  You'll need the Direct Link. 

3. Create HTML for your button: I found tons of code online - most oudated and didnt work anymore - part of the reason i decided to post recent instructions to creating a button.  This code was revamped by mr. husband and tested to work!   Use this code and replace yourblogURL with your blog's URL, yourimagedirectlinkURL with that direct link URL i mentioned in step 2 in Photobucket, and your blogs name in the blogname.(keep the quotation marks!)

<a href="yourblogURL" target="_blank"><img src="yourimagedirectlinkURL" alt="blogname"></a>

4. Place the button in your sidebar: In your blog sidebar, (i use sandvox) choose the add a gadget or in my case i chose objects and insert raw HTML.  In the title area, put whateva your heart desires for grabing peoples attention to wanting to grab your button (hehe) and put it their blog page.   Then in the HTML box, use the HTML from the previous step you created. Save it. Make sure your button shows up on the sidebar and that the button takes you to your blog. 


Merry early Christmas friends - this was my present to all of you.  Serioualy though, i hope this helped!

Enjoy your new button and happy blogging.  Oh and check out that blog i mentioned, shes pretty darn cute.


xo-steph

ps - everyone deserves a glass of wine a day…cheers!



Dec 3, 2011
Aug 29, 2011
© Steph Chesebro 2011