Wordless Wednesday - Hubby's Project

The downstairs laundry/bathroom project. The space was not finished when we bought the house (only the framing, wiring and plumbing lines were in). Hubby has been working on it in his spare time......finishing the floor spanned two weekends.

Sub floor installed

Tiles down, spacers in and beer waiting.....

The favorite shoes....not quite so pretty anymore!

Finished!

Linking up with:

Strange Happenings

I was up way too late last night messing around with my blog......
I was trying to find a better set of social sharing icons than the standard ones that came with my blog and finally found ShareThis.com which allowed me to customize exactly which buttons I wanted to appear on each post and I was easily able to add it to my blog without having to go into my blog's HTML coding!

So I got it all added and then was messing around with some of my older posts updating my signature line and the strangest thing happened......

I have been using blogger on and off for over two years and have never had this one happen to me....

Suddenly all of my sidebar gadgets were floating at the bottom of all of my posts!  My footer was still where it was supposed to be.  I went into the Design/Layout section of my blog and it still showed my sidebar off to the right where it should be.  Although I love a good challenge, I was not impressed!

• First I tried "restoring" my blog from a previous backup when I new that the blog was working fine - that failed, all of the sidebar gadgets were still at the bottom of my posts.  So I knew it wasn't a problem with my HTML coding.  Then I tried going into my design section and changing the layout so that my sidebar would be on the left instead of the right and that didn't work either.  

• I then noticed something else strange - notice how I have an outline box around each of my posts?  All of my posts looked fine except the last two, I had the very last post embedded within the second to last post.  In other-words, the last post still had a box around it, but the second to last post had a box all the way around it and the last post, so it was a box within a box.   

• As a last ditch effort I thought something must be wrong with my last post so I changed it to draft and looked at my blog again and I still had the same problem......Hmmmm, something very strange was going on.  As a last ditch effort I decided that maybe the problem was that I the "share this" gadget would not allow me to have so many posts on my front page (I had 7 showing).  So I changed it to show only 6 and still had the same problem.  I then went in and changed it 5 with the same problem and then tried 4 posts showing.  The MAGIC number seems to be 4 posts since my blog magically aligned and put everything where it should be.

I am still not sure if this was a quirk of the "Share This" gadget or something else going on with a post or just some strange bloggy behavior, but I decided to work with only having only four posts showing!  Needless to say I had to move some of my sidebar gadgets around since with only four posts showing my sidebar ended up quite a bit longer than the posts and it looked funny.  So after some final shuffling around this morning, I ended up with my blog looking like this.

Now I am operating on about four and a half hours of sleep (darn blogger), but it's really my own fault since one of my quirks is that once I am presented with a problem like this I HAVE to solve it or it would have driven me crazy!

So my question for you is this ~ have you ever had your blog go crazy like this or do something else that you had a hard time figuring out?  What did it do, please share so I don't feel so alone in this crazy blogging world!

UPDATE:  

Darn blog.....I discovered that if I went to older posts the second page was doing the same thing that my first page was doing.  I think I nailed the problem down to a particular post and once I changed the date on that post the whole blog problem seemed to be resolved.  I am now back to showing 6 posts on each page and everything is where it should be!

Thought for the Day - Home

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

Getting Back to the Blogging Grove!

Part of my New Year's Resolutions was to get my blogging groove back and one of the best ways (besides posting of course) is participating in Blog Hops! I discovered this one quite by accident, but it looks to be fun since it has over 150 participants! 
If you want to participate just click on the link↓↓↓

This Weeks Questions: 

What is your ideal way to relax: Working on my blog (designing & refining) or reading a good book!

Where is your favorite place to be: Anywhere with my family!

Who do you consider your biggest role model: My Mom!

What does your life look like in 3 years?  Hmmm, pretty much the same as now, except I want an RV and settled into my Mom Cave/Office/Craft Room!

If you could go back and change one decision what would it be?  I would have had my last two kids when I was a bit younger!

What is your biggest accomplishment in life thus far? My Family and My Business!

I am looking forward to meeting some new "Bloggy Friends" ~ leave me a comment and I'll stop by your blog and do the same!

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

Blogger DIY - Centering

Some people like to re-arrange furniture and some people like to constantly change their home decor but what I like to do is find DIY ways to change and or customize the look of my blog.  Don't get me wrong I like to change things around at home too, but my space, budget and time is so limited that I don't often get to change the furniture or decor so my creative outlet is primarily limited to my blog! 
Since I am cheap budget conscience, I am always looking for a way to do things myself especially when I know they can or should be able to be done!

The other day I did a quick post about adding a Pinterest Gadget to my blog and today I will tell you how I centered both my Header Image and centered my Page Menu.

Both of these "fixes" are really simple to do!  Let's start with centering your Header Image.  First of all this fix will only work if you have chosen the check box to display your Header Image "Instead of title and description".

You would have done this when uploading your Header Image or it can be changed by going to Layout, then clicking on your Header Image to change it.  Once it is changed so that the check box shows "instead of title and description" you can go to the next step.

You should be in the "Layout Section" of your blog, then click on "Template Designer.

Once you have clicked on Template Designer you will come to a screen that looks like this:

You will need to click on Advanced, which will take you to this screen:

You will then need to click on "Add CSS", which will take you to a screen that looks like this:

 The blank White Box is where you add your custom coding to change things on your blog.

To center your Header Image You need to Copy and Paste this code into the White Box:

#Header1_headerimg {margin:0 auto;}

 

To Center the Page Titles You need to Copy and Paste this code:
.PageList {text-align:center !important;}
.PageList li {display:inline !important; float:none !important;}

If you are doing both at the same time your code should look like this:

 Then you want to click on "Apply to Blog" in the upper right corner.  As the changes are happening you will be able to see the the preview of your blog.  Once the changes have been saved you are all done!

That's it for now, I hope this quick tutorial has helped you out!  Please comment to let me know if you used it so I can check out your blog!  If you have a DIY Blogger fix you cannot find or would like help with then post a comment and I will see if I can figure out the "How To" on it - I love a challenge!

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! 
Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. 
Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

Thought for the Day.....Happiness

I am still immersed in moving my blog posts over from my other blog so I am leaving you with my Thought for the Day......

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

Thought for The Day...Being Nice

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

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Hot Chocolate Shooters

I found a fun idea to make and give out at Christmas this year - hot chocolate shooters! They looked like they would be cute and easy to make, but finding the containers (my daughter says they look like test tubes) required a bit of research. I persevered and found them online at a company called SKS Bottle and Packaging Inc. The bottles that I choose were #0890-17 and came packaged with 48 tubes and lids for $22.18 plus shipping (my total cost was $27 plus change). Each of the tubes will hold slightly less than 1/4 cup of hot chocolate - just the right amount for one standard size cup of hot cocoa! I created some cute little hanging tags for the directions, added a tube each of both chocolate and vanilla mini marshmallows along with a tube of crushed up peppermint bits, wrapped the whole thing with a ribbon and taa-daa, I think the end result turned out pretty fantastic!

These were simple enough to make that the kiddos could help too. I am thinking that the addition of cinnamon bits would be great for Valentine's Day!

Thank you for stopping by The Mix Gal! Comments validate my blogging efforts, so I would love to hear from you. Take care and Keep Life Simple by Mixing It UP!
~♥KerrieLynn

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Christmas 2012

  I have been really struggling to keep regular posts happening and this one is no different. It doesn't help that my blog was hacked twice and I had to take some extra time to implement some added security - then to top it off I had to move a bunch of files (over 2500 of them) and most of them were images - needless to say I now have a whole bunch of missing image links on posts that pre-date March of this year. I am in the process of adding them all back in but it is very time consuming and doesn't leave much time for new posts. Before it gets much later in the year I thought I had better take some time to get my Christmas recap post done!

She Loved Her American Girl Doll from Santa....

The morning chaos....with over 10 people it is bound to get crazy!

Other than the weather (usually cold and rainy) I love everything about Christmas, from the decorations to the food and most important the gathering of family. We missed my hubby's parents this year since they were not able to make it and my sister was not able to come up this year either, but my immediate family plus my Mom, Dad, Grandma, Brother and his daughter were able to make it.

My house has morphed over the years into the gathering place and I love that! Christmas morning is just the four of us (myself, hubby and two daughters still at home) plus the dog and the cat. We spend the morning opening our gifts for each other and the gifts that Santa has brought and then we enjoy our traditional Christmas morning cinnamon rolls.   Early afternoon brings the arrival of my Son and his Wife, my parents, my grandma and my brother and his daughter for gift opening round two. After that chaos is over we move on to the Christmas dinner which is usually ham and scalloped potatoes plus all the side dishes. We usually have so many cookies and homemade candies that we let those be our desserts.

My daughter in law and I (my attempt at taking our picture)

Of course our dog did not want to be left out of anything....

 A wonderful time was had by all - it was loud, it was chaotic and it was family - it was perfect......

Thank you for stopping by and peeking into my world.