Project Smile: January

It has been a difficult month for me personally. And as I sit today I am reminded of the purpose of this project. It was initiated in an attempt to help get me through my S.A.D.

And with these dark. mucky. cold. short days... it's a wonder more people aren't plagued with this condition.

Because let's be real. Winter sucks. And I know that I'm not alone in my struggles.

We need sunlight. We need to get out and be active. We need a good healthy dose of vitamin D. We need to not be held hostage in our homes.

Thank you for joining me on my smile crusade. Whether you document your smiles daily, weekly, or recount them monthly... it can be a blessing in your life just as it is in mine. To sit and cogitate on all of the wonderful reasons to smile.

Today I am only going to mention a few.

And this one tops the list.

These beautiful women are my mother and oldest sister and they both made many sacrifices on my behalf to be here for my birthday.

My sister arrived after spending 2 days in airports. No pilots, no connecting flights, and lots of hiccups, etc... And here she is after only 1 1/2 hrs of sleep and no shower. Isn't she beautiful?

(By the way, these photos were taken by my 11 year old son. Love his unique perspective.)

I am so lucky to be so loved.

By so many wonderful people.

Hubs made a double angel food cake for me with my fav fluffy white icing even though he couldn't eat a lick of it because he is on a special protein diet right now. That's what I call true love. This has been a fav of mine since I was a little girl. Click here to see me and my cake through the years.

And if you haven't heard from me much, it's because I've been elbow deep in projects over here. Taking classes. Learning. Growing. Expanding. Creating. And it never ceases to make me smile. The above photo is just one of the many examples of texture that I've been playing with this week. You can see another one here.

I hope that you have found a few smiles in your neck of the woods.

Just think... spring is right around the corner. And I hope that brings a smile to your face as it does to mine.

This is a bloghop. Feel free to snag the linky and add it to your post. The linky will be open for one week until Tuesday, Feb 7th at 11:59 PM.

I'd love for you to join me. Let's make the world brighter- one smile at a time.



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Not So Wordless Wednesday: Ten Reasons I Love You

There is no sound worse to a mother than that of intermittent sobs coming from their child. Especially when they are 11 1/2 yrs old. And no amount of hugs or kisses make it better.

I want my children to be happy, well adjusted individuals. To be free of pain and hurt of all kinds. Unfortunately that is not the way life works. Let's face facts. Kids are mean. And junior high stinks. And my heart is breaking into a million pieces just thinking of the alienation and sadness my pre-pubescent tween is experiencing.

By the way, this is one thing no one ever told me about motherhood. You can see more over at Drama Mama's place. (With a never before seen pic of my as big as a house.)

It was just last year that we learned of little man's NVLD diagnosis. He is an extraordinary child, which makes for more challenges in his little life. This week has been one of those rough weeks for my little man. And I've been racking my brain trying to come up with the perfect way to let him know how special he is and how much he is loved.

Then I saw this idea for an 8x8 book over at Ali Edward's place. Perfect!

You can find a great tutorial by Melissa Speelman over at freckle photo blog.

So I hopped over to designer digitals and put the layered template set in my shopping cart.

And voila.

(This is about half the size of the actual book.)

And if you make a purchase at Best Buy, you can get a free 8x8 20 page shutterfly book- good for 6 months from date of purchase. (I am actually only doing one 8x8 page for the cover and last page so that it can be just 20 pages and free for my first book.)

I thought this would be a perfect Valentine's gift. But you can't do it for one child and not the other (thank the lord I only have 2), so I threw one together for Pokey too. (I did her's a little different, only using photos and leaving off the frames.)

So excited to get them printed!

And with the month of love just around the corner, I am excited about this upcoming class that I am enrolled in. Have I mentioned that I HEART holidays?

It is a FREE 28 day class put on by Willette Photography called the Joy of Love. Pop over and check it out.

And before I close, I have to mention those little buttons on the bottom (right above the place to comment.) I am just a little proud of those. I figured that out all. by. myself! Feel free to try it out and make sure it works. Also, if you'd like to have those yourself and don't know how, I shared a tutorial this week. Idiot's Guide to Adding Social Media Buttons to Blogger.

As always, so nice of you to stop by. If you have a photo to share, just link up below.

A little pick-me-up.

And by the way, you can find me over at Drama Mama's place today talking about all the things "no one ever told me" about motherhood (plus a never before seen picture of me as big as a house). Stop by. I'd love the company.

Happy Monday! -Lish

Idiots Guide to Adding Social Media Buttons to Blogger

After searching the world over it is apparent to me that I was wrong about my technological status. Here I thought I was pluggin away in the blogging world. Sure, a hiccup here or there, but for the most part I was rockin it.

Then I attempted to add social buttons to my blog. You know, those clickable tabs so that I could remove all that junk on my right sidebar.

[Insert long siiiiiiggggghhhhhhhhh here.]

I just wanted it to look like this. Seems easy enough. Right?

I would have screamed or pulled my hair out but I didn't have it in me at 2 AM after several straight hours of staring at the computer monitor. I was toast. My brain was fried.

Why oh why won't they just work?

No, turns out I don't exactly fit into the "dummies" category by the world's standards. Trust me. Those tutorials went right over my head. So, by process of elimination there is only one category left- the category of idiots. Please. Just tell me I'm not alone in my technological retardation. Come on, just humor me a little.

So, after many, many painful, arduous hours slumped over my keyboard I have decided to share the little bit I know in an attempt to prevent you from an unnecessary computer induced cataract coma. You can thank me later.

Step 1. DOWNLOAD A PICTURE OF YOUR ICONS.
If you don't need anything fancy this is a great starting place. But there are literally hundreds of sites out there with endless amounts of images. If you get them from different sites, you may need to resize them to get them to all be the same size. I made mine 64x64 pixels in photoshop. (But the great thing about doing them this way vs blogger's generic widget is that you can customize them to any size or design of your liking.) Once you have them the size you like, save changes and then upload them to a third party hosting site, such as photobucket or flickr.

And if that seems like a pain, I have already saved several to my photobucket page and you are welcome to snag them to remove some of the leg work.

Just click on button you would like. It will take you to photobucket. Move cursor over icon or click on it. Then select share. Click get link code. Then copy the full size HTML code for websites and blogs. (Save this or bookmark for later.)

Step 2. ADD A GADGET
Sign in your blog and then go to design. From there click on add gadget.

Select the HTML/JavaScript choice.

Step 3. INSERT CODE TO HTML/JAVASCRIPT
This is the important part.

Here is the code that you will use for each and every button.

You will need to replace YOUR FEED URL with your actual feed url. Also replace YOUR PICTURE URL with the one that you have in your third party hosting site.

Here is an example from my HTML/JavaScript menu for the first three buttons on my right sidebar. The light blue is my feed url. The darker blue is the photo url from photobucket.

I found that if I didn't include any positions in the coding the buttons automatically positioned themselves just fine, at least this seems to be the case with my template.

Save your work. And like magic- POOF! It only took me 2 days to figure this out.

Now let's shift gears.

Clickable social buttons at the bottom of your posts.
I found a really easy way to do this for blogger.

Go to Add This. You will find this page. Make sure to click on more options on the bottom.

Select blogger and then the style of preference. The bottom is cut off, but you have to select whether or not you want analytics and then press GET THE CODE.

On the next page you will need to make sure that "install in every blog post" is selected. Then copy the code.

Below the code will be instructions for where to plug it into your blog. They are very precise, detailed instructions with visuals.

Follow their instructions word for word. It is a fabulous tutorial. You literally just copy and paste the code right into your edit HTML page exactly where they instruct you to (beneath the div class="post-footer" tag).

And voila. You are now movin up in the blogger world. Social media buttons. Check.

Now if someone could please tell me why they load so incredibly slow I would be most appreciative.

Wordless Wednesday Linky Party: Solitude

Photo taken during a blizzard in 2009.

It says "solitude" to me. The quote is by Rainier Maria Rilke, taken from Letters to a Young Poet.

"Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant..."

Text is by Ali Edwards. You can grab my 10 favorite fonts here.

I chose a texture by Shadowhouse in his texture set #2 called Hazy Shade of Winter. You can find the downloadable zip file here for the complete set.

If you have photoshop elements and missed my texture tutorial, you can find it here.

I am participating in a photoshop class by Kim Klassen called Skinny-Mini eCourse. She is a genius with textures and I've been playing with some old photos this week.

As always, thank you for stopping by. You can link up below and then make sure to check out some of the other fab WW parties.

How to Download Fonts + My 10 Favs

I have been asked several times about my fonts that I use and thought I'd share a quick tutorial.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of free fonts available for download. Once you find your favs, you must insert them into your computer's font folder in order to access them. Once they are plugged in they will work on any program on your computer that uses fonts including photoshop. You can add an additional layer in photoshop to add text to any image.

I use Windows 7. If you use Windows Vista, XP, or Mac OSX, click here for a tutorial.

For Windows 7, locate your control panel. Then select appearance and personalization.

You will see these choices (below). Click on fonts.


It will look something like this.


Just copy and paste your unlocked font into this location.

Tip: I download fonts and then extract them to my desktop for easy access and retrieval. Once they are plugged into my font folder I delete them off my desktop.

Here are some of my favorite fonts.


Download 1942 report here.

Download CK jot here.

Download CK Ali's Hand here.


Download Depressionist Three here.


Download WW Flakes here.

Download VT Portable Remington here.

Download Splendid 66 here.

Download 2Peas GGs Love Me here.

Download Pea Kevin & Amanda here. Plus hundreds of others from her here. You can even choose to download her entire collection here.

Submit your own handwriting and have her convert it into a font for you. She shares new fonts every Friday. A fabulous site to bookmark!

I hope that you enjoy playing with some of these fonts. They can certainly transform any picture or scrapbook page!

Have a great week!