Military Family Story and Cottages and Lovely Rooms

To those of you who haven't seen yesterday's post I would recommend viewing it. I offered just a little bit of help with the new blogger interface. I'll be doing a more in depth tutorial in the near future, but it takes a long time to do a tutorial with screenshots. There is also a tutorial on taking screenshots with your computer if you have any interest. It is located on the side bar just below Blogging Tutorial. It comes in handy a lot of times.
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Growing up in a military family had its advantages and disadvantages. One advantage was we traveled a lot and lived in many different places. One disadvantage was we traveled a lot and lived in many different places. You get the irony of this I'm sure.

Being a shy kid, I hated changing schools but especially in the middle of the school year. You know how it goes: Your parent takes you to the new school and registers you and then you are walked to the new classroom and introduced to the other students as you stand up at head of the class. I hated it. I was always mortified to be the new girl in class. I never got over the feeling of not belonging any place. That's one of the hazards of being a military brat. I'm guessing that many kids of military men didn't like it much either. Maybe that's why at this point in my life I don't like traveling. I absolutely love staying at home.
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This is a home I would have loved to live in at some point in my life.

Aren't these cups/glasses beautiful? I'd love to have some.

Reminds me of Puerto Vallarta and the beauty of Mexico.

Cute and sweet and easy idea for an outdoor party.


Definitely an English-type home. Beautiful.

 

Pink cushions, but the table looks pink to me also.


Don't ya just love this?!

With the thatch roof this has to be in England or Ireland.

Roses touch me in a way nothing else can. Just their beauty calms my soul.

I know those of you looking at this now are wishing it belonged to you. It looks to be somewhere in Spain, Italy or France.

A very intricately thatched roof.

Somewhere along an old country road.

Yes, this is a little girl's playhouse.

 This home reminds me of old English mysteries, which I love.

Another office or studio idea. Easy, quick and cheap.

Anything like this catches my eye. I'm a lover of eye candy for sure. But this also gives me ideas.

This house could be anywhere in the world. It's just a classic stately home.
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If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss or a drill instructor. (I know this from personal experience. Hubby was a Marine and a Marine drill instructor in the 1960s.)

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Photos courtesy of tumblr and pinterest.

A Small Bit of Training on the New Editor

Since so many people have emailed me wanting to know what is what with the new interface I've decided to do another tutorial, but it has taken me hours and hours to just do some investigating, problem solving, testing(!) and this will be short. I can do a bit more in depth given time, but time is a luxury to me at the moment so let's do quick and easy and see where this gets you. First of all, this is how I do it. (Now, remember, I'm on a Mac so the photos of my desktop will look a bit strange to those of you on a Windows PC, but a browser is a browser and they all look the same and work pretty much the same on all computers. I've also kept my images at 800 px wide proportionately and that's as big as I'd like to go because any bigger and those of you on smaller screens would have to scroll. I have a very big screen on my iMac.

But first a big word of caution. On the old interface your buttons to publish and preview were far apart. One at the top of the window and the other at the bottom of the window. As you can see here they are almost beside each other. The Publish button, however, is orange so there shouldn't be much of a problem; however, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to that orange button and almost Published instead of Previewed. So just be cautious when you're wanting to Preview it before Publishing. When it's published, it's published! Done deal. You can edit it but I schedule mine for months at a time so if I inadvertently hit Publish before I want to and have forgotten to schedule the time, it's done. That's one reason I put a date a month ahead in the Schedule box before I do anything! I don't want it to show before I'm ready for it to show.

When I first click Post this is the screen I get. I click return three times to add space at the top because I always start with text whether it's a story or a photo description. That's always how I start. I then expand the window by clicking on the little arrow I pointed to with the arrow I photoshopped in below. I like big spaces to work in so that's how I start. I certainly don't want to tell you all how to do your posts but then if you don't follow what I say, it probably will look like a lot of them I see where there are huge spaces between the photos or even between the photos and the text describing a photo. I do my text above, but the same principle about the spaces will apply if you want your text/descriptions below

 This is what it looks like while I am creating the post. Notice the text is up tight to the photo.

Well, this is how it looks when I Preview it and will look like when I publish it. And I've not added any breaks/returns at all. (Truly, this is in the way that the new interface HTML is written so there is nothing to do but accept the way it looks. I doubt seriously if this is an issue coders would consider important, but they aren't OCD women!)

There aren't many of us happy with the new editor, me included, but it is what it is and there's probably nothing we can do about it. We just may as well get used to it because it's here to stay. But we can get it to do what we want it to with just a simple lesson today explaining what things are on the new interface. I'll probably end up loving it in the end but this will be only after I figure out how to make it stable for me and do what I want it to. I've even worked with their html but on the first try it limited my photos to 400px wide by 344px long. That is not acceptable to me. I like large photos to show on my blog. I do not like those tiny ones some people put on.

 Anyway, I think that's enough to get you started. There will be more, lots more, later. I'm just tired at the moment with trying to solve some immediate problems for people who can't get on the blogs at all. But I promise I'll do a more in-depth tutorial soon. Just be cautious. I can probably do an in depth tutorial later, but I want to see how I can work with the HTML template first. If anyone has any question, I'd be happy to help. You can send people who are asking about the new interface over here if you'd like. I truly am happy to help anyone I can. I know this is frustrating but change is inevitable with technology. We're all a technology-loving family. :-)

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Now, I'll never leave you without some beautiful photos to peruse so see what follows.

This is one of the most stunning places I've ever seen for a craft room and storage of fabric. Notice this chick has a Mac computer. ;-) Smart girl.

Just soothing for the soul to see.

Come take a walk down a country lane.

Gasp!!!

While not fond of orange, I still love this room setting and the comfortable-looking seating.

Beautiful gardens on second and third story building.

Somewhere in Europe judging from the sign on the building. Perhaps I've never mentioned this but when we visited Ireland their street signs were on the buildings, but a street name could change within a blog or two while on the same street. Very confusing.

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The other day while getting ready to go out for dinner I asked Love Bunny (Has anyone ever noticed how Love Bunny—what I call him on here to preserve his privacy—has the same initials at Living Beautifully?) how my hair looked as I badly needed a cut. He said, "It looks a bit fluffy."

I said, "It's been fluffy for 51 years." Duh! Funny man.
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I Go to the Soft Places of My Heart

First of all, I have a tutorial on my sidebar on how to do a screenshot if you are interested. Just look to the right and it's down just below my blogging tutorial. Lately, while helping several people with the new blogger interface I really needed to see what they were seeing on their computers. It just wasn't going to work any other way. They didn't even know what I meant by screenshot so I helped them. Doing that made me think about others who don't know this wonderful tool. So take a look if you have any interest in knowing about it and how to do it on both Macs and PCs.
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I am also going to tell you in a few days what I am going to do about the New Blogger Interface. I think it might be of some interest to some of you so stay tuned.
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Whenever I need soothing or contemplative time, I go to those places in my heart that are soft. I have a soft heart but I also have a few hard areas. I try to let the soft be the dominant place but that isn't always the case. Life happens. People can be cruel and unthinking. I certainly am guilty of that. An evil presence can seep in at times. I try to ignore it but it isn't always possible. I'm working on it however. A book will always calm my soul, no matter if it's a thriller, spy, espionage or humorous. Reading always gets me out of myself. Perusing photos or magazines (which I buy less and less now because of prices) can really affect my sereneness.

Then a lunch out with a young friend can sooth the hard edges away. We're thirty plus years apart on the outside but we're the same age on the inside. That will never change with me. I have more experience but I'll always be 25 years old in my heart and head. Girl talk always excites me to no end. I prefer one-on-one with friends. More than that and it gets too complicated and frenetic or frenzied. We sit and chat for two hours while eating and just have a relaxing time. We call it "Girl Time."

Blogging is another way of soothing my soul and touching my soft places. I can spend hours in this romantic office putting pictures and words to paper. Okay, in this case, typing words to computer and uploading pictures, but it's the same outcome: it soothes me.

So, where do you go when you need soothing? I'd truly love to know. Could it be somewhere that looks like the cottage below? This beautiful place would definitely do it for me.

While beautiful, this is not a style I'm fond of. I don't care for stylistic art, which this painted wall is. I like the reality of a flower, not stylized.

I saw these recently on Sears' website and am thinking of buying them. But first I'll ask myself the question: Do I really need them and are they worth the money and can I live without them and not be sad? It depends on the day what my answer will be however. Maybe...and maybe not. But these are the kind of porch/lawn chairs we sat on with my grandma.

I have a fence gate like this but I doubt I can bring myself to dismantle it to achieve this look somewhere in my house or garden.

While I love the look of these french bistro chairs. and in this particular chair, the paint color also, they are absolutely not comfortable to sit in for any length of time.

Cute way to organize some things.

A place many of us would like to go to soothe the soft places in our hearts.

What a unique way of decorating your walls.

While I love the setting, if I did this in my backyard, the neighbors would run screaming from theirs it would be so traumatic for them. ;-)

The cane back chair is what drew me to this photo. Pinkaliscious!

Hubs just about a half hour ago informed me he's making me waffles for breakfast tomorrow. Sweet man!!

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Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you run out to save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

This message was brought to you from a personal experience one day when our son was in his 20s, came home and just happened to sit and listen to us talk about the old days. He sat there fascinated for hours listening. He loved it and told us he'd never heard the stories before. POP! Wow, all of a sudden we weren't so boring anymore. He's now 49, been married for 25 years and doesn't find us boring at all now. Funny how that happened. {Wink}

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Photos courtesy of tumblr and pinterest