Missing Your Blog List?

Is your Blogger blog missing your blog list?  

My Partial Blog List

I freaked out just now when I went to my blog and saw my blog list (pictured above) missing. A blog list is a Google gadget that can be added to your Blogger blog layout. It allows us to add the urls of other blogs we want to share on our blog sidebars. I also use mine like a reader to keep up on all my blog friends. 

Google Blog List Gadget

I quickly hopped on google and searched for "blog list gadget is gone." I found the following information on the blogger help forum, but I can't vouch for its accuracy. It says blogger is working on restoring the gadgets, but it might take a while. 

Screen shot of Blogger Help Forum

 

My blog list is my only record of the blogs I follow ever since I stopped using my blog reader after their most recent inconvenient update. So you can imagine how upsetting it is to me that it's gone. I'm kicking myself that I didn't keep a written backup list somewhere.

It's not too late, though! I did what another poster on the Blogger help forum recommended to do to at least salvage my blog list as a reference in case it's not put back. Here are the steps:

Search for your blog on Google.

Click on the little arrow next to your blog's name.

Choose cached from the drop down menu.

Take screen shots of the blog list (or write it down) from that cached copy of your blog.

Unfortunately, I added a few blogs to my list since my chached blog copy of a few weeks ago, and I'll have to try and remember them myself, but most of them are there. From now on I'll keep an up to date list of the blogs I follow, just in case. I'm happy to at least have screen shots of my list this evening. 

I'm hoping Google is able to restore our blog list gadgets intact. Google does a fabulous job providing us with a free platform for our blogs, and I'm sure they're working hard on it. 

  

{Note: Hurrah! My blog list was restored on October 7th!}

Here I come, Apple!

In just a few minutes I'm hooking up my old Windows-based Toshiba laptop and migrating my files over to my new MacBook. 

It's kind of like moving to a new house. I spent days organizing and cleaning up my hard drive so everything will be spiffy in its new home. 

I read tons of info. on the Apple website

and feel confident I know what I'm doing, but...

YIKES!

   

Wish me luck!

Project Update

I think blog time is different than my time. 

I posted this "before" photo of my current project seven days ago. 

 

 Ever since then, it's been kind-of nagging me in the back of my mind that my readers will think I'm slouching if I don't show steady progress, and it was starting to feel like weeks since I started it.  

Pressure!

But this morning, I see I've only been working on it one week! Wait a minute, one week in my time equals weeks in blog time?

 Huh. What's up with that? 

Pressure!

Sometimes, when I see amazing room and furniture reveals on other blogs, I think I get a skewed sense of the time and effort behind it.  Online, it appears like an entire room was redecorated or a piece of furniture was repainted more quickly and with less effort than I know it was. Many bloggers don't show the nitty gritty behind their complex projects, just the beautiful results. Their hard work and beautiful projects get mixed together in the kaleidoscope of my mind with no sense of time passing.

And, actually, that's a wonderful way to think of time, isn't it? As a circular kaleidoscope made up of wonderful moments happening right now, instead of a straight line with some future point causing me to feel pressure until I reach it. I don't want to miss a single second of my life while my attention is on something that hasn't happened yet. So I think that means my projects will find their way to my blog when they're ready, and I'm okay with that now.  

No More Pressure!  

I wonder if my blogger friends, whose blogs I admire so much, ever feel pressure to perform in a fantasy "blogger time." Do you ever lose sight of the reality that's behind your blog, in the rush to get it online? 

Anyway, this is what my project is looking like today, and now that I've spent so much time talking about time, I don't have much time to talk about my project!

Pretty funny.

I'll let this photo do the talking.

 

As you can see, I painted the plywood subfloor. (Good job if you guessed that from my previous post!) I also painted the walls. 

  

Today, I'm priming and painting miles of base shoe molding. I didn't even realize I'd need to install any molding until the carpet I ripped out left a Grand Canyon between the floor and wall. 
  

This project has been full of unexpected twists like that.

I thought I would be finished by now. I started out thinking it would be a cakewalk, and a week later I'm living here in a new and unexpected moment that's not where I expected to be, but just as wonderful. 

With no more pressure.

Confusing, I know.

Thanks so much for listening today!

 

Ordering A Blogroll

The blogroll on my blog's sidebar helps me keep track of my

 favorite blogs and share them with my readers. 

We've been in a zero degree deep freeze up here in Boise the
past few days, so I had plenty of time to go down my blogroll 
list and visit every single blog, catching-up on all the wonderful
posts I missed while I've been away the past couple of months.

Tucker enjoyed it, too!

While visiting my favorites, I found lots of fabulous new blogs

to add to my blogroll. But as I watched my list grow longer and

longer, I wondered how I'd ever have the time again to keep up

with them all.  

Happily, I found out I don't have to continue clicking on each

blog in the list to open it and see if I'm up-to-date. I've learned

how to reconfigure my blogroll in blogger to show which blogs

have new posts and how long ago each one was updated,

placing the most recently updated one on top of the list. 

It was as easy as clicking on the little tool icon at the bottom of
my blogroll and changing the following two options:

 So, now that I'm all caught up with my favorite blogs, I can

quickly check the list from the top down each day or so and
visit only those with new posts. 

Easy Peasy!

I hope you'll visit some of the great blogs over on my new orderly blogroll. 

Thanks so much for stopping by today! 

  

New Buttons

I finally made link buttons for my blog today!

If you're not familiar with blog buttons, they're those little square graphics with boxes of html code beneath them, often found on a blog's sidebar. Bloggers can cut and paste that code into their own blog editor, and it will show up on their blog as a linked graphic back to the original blog.  

Bloggers who feature projects from other blogs "hand" their button code out, so to speak, so the blogger whose work was featured can show it off and offer their readers a link back to where it was featured.  

It was a huge milestone for me the first time someone featured one of my projects, and I couldn't wait to proudly display the blog's button on my sidebar. All of those buttons over there are really special to me!

I also feature many other bloggers on my Friday Finds, and now I finally have my own buttons for the lovely people who let me share their projects.

So, to the many gracious and generous bloggers whose work I have shared, if you'd like one, please...

Grab my Button!!

(I always wanted to say that!!)

<center><a href="http://www.thenorthendloft.com/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJodC2YgVN4fVr0muSE5zKqyHxH_7qb4tfXne5kWrc5ed36llpjXjLRUPXXCFDkAcumzzjQlgbDRGbzkfoI3ouGxrhMKHevkWseQzE82rkyfXPFEeEc902MFhXBxPx7IG3Gw6SM6qnCY_R/s1600/I+was+featured+blog+icon125+px.jpg" /></a></center>

<center><a href="http://www.thenorthendloft.com/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ouzmMHwJXbSKDMOf3I5Nx-MMsxWpPbedzB0-4vVvAJRsO1tVteQhHfLepr3mD7sjku340swoH_48FUs5wYB9GUkAaSPa6WI7_4W1Nzq0I4xNt80-kBnn2kqk6tpDTi0yS3E6CQzqB_CA/s1600/Shed+Rose+icon+125+px.jpg" /></a></center>

<center><a href="http://www.thenorthendloft.com/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNRgCesAx9ol4VAkf1_MLUS4cEjPIF2f7gaUOC1UlnUJGF0RQ7c3HeZHjMh8yUelep5Umua6TQZwReSW7sOwUKMeE0F5VCGEu6F7W0R8nKYB7WzM-jVgP3wBdk9y7qo-1SSeNaH6erEVt/s1600/can+icon+125+px.jpg" /></a></center>

A huge thank you to Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for writing the absolutely easiest to understand tutorial for making a blog button with a grab box.

You can find her tutorial here. 

My Blogging Adventure (or How I Thought I Knew It All)

I've been enjoying the heck out of this whole blogging adventure.

I decided about two weeks ago to stop trying to plan a blog and just jump in and do it. That was a great decision for me. Everything I know about computers, I taught myself, and I was confident I could teach myself about blogging as well. So far, so good. In fact, after I was well on my way, I came across these posts from At the Picket Fence called Ten Things I Wish I'd Known About Blogging and Ten Tips For New Bloggers. After reading these excellent posts, I realized that I'd taught myself most of what they explained there. I could have saved myself some time and effort by reading these blogs first, but learning it on my own was an adventure that I don't regret. So I was feeling pretty smart and patting myself on the back. My blog wasn't Young House Love or anything, but hey, it wasn't too bad for a brand newbie. 

Then the other day my daughter sent me an email telling me some of the photos on my blog were showing error messages instead of photos. All of a sudden I wasn't so smug and smart. I was upset and anxious to think that my blog might be seen as anything less than professional, and I scrambled to fix my mistakes. 

What struck me afterwards was how upset I was. I was really stressed out by this little mistake. Just how little a mistake was it? I only have ten followers. I'm pretty sure no one is reading my blog. That little.

And all of a sudden I realized I had not taught myself everything that At the Picket Fence suggested I might want to know.  I had skirted over the most important lesson there: Ten Reasons Why Women Should Blog. I hadn't considered really deeply why I wanted to write a blog and what I wanted out of the experience. No matter what a person's reason might be, writing a public blog is an intensely personal expression of who we are, and that means our motivations for writing it deserve to be very well understood.

Once I understood my motivation, I realized that my real mistake had been in trying to create a blog styled on blogs I love, rather than on who I am. So when I made a small technical goof, my reaction was, "The Lettered Cottage  would  never make a mistake like that!" and I freaked out. But I'm not The Lettered Cottage, I'm The North End Loft. And, hell, I make mistakes ALL THE TIME! I'm impulsive and don't always think things through as well as I should, and I make mistakes.

So I took At a Picket Fence's advice and figured out why I'm writing a blog. I decided my blog is a record of who I am and what I do. I decided I want to find my own voice, portray my own life, and be able to make mistakes without freaking out. No "keeping up with the Jones," no comparing myself and my blog to others and their blogs. Making a commitment to myself to do these things and to keep it real has been strangely liberating, like giving myself permission to make mistakes and not be perfect.  

So this is my first post as the "real" me. It's about taking Tucker for a long unhurried hike up in the hills without planning my next post in my head or wondering how I can entice new readers to my blog. 

We're heading for those hills up there.

It's about standing still for ten minutes listening to the wind in the trees while watching an eagle circle way above me. (That's  not lint on your screen, that's an eagle.)

It's about wearing hiking boots instead of high heels.

It's about coming home and making a big pot of this corned beef soup for my family. 

Because the most important things in my life are my family, my dog, and being outdoors. My blogging adventure is a creative outlet, an expression of who I am, and it's for fun, not for being perfect, and not to stress over. 

Feels great!

And while I'm at it, my craft table looks like this a lot of the time.

Not like this

 
And the other side of my loft behind my loveseat doesn't look like this

 It looks like this

Just keepin' it real. : ) 


I thought I knew it all, but I was really just beginning this blogging adventure. Everyday is a learning experience, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't wait for whatever comes next.

Jumping In With Both Feet

I've considered a hundred reasons for putting off the start of this blog, from picking the perfect name, to buying a fancy camera. Life isn't perfect, and I'm certainly not, so why am I expecting my blog to be? Silly. So here I go... jumping in with both feet!