works for me wed

Long overdue: A New ‘Do

Let’s just say that I am nothing if not a peacemaker. I don’t like conflict. I like for everyone to be happy and I always feel the need to be the one to make it so. Especially when it comes to my husband.

Until now. As Popeye™ once said, “I’ve had all I can stand, and I can’t stands no more!”

You see, conflict has reared its ugly head, and for once, I am determined to get MY way. Hear me out, folks.

I’m talking about my hair.

What works for my husband is long and grey. What works for me is some semblance of style and not looking like my 78-yr old mother.

Exhibit A: Photo of subject taken on December 5th. Note the 3 inches of *lovely* new GREY! growth and the dull, stringy, lifeless (not to mention “NO STYLE OF ANY KIND”) hair. Please disregard the horrible, washed out look of the defendant due to the unfortunate pairing of camera flash, no makeup, and yellow sweater that is TOTALLY the wrong season for her:

Note the “Deer-In-The-Headlights” look. She’s obviously GUILTY of neglect, and looks pretty upset that she’s been caught with her hair down.

Luckily, she has a wonderful friend who bailed her out of her hair prison by paying for a new cut and color for her for Christmas! {cue Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus}

Exhibit B: Photo of subject taken 3 hours after haircut and lowlights to help blend in the grey as it’s growing in, because, 3 inches of white on top of 9 inches of dark brown really should be a crime. {my before was just a little more “hillbilly” than what I was going for, y’all}

Note the relaxed and happy look on her face, even sans makeup. (Yes, I am a sahm mom who NEVER wears makeup unless I go to church, or on a date with my husband – it’s too much trouble!)

The conflict was within me, to be honest. My husband just wants me to be happy. But I wanted to please my husband and have beautiful long, silvery-white hair {think “Storm” from Fantastic Four}, but the reality is that I’m almost 40, overweight,and I look nothing like Halle Berry. It’s a good look on her, not on me. I knew it, but was really clueless what to do about it. I had taken to wearing my hair up in a clip every day of the week until I could grow it out long enough to get all the color cut off.

So what works for me? Having a good friend who listened to me whine and complain to her about my hair and the way it was making me feel and who was willing to take action on my behalf and rescue me from my pit of “desp-hair”. She is wonderful, not because she paid for my hair makeover, but because she is one of the most encouraging and uplifting people I have ever met, and she would never tell me I was having a bad hair day! 🙂

I rest my case.

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WFMW – Backwards

I’m in a blogging rut – I haven’t had time to find any new blogs lately because I’m working too much and homeschooling, thank you very much.

So I could use your help. I love to read in my spare time (when I have it) and would like to know who’s your favorite blogger and what’s his/her url? I need some fresh new reads.

Head on over to Shannon’s – maybe you can answer her question. 🙂

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WFMW – Having Your Say

One of the things that I have always loved about blogging is the interaction between writer and reader. There’s more than one way to communicate in this age of digital media – and blogging is by far one of the easiest to master. You can have your say every day, but we all know that the most immediate reward that comes from blogging is readership and comments – would you like to know how to get more? I thought so.

I have teamed up with Melanie (Chilihead) from Don’t Try This at Home, Blogging Basics 101 and Bloggy Giveaways to produce a weekly radio show called “Behind the Blog: You’ve got Questions, We’ve got Answers” that will take you, the listener, behind the scenes of some of your favorite bloggers who have seen some measure of success.

We will be covering every aspect of blogging and featuring a variety of bloggers from every genre to teach you some of the secrets to having a successful blog, as well as giving access for you to call in or chat live with your peers and our guests.

We had our test show today, and despite a few technical glitches, it was a blast and we can’t wait until our show next week when we “go live”. We’d love for you to join us and have your say and learn a thing or two along the way – because in the world of blogging, I think that is what really works for most of us!

Subscribe to my feed reader if you’re interested in joining us – more details will be forthcoming this week, along with who our surprise guest is! Trust me, the feedback that we received from the bloggers who were with us today tells me that this is something you do NOT want to miss out on!

So have your say and learn something new – that’s what works for me!

For more works for me Wednesday tips, head on over to Shannon’s @ Rocks in My Dryer.

Oh, and feel free to grab our button off the sidebar and help us promote the new show – we’d really appreciate it!

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Works for me: Backing blog photos up

As you can see, all of my graphics on my page are gone, leaving me with a very boring and ugly webpage. ****All has been restored, so if you are seeing it normally, just trust me when I tell you it WAS gone. :)**** I would be genuinely worried, except for the fact that I have all the images for my blog backed up on a cd that I can pop into my computer and upload to another photo site if Photobucket doesn’t get their act together and SOON.

Photobucket was hacked yesterday by a Turkish hackers group who hacked into their DNS (Domain Name Server). According to That Danny,

“A dns hack alters where your computer browser goes when you type in an Internet address. Every web address (like http://www.thatdanny.com) has a corresponding number like 66.118.156.62 which is its real address (like a telephone number). When you enter a URL, your browser goes to a directory (called dns-”domain name server”), which tells it what the number of the domain is, so that it can find and display it. Thus, if you can change an entry in the dns directory by hacking into it, you can cause users to go to a completely different website.”

The most disturbing thing about the whole photobucket hack is that they are in denial about being hacked – they sent me an email that stated:

On Tuesday afternoon, some users that typed in the Photobucket.com URL were temporarily redirected to an incorrect page due to an error in our DNS hosting services. The error was fixed within an hour of its discovery, but due to the nature of the problem, some users will not have access to Photobucket for a few hours as the fix rolls out. It is important to note that only a portion of Photobucket users encountered the problem and that no Photobucket content, password information or other personal information was affected by the redirect.
Sincerely,

Your Photobucket Support Team

Well, it wasn’t fixed last night. It’s not fixed today. My blog looks like poo poo, but I am thankful that I have all of my photos backed up. I even have all of my client’s photos backed up in folders.

Back it up! That’s what works for me. Head on over to Shannons to see what other tips you can find that might be useful.

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And we’ll have fun, fun, fun…till daddy takes our cameras away…

Summer is officially here. How do I know this? Besides me having the overwhelming urge to make up my own Beach Boys songs, it’s because my homeschooled kids have no desire to be outside in the heat. (Unless they’re swimming.)

But they do know better than to ever tell me they are bored. My mama always said that “only boring people are bored” and then she’d give me the option to either find something to do on my own or she’d find something to do for me. And you know what that means…that dreaded chores list. So I learned, as have my children. {insert evil cackle here}

How do we beat the heat and the boredom at the same time? I have two new things I’m going to share with you that we are doing this summer, and if you happen to have a digital camera and printer, then you are in business. If you don’t, well, you might have to get a tad bit more creative, but you can still do these cheap and easy ideas:

For 3-8 years old: (just a guideline, obviously)

Remember paper dolls? We have a newer version in our house. I am taking head-to-toe photo shots of each family member, printing them out on 4 x 6 photo paper and affixing them to a thin magnet sheet. (or you could just use a magnet strip, but I find that by using the whole sheet, the “doll” is sturdier for little hands) They will live on the front of our refrigerator for the summer and the kids will make paper doll clothing fashions for them. My kids are so looking forward to creating some uber-cool fashions for their little dolls and I imagine they’ll come up with some pretty interesting things for dad and I to wear. I did this for my youngest daughter when she was three (just of her) and she spent literally HOURS playing with her mini-me.

For 8-up:

I was recently given a much nicer digital camera than the one I was previously using (which is why you’re seeing more photos on my blawg) and so my oldest daughter inherited my old digital camera with all of its personality.

One thing I plan on doing with her is a PHOTO scavenger hunt. I’ll make a list of 40 things or so that she has to photograph (in order) within a certain time frame (it has to be relatively short – no more than an hour or they lose interest). It can be a specific list like: 1. books, 2. paper clip, etc (you get the idea). Or, my favorite is to make a list of things she has to find that affect the 5 senses (since she is a kinesthetic learner) – 1. something that smells sweet, 2. something hot, etc.

When we get back together after the hour, I will upload all of her photos and let her pick her favorite “art shot” to print out for her bulletin board on her wall. She absolutely loves scavenger hunts, and this one is sure to be a hit with her.

I am a list-maker extraordinaire, so we have list upon lists of things to do this summer…but these are a couple of my favorites. What about you? If you’re here from Shannon’s, be sure to leave me a link to your favorite summer activity, because I want to know what you do to beat summer boredom!

If you haven’t been over to Rocks in My Dryer today, go see what other moms are doing to keep their kids occupied. There’s always some really good ones!

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