Blogging

Wordpress, blogging and design work

Mar042011

Recent Design Stuff, Mild Depression

Hello my friends,

It’s been quite busy lately for me.

Recent creative accomplishments:
* Created the adorable business cards from a few posts back
* Designed the theme for this blog
* Designed/created a business card holder from scrap yarn [pattern forthcoming!]

Upcoming accomplishments:
* Legalizing my companies
* Preparing for Word Camp Miami this Saturday
* Knitting a [test knit pattern] sweater
* Job hunting, primarily in Orlando
* Going back to school (no clue for what though!)

While things are busy, mentally I’m not doing so fabulous. There is everything and nothing going on at the same time. Between not contributing financially and living in a place I despise, I feel out of my mind. I am sorta on the mend – as much as I can. Working through depression without professional assistance is difficult, to say the least.

It was suggested that I buy the book, The Dance of Anger to read and work through my problems. Here’s hoping, yes?

Feb252011

Welcome to Becca Blogs!

Cute cards, right? This iPhone picture doesn’t do them justice!

I finally got everything completed with the transfer and domain swap. There are still a few glitches here and there like some posts have multiple signatures (I learned to hard code around the dynamic code so I’d stop forgetting to add it.. see below!) and some hard coded links from earlier posts direct back to the other blog. However, seeing as this blog is about 97% complete, I decided to launch!

Those adorable business cards up there? They are obviously meant to look similar to the header on the blog.The back has my name, phone number, Twitter handle and email address. These cards have been in the works for about a week as I tried to find a company to print them with a relatively quick turnaround time. No dice! In the end, I laid them up in InDesign CS4 16 per page and printed them out on our shiny new printer. Oh, but finding a thick enough paper to suit my desires? That was a pain in the tush! Michael’s didn’t have it and ordering it online would’ve taken forever. Someone suggested Pearl’s and they had it! You can’t really tell, but the paper is an ice blue which saved our ink from having to bleed color around the entire card. Win-Win! Oh, and it cost me under $4 for the paper with no shipping costs! Bo-nus!

Anywho, welcome to my much-easier-URL-to-remember blog!

Feb252011

Entirely New Blog/Look

If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, you won’t know that the entire blog has changed, even the URL. Please, pop on over and have a look around!

Don’t worry, as long as you’re using the Feedburner RSS, you will still continue to receive all my posts.:-)

Also, if you are reading, I’d love a comment every now and then to know who you are.

Thanks!

Jan312011

Have You Ever Coveted Another’s Life..?

Hello friends!

Death Flu Update: I am mostly OK and recovered from the Death Flu. Right now the cough is lingering and, because my body sucks, the chest pains. Oh, not your typical chest pains… no no no, I should be so “lucky” to have those. These are the “I’ve coughed so much that I either cracked a rib (or 2) or ripped the muscles away from my rib cage” type of pains. Sadly, I have experienced them before. Last time I went to the ER terrified that I was dying. The chest x-rays and shot in the butt confirmed that I wasn’t and I was given heavy duty narcotics. This time? I shall suffer with only Tylenol.

But alas… being down and out for well over a week has given me a lot of time to think and soul search about my current life. As I perused Facebook, Twitter and read through all my blogs amongst all the sleep time, I discovered that one of my high school friends is living the life that I wish I had. Have you ever had that revelation?

Don’t get me wrong, my life really isn’t bad. She just has the stuff we both want: 2 beautiful children, an amazing husband, a few profitable businesses to warrant her being a stay at home mom, a great house and the lot purchased for their dream home, enough money to take family vacations and, best of all, she loves her life. I’m sure she has a lot more than just these things, but we really aren’t close enough for me to know. Basically, in the limited view I have of her life, she has it all. The businesses thing is something Steve has been talking about for ages. He really wants something that will earn us rent/ royalties for many many years to come. Enter my yarn shop? Maybe some apartment complexes?

What does this mean to me? I dunno. Something along the lines of how do I emulate her life? Yeah, I have no idea. The businesses take money, as does the children, homes and vacations. While we are doing OK with Steve’s current salary and are able to pay down some of our credit cards and other bills, we definitely need more for kids, homes, moving, etc. While I would love to be a stay at home mom and raise our kids, well, we don’t have any yet. My part-time job is kinda killing me in that I hate not being able to contribute more financially to our little family. I’m still dreaming of the day when I find a job with a nice salary and health insurance. One day, I would love to actually use my uber expensive education.

Do you know someone that has everything you want out of your life? What did you do? Steve suggested I ask her how she achieved everything, but that sounds a bit odd to me. Am I alone in thinking this? I dunno… Any suggestions?

Also, I have been tirelessly working on my new blog. The coding is still all over the place and not yet ready for the big reveal, but hopefully soon! No, I’m not giving out the link until the coding is pretty. Mostly because right now all my pages are broken. 😉

Cheers friends!

Jan262011

I’m Still Alive

Hello my darling bloggie friends!

I am still alive, promise. I was officially diagnosed with Influenza type A on Friday and have been sucking down Tamiflu, Mucinex D and Tylenol since then. Have you ever been tested for the flu? It pretty much sucks! My amazing husband took me to urgent care Friday night and the doctor so kindly shoved a very long swab into both sinus cavities. Oh yes, I both cried and sneeze-coughed. It was painful!

During the last week I have been sleeping about 16 hours a day. Seriously. Having the flu is horrendous! I went out yesterday morning to sign up for a PHP/MySQL class with the hubby, then came home and crashed on the couch for hours. Yesterday evening, I went out to do some registry clean-up at Bed Bath & Beyond and felt like I was having a 90 minute hot flash and coughing fit. Yeah, it was dead sexy!

Today I’m off to work again. Here’s hoping the perpetual hot flashes don’t persist!

In other news, I bought a new blog domain name. In other words, once I have the design down pat and ready for the reveal, you will no longer be accessing this lovely story of my life and future via blog.benaimfletcher.com. That’s right, it’ll have it’s very own name! But until then…

Lots of love and healthy vibes!

xo,

Jan052011

Temporarily Broken Blog

Some of my loyal readers may have noticed that my blog was broken… dead.. kaput there for a few hours. Well, from 4am-2pm. The problem is when I start messing around with things in the databases and don’t verify that the blog still works, things go downhill fast.

Yeah, that’s right. Me, Miss I can Code but Suck at Basic Blogging, changed my password last night (yay 4am insomnia!) to try to mess with the SQL code and forgot to update the password in my wp-config file.

Bloody brilliant, I tell ya.

And who knows how long it would’ve been dead had I not gone looking for the post I scheduled this morning.

PHEW!!

If you follow my twitter feed, then you probably saw my meltdown as it was happening.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.. reading.. whatever! 😀

Jan052011

Contemplating a Blog Split

Hello friends!

I have a bit of a dilemma here. Well, it’s really not a dilemma, but I do want to expand my blog a bit and think this might do the trick.

Have y’all noticed my increase in posts about baking? Even before I received my amazing new best friend KitchenAid stand mixer, I was always a big fan of cooking and baking. This passing fancy has certainly expanded over the last few weeks. To the point that I’m heavily considering creating a tab specifically for baking and creating a new default page where you’d pick normal blog or foodie blog. Eventually this would expand to pregnancy/ adoption, foodie, and other stuff.

As I was making butter earlier and taking lots of pictures for yet another foodie post, I started thinking about this. I mean, does it make sense to have all the posts mixed in together? Would it make a difference in my RSS feed? That I don’t know and do need to look into before making any changes. Does anyone know? My current RSS points directly to my home page. What will happen if I change my front page to a Pick Your Feed type page?

Of course, before I go ahead with this switch, I need to figure out the details first. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Dec152010

A New Look

So… You may have noticed the new look around here. And if you’re reading this via RSS feed, come check it out!

I finally decided to figure out how to mess with the code enough to make the changes. Huge thanks to Emeric Photography for the picture that is not only my new header, but also our desktop image.

Now if only I can figure out how to move the date from the top of the post to the bottom, change it to mm/dd/yy format, and add the time. The I think it’ll be perfect. For me.

Oh, and the “k1p2” line is because when ever I’m knitting, both Steve and my dad think they’re funny and say “knit 1 purl 2” even though I rarely knit k1p2 ribbing.

Enjoy the new look!

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