Thursday Thirteen Number Thirty-Eight. Potluck.

Aw, heck, y’all I’ve gone silly around here and forgot it was going to be Thursday Thirteen time! So, let me tell you about a few links, and tell you about birthing a blog. Having a ten pound baby without anesthesia was a lot easier!

1) My friends, I told you about the Handmade Afghan Project, which puts together afghans for our wounded military. It’s spearheaded by a dynamo named Deborah Starobin-Armstrong. She was also a volunteer for Share A Square (and mentor for me). She mentors other folks who step in over their heads with charitable projects AND works full time! I don’t know when this woman sleeps! But, she said there is exciting news for the HAP! They have a video on the AARP on-line magazine. Watch it, and it will make you so proud of them and their hard work. Deborah, you are the best!

2) My friend, Amy Palko, at Lives Less Ordinary, has a beautiful blog which is now celebrating its sixth month in existence. She’s offering “3 bundles of Scottish/Lives Less Ordinary goodies which will be sent to 3 random commenters.” Just go to her post called To My Readers to tell her what you think. And, while you are there, visit a little. I promise you won’t regret it. Lovely photography and beautiful prose abound. But, I want one of those “bundles” so y’all leave one for me!

3) My friend Lola in Spain sent me an e-mail. She said, “Hola estoy sorteando unos pendientes, para participar sólo tienes que visitar la página que indico abajo y dejar un comentario en el apartado sorteo.”

Babelfish.com translates those words as “Hello I am drawing for slopes, to participate you only must visit the page that I indicate down and let to a commentary in the section drawing.”

Do whut?

I think she means, “Y’all come see me here, say something, and you’ll be in a drawing for these earrings” I should do translations, don’t y’all think?:

Y’all go see the beautiful jewelry she makes, and tell her “hey.”

4) Did I tell you I was starting a blog called Dear Dora? Well, I did…but I had a false start that took the wind out of my sails. [Editor's note: I did, but she is now incorporated into this blog!] I had gotten Leanne to set up the WordPress on my server…because I never thought I could do it. I couldn’t afford to have her “design” a blog, but picked a WordPress template that I later realized was too bland for Dora. She needed to dominate the page. She’s like that, for sure.

5) I then tried another theme called “fleur-de-lys.”

It was soooo pretty with a rotating header. I stumbled around and managed to put five header pictures of Dora in it and was pleased with myself, so I started posting.

6) UNTIL I realized that this blog had some major problems! Even I could tell, when looking at the code, that it was written in a wonky way (I’m not linking to it, but if you look in the theme section of WordPress, don’t get any themes written by the guy who designed this!). He didn’t ever hit the return key when he wrote it, so you can’t find anything! Leanne took one look at it, and said she couldn’t work on it and that I’d have to contact that fellow who wrote it for support. Fat chance!

7) So, I talked to my friend SusieJ, a generous blogger who always shares ideas with me. She told me to check out “Antbag’s” themes. I found this one, called “Preview,” and thought it was workable. I like the clean look.

8) But, I worried for weeks thinking I’d have to create a whole new “test blog.” THEN, I found THE ultimate WordPress plugin called Theme Test Drive at Vladimir Prelovac Online! Whoot! I installed it and was able to look at Dora in my new Antbag theme, mess with the code to see if I could make it workable, and test it out. All the time I was doing that, all you would be able to see is the theme I already had sort of “working.”

9) I increased the size of height of the header, put a rotating header picture in there (every time you refresh the page you get a new picture…well at least seven times), increased the width of the columns, and increased the size of the font so that I could read what I write. I don’t even know how to do that stuff!!! But, it works!

10) I’m proud of the results:

11) Dora wants to be snarky, but she is lonely. She needs you to visit…she needs you to write goofball letters to her…she needs you to link to her, because she thinks she is in a popularity contest!

12) So, over the weekend I will announce a contest of some kind.

13) But, right now, I’m going to go enjoy my birthday. Y’all be good and I’ll catch up later.

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Related posts:

1. Thursday Thirteen #35. I Wish I Had Time
2. Thursday Thirteen Number Thirty-Seven. My Distractions.
3. Thursday Thirteen # 34. What Rattles Around in My Head
4. Thursday Thirteen Number 26. Scattered
5. Thursday Thirteen #20—I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You

Tagged as: All Things "Blogging", Dear Dora, Links, Thursday Thirteen