Kirsty and I take Portland by storm

This weekend, Bob and I headed down to Portland for a day trip for the special occasion of seeing Kirsty and Alex! They are in the states for a bit, and we wanted to head to Fat Fancy together and take them to Powell's. And look at beards. You know, Portlandy things.

Bob and Alex headed off to the Starbucks across the street while Kirsty and I tried on amazing vintage dresses.

Like so:

(I think this was handmade from a bedsheet. Amazing)

And voila:

(we called this dark confection the "Edwardian Power Ballad")

The next stop was Powell's, where we exchanged a suitcase and a backpack full of books for an always-amazingly-high amount of store credit (I feel like Powell's is really generous in that way). I picked up a book I'd been wanting for awhile, Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion.



Then we headed over to an arcade that I can't remember the name of, where I sweat. A lot. It was unbearably warm inside. I hate sweating.


Outside the arcade, two sweaty hot babes pose for the camera:


After that, Kirsty and Alex had serious jetlag to contend with, so they went on to relax for the rest of the evening and Bob and I rounded out the triumvirate of every Portland trip we take by going to Pine State Biscuits, where my Southern heart was melted by sweet tea in mason jars.


We always order the same thing: THE REGGIE!!! A biscuit with fried chicken, bacon, sausage gravy, and cheddar cheese.

Bliss.

What were your plans for the 4th of July weekend? Did anyone do anything fun?

Internet lovin'*

(This was one of the first images that came up on Google Images for the phrase "internet loving". I'm not really sure about the tie in, but I needed a pic for this post and, well, surprised cat is pretty adorable.)

I have so many favorite blogs and find so many bloggers inspiring that I wanted to do a post to highlight just a handful (a handful!) of blogs that I've been faithfully reading for the past several months.

If I can be counted on to be consistent (which I can't), I think I'd like to make this a weeklyok, let's not kid ourselves, monthly feature. Because, seriously, the internets are full of great blogs.

Here are a few of them - please enjoy!
a monkey fatshionista
pretty penny mae
tall girl blogging
bearly on earth
a curious fancy
fatty unbound
a well rounded venture
the nearsighted owl


*not that kind, though if you are into that, I say go for it!

All the Blogger bloggers, all the Blogger bloggers (to the tune of "all the single ladies")

.... If you like it then you could give me some feedback.

Ok, so maybe that doesn't work with "all the single ladies"... it doesn't really sound right :)

However, I know that many of my dear readers and commenters use Blogger.com to power their blogs. I have a unique opportunity to give some feedback to a community manager at Blogger, and wanted to reach out to see if any of you have criticisms/feature requests or compliments/praise for me to pass along?

Here is what I want to bring up so far:

1) Reply-to-comment functionality. This is the number one thing that I really want, and wordpress offers it. It's a big enough deal for me to seriously consider switching over! I want to be able to reply to comments that folks leave on my posts, rather than just commenting on the post itself.

2) Better template design functionality: auto-resizing of banners, more variety and better customization (a la wordpress).

3) Google FriendConnect/blogger "follow" button integration with Google Reader. Now, when I "follow" a blogspot blog using the "follow" button, it puts it in a folder in my reader automatically. I can't move it from this folder (if I do, it stays in the folder, as well as moving to the new folder, so it is in my reader twice, which I find annoying).

4) A better android app. The official one has very limited functionality, and there are no good unofficial ones out there either.

Any other feedback on Blogger.com functionality and features from my Blogger.com-using readers out there?

Welcome all ye from the "blog of note" post!

My, my, such a spike in traffic and commenters and followers over the past few days! For those of you wondering where all the new folks have come from - I was featured as a "blog of note" by the blogger community managers on Friday, which is very exciting for me!



It's great to have so many new folks around here. Make yourselves at home! I try to respond to all my comments, that may not be possible for the surge I've seen in the past few days but hopefully I'll be able to! If not, please know that I appreciate all of the comments so much!

Also, I've gotten a few comments and emails asking me to promote or do link exchanges. I actually don't do link exchanges or promotion of other blogs in that way - BUT I love finding new blogs and following back the blogs that I find interesting. Also, I definitely love mentioning posts that are really special or a cut above or that are funny or that I relate to and think my readers will relate to.

I've also gotten some emails from new bloggers asking for advice, which I think is funny since I still feel like I barely know what I'm doing when it comes to blogging and am definitely not a pro! However, here are a few things that have worked for me:

- finding a community of bloggers that I identify with
- reading a bunch of blogs regularly and commenting with insightful comments (rather than "hey, nice blog, follow me please", which doesn't really make people want to follow you)
- Having good pictures on your posts
- Posting pretty often, but not too often (2-4x/week works best for me)

For more advice on how to build up a reader base as a new blogger, I came across a great article the other day - here it is if you'd like to check it out!

hugs and kisses!

Getting my home-making on

Dear readers, I must tell you, last weekend I home-maked like a BOSS.



I made JAM!!!!



Made from peaches.



That were food-processored.



Then packed up to give to friends.



It was my first time making jam, I was inspired by this recipe but followed the instructions on the sure-jell pectin (which I'd recommend, they are easy to understand and it turned out great!). Other than the fact that we got sugary peach slurry all over the countertop when trying to pour it into the jam jars.



I started to hand-write the labels on post-its-notes, but then I thought "if I'm effing MAKING JAM FROM SCRATCH I can get out the typewriter like a respectable crafty person."



Also I made bread! From scratch!



We don't have a cooling rack, so I use a metal trivet. Resourceful, I am. And, judging by the smiles from my friends, they thought the bread and jam turned out pretty good.