Foto Friday: Dog Beach

As I mentioned yesterday I was given a wonderful new camera for Jesus' birthday.  It is not as fancy smancy as a Canon DSLR but it is pretty nice.  It is a Nikon Compact DSLR camera. It has settings on it and it is fancy but it is so much easier to use.  You have to focus it and zoom and stuff, but it ain't all that bad.  I signed up for a photography class and I am the nerd who takes my new camera every where.

Below are my photos from this week.  It was a delight filled week full of nothing.  So in order to live my life of riley I took my pup to the dog beach at Newport Beach for the first of many times.  She was such a good dog and had a ton of fun.  She was totally not into dogs her size and only played with the big pups. Her new best friend is India the dog, who belongs to my friends.  Overall it was a beautiful Southern California day.  I mean where else in the US can you go to the beach in the dead of winter?



[caption id="attachment_372" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Fallish weather by my house. Really this is as seasonal as we get.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_382" align="aligncenter" width="640"] This is an iPhone pic, but it was too cute not to share![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_380" align="aligncenter" width="640"] India the dog taking a momentary break from digging.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_381" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Justina and Taylor[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_379" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Penny loved running like a mad woman around the beach.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_375" align="aligncenter" width="640"] India posing for a photo[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_376" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Penny is super intrigued by Taylor's artistic sand ability.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_377" align="aligncenter" width="640"] #Penny[/caption]

The One With Christmas Photos

It is the second day of the New Year and I am just now posting my Christmas photos.  I hosted Christmas at my little condo this year.  I took a few photos of the condo and my family.




[caption id="attachment_362" align="aligncenter" width="640"] So I am not crafty or fancy, but I thought it was cute.[/caption]



[caption id="attachment_364" align="aligncenter" width="640"] This is as close to a granddaughter my mom is getting.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_392" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The floor is littered with Penny's toys. She is a little bit spoiled.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_366" align="aligncenter" width="640"] My grandma made a big tada over looking "natural" in a picture. I think it looks awkward so yes, she achieved her natural goal[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_368" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The cousins.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_369" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Our little family![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_370" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Merry Christmas from Penny and me![/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"] I made the photo on the mantle. It was described as "The Best Christmas Gift Ever!"[/caption]

Merry Christmas From The Kids Table

So I am currently at my mom's house watching the Hobbit and trying to teach Penny to be a lady of decorum.  So far she isn't taking to my instruction, but she is cute.  She looks like a little doll today and I love it.



We were at my aunt and uncle's house tonight for Christmas Eve.  My family is quite small, but on my aunt's side there re a lot of people.  I do not quite fit into to any of the age/life stages that are represented at this family gathering.  My favorite people to talk to are my uncle, my mom, my aunt's sister and her daughter.  Really it is fun to talk to my mom and dousing, they are both counselor and make the holiday conversation so light.  Tonight's topic, sex offenders.

After we have exhausted the counselor talk I usually end up with the dogs or the children.  They are just way more fun than everyone else.  They do not get drunk, or care about a football score,or have life issues.  They are just so happy it is Christmas and want to share that joy.

Tonight I played with two sweet little kids and it was wonderful.  Scout, my cousin's dog even joined the fun and it was perfect.  I then drove home to get Penny to go to my mom's house.  I cranked up the radio and sang Christmas songs all the way home.  Think Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle, "horses, horses, horses!"

I love that there are ways to find joy in each day.  I hope you can find a way to be happy and enjoy the wonder of Christmas. Sit at the Kids Table if you need a little refresher on how love Christmas!

So Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart!  I hope you are all singing Feliz Navidad now!

Wait! It's Christmas Eve?!

One more sleep till Christmas!

I do not know about you, but it has been a little hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit.  I mean honestly, I have watched one Christmas movie, The Family Stone, probably the most depressing Christmas movie ever.  I haven't looked at the lovely lights in the rich people neighborhoods. I am pretty sure I forgot to buy my sister and brother their Christmas gifts.

I am not even a grump when it comes to Christmas, this one just got away from me.

I know that I will be watching all my go to Christmas movies soon.  I mean there is Elf!  I haven't even watched Elf yet!

That is pretty much how I feel right now.

I also know I will watch A Christmas Story all day on Christmas.  Thanks TBS!

I have however, watch enough Channing Tatum movies and Harry Potter moves to have them totally work their way into my subconscious.  In fact just last night I had a dream that my boyfriend Channing Tatum was trying to protect me from Voldemort, who was trying to kill me because I was the "chosen one."

Merry Christmas to me!

A New Look

Well Hello there!  Can you believe it is only two more sleeps till Christmas?  That is wild.  I am never really ready for Christmas anymore.  I usually put off shopping and stuff until I am done with teaching and then I never want to do anything!  Amazon for the win!

If you have been around my blog in the last few days you will notice that there have been some great changes, or now you are noticing that there are some changes.  Yes folks, I made the switch from blogger to WordPress.  I had a few reasons for the switch and I am going to share them with you and some of the challenges I faced while switching.



 

I want to start by saying that I am not delusional to believe that I have a huge blog and that is why I switched.  Actually it was somewhat the opposite.  I knew my blog was small enough that if I switched it wouldn't be terribly detrimental if I lost a few readers from GFC.  The more people I had reading in Google the harder it would have been for me to switch.

But that does not answer the real question of why I switched so let me break it down for ya.

I like the way WordPress looks

I think it looks cleaner than Blogger.  I know that you can get some bomb designers in Blogger, but I have been waiting for a whole semester for my new design. In WordPress I can choose my own templates and design for myself, for the most part.  I actually still want someone to make a new header that is sparkly.

I own my own content

I am not sure if it is the future published author in me or the only child in me but it was super important that I owned my own content.  In case you did not know if you have a Blogger blog Google owns the content you post.  In WordPress everything is self hosted and you own your content.  I am also getting a nice camera for Christmas and I want my photos to be my own. I am really happy about this.

If I do not like something I can change it with a new plugin

I wanted to add icons so you can follow my twitter and instagram pages.  I played around with some plugins and found one I like for now.  I am sure I will find another one I like more.

Anything you are having trouble with someone else had trouble with

WordPress actually does not have employees to provide support if you need help.  Instead there are forums that you can read on every single topic to help you out.  It is a little time-consuming to find what you need, but so is contacting customer service for any website. The best part is you learn how to fix it yourself and get even better at computers.

For example, I wanted the comments to appear at the bottom of a post instead of at the top.  The template I am using has them at the top.  I googled how to move the comments for my theme to the bottom and found the forum on the same topic.  I got the html code, slapped it in and bam problem solved.

Even though it is great to learn more about your website this leads me to the few drawbacks I have encountered.

[caption id="attachment_260" align="aligncenter" width="576"] A photo of Penny and I from my new phone. Something to make you happy before I get into the negatives.[/caption]

You have to know what you are doing

Really though, I have spent a ton of time just trying to figure out what the heck I am doing.  I went to bed last night with a huge headache from looking at my screen and figuring things out for so long.  Penny has been such a bad girl too because I have been on the computer way longer than she thinks appropriate.  She will usually give me an hour to do my work and then it is play time.

Your Bloglovin feed gets messed up

This is an easy fix.  You email the customer support and they fix it in a day or so.  Make sure you get a new button just in case your website changed, you want to make sure your readers get to the right spot.

Comments.  

One of the things I liked most about blogger was the comment system.  If someone graced my blog with a comment I was notified in my Gmail inbox and I could respond by composing an email back.  It was simple, easy, and effective.  WordPress is not this way.  If you leave a comment on a WP site you only know if someone wrote you back if you subscribe to their comment feed.  This means you get all the comments that people leave on the post, not just the author's reply.  ANNOYING!

My solution was to add Disqus to my site. I choose this because I know a lot of bloggers use it already and it is pretty easy to use.  I mostly just wanted a way to write people back so they knew I valued them and the time they spent to write me a comment.

Redirecting your links

This one is huge.  Yes it is easy to import your Blogger blog to WP.  If you want to know how I will help you.  The part that is hard is adding the redirect html to your Blogger and WP accounts.  You want to make sure to do this so if there are any links out there that have a url to your Blogger blog they will come to WordPress no problem.

I found the following article and video to be the most helpful in this process.

If you ever are thinking about making the switch I am more than happy to try to share what I have learned with you.  I am in no way an expert and I have just done the minimum to make sure my blog looks nice and is functional.  I know I have a ton to learn, but I am looking forward to the challenge.  I am pretty sure if there was a job of being a professional student I would do that in a heart beat!

In other news it was decided yesterday that I am hosting Christmas dinner for my family this year.  They are all over it and no one wanted to.  I offered with the condition that there will be a lot of love and joy and mediocre food.

I am in luck because my grandma orders food on QVC for Christmas.  Yes, you can order food on QVC, my grandma doesn't like to leave the house.  I just need a main course.  I do not want to make a turkey, but want something with turnkey in it.  All you awesome people out there should leave a link for a great recipe that I can make!

I hope you have a great day and get your errands done early so as to avoid all the crazies!