Thursday, March 30, 2006

Laundry

"I used to think separating the colors was stupid, but now I like it"

I think my wife might be drunk. woohoo!

5 comments:

Elizabeth Prata said...

Hello Christie and Darren,

I really like your blog. As a newcomer I learned a lot about what makes a good blog by reading yours. It's warm, funny, and interesting. I particularly like the .eeps research and GWBush speechwriting!

I also like the sidebar with recent reads etc. I looked and looked on Blogspot for directions on how to do it but cannot find. WOuld you be so kind as to point me to the directions?

Thanks and thank you also for your blog.

Elizabeth
PS What changed Christie's mind about separating colors?

Christie said...

Hey Elizabeth,
We're glad you like the blog. It's been a fun experience.

Here's a quick, probably lacking in good content, overview of how to get new info on the sidebar. I didn’t find directions on how to do this in Blogger. I showed my husband, who’s a programmer, a site that had something similar and he helped me do it on our site.

What you need to do to get something on your sidebar.

1. Sign on to Blogger
2. On the Dashboard, click the blog link that you want to add sidebar info to
3. Click Template
4. Scroll through the html until you find a the sidebar sections (For example with my blog I looked through the code until I found the sections Blogger automatically had for the template I chose - these included “contributors,” “links,” “previous posts,” etc.) You’ll start to notice a pattern. Opened items “<a...” need to be closed “</a>”.
5. Decide where you want to place the “recent reads” section, you can name this section whatever you want.
6. Type the following to add info to your sidebar in the appropriate place

<h2 class=”sidebar-title”>Recent Reads</h2>
<ul id=”recently”>

<a href=”http://[INSERT THE WEB ADDRESS HERE]”>
<img src=”http://[INSERT THE WEB ADDRESS HERE” width=[###] height=[###]>

</a>

If you want to add more than one item, use <br> to add line breaks and wait to type </a> until you have added all the items you want to add.

NOTE: Areas in brackets [ ] indicate items you need to fill in with the correct information. You should not be typing “INSERT THE WEB ADDRESS HERE” but the actual web address.

How to grab the web address and image source “img src” address needed -
here’s an example.

1. Go to www.powells.com
2. Search for the title of the book you want. In this instance, The Lovely Bones.
3. When you get to the book page, highlight and copy the url. It should look something like this: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio/0316666343. Paste this url in the “a href” section of the code (see above).
4. Control-click the book image on the powell’s web site
5. Select “View Image” from the list
6. Highlight and copy the image url. It should look something like this: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=0316666343
Paste this url in the “img src” section of the code (see above).
7. The image size should be listed on the top bar of the window. In this instance it is 120x170. So you would type “width=120 height=170” in the width/height section of the code (see above).

Does this make sense? Good luck!

Christie said...

As for separating colors while doing laundry...when I originally started washing my own laundry, I was living in an apartment with laundry facilities in the nether regions of the building and there were a few reasons not to separate - it cost more and took longer. Plus, when you live alone it can take weeks to get enough laundry together to facilitate the separating of colors. My one red shirt would have never been laundered if I hadn't hooked up with my then-boyfriend, now-husband and added his reds to the mix. :)

But a nice side effect of color-separating is that it makes it that much more difficult to lose socks in the process.

Anonymous said...

Hello Christie,
Thank you so very much for answering me and taking the time to be so helpful. I was able to put up my first "Recent Read" so I apreciate it and looks like I am off and running!

Christie said...

Hi Elizabeth,
I noticed it on your site this morning. I'm happy I could help. I received that book for Christmas and recently read it. I enjoyed it.