Widgets and buttons and blogrolls -- Oh my!

Okay, so there are just WAY too many things I want to put on my sidebar, but it is starting to overtake the entire page! Even with my high speed connection it is getting slow at loading up. So I thought I would take a few of them off, one at a time, and dedicate an entry to each.

So here is the first one I am taking off because, even though it relates to this blog, it is not a priority to me. I believe "education" should be an every day thing, part of our lifestyle. This blog was set up as a homeschooling blog, but I am educating myself on things as well, so it is more about our passions and things that everyone in our family is learning, not just the kids. I am very passionate about homeschooling and even the style of education we have chosen for our children, but the widget with the quotes will just have to go for now, no matter how awesome they are. :)

My BFF!

This is Chrysinda's dog, Ben. He's so cool. :) Click on him to go check out her blog! It's awesome!

Bloggy fun!

Alright, I'm not sure who might actually use this, but I was just having some fun. So if you feel like it, copy and paste this html code into your sidebar to link back here! :) It will just show the picture and will go to this link when you click on the image, it won't have the code. Yea! Fun stuff!

Send me a picture of your blog or web site and I will gladly customize your own code!

<a href="http://everydaylifetogether.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" alt="LIFESCHOOLING" src="http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s262/cpinokc/29d1920c-1.jpg" title="LIFESCHOOLING" /></a>

How GREEN are you?

1. Which household material is considered hazardous waste?

A. Metal
B. Plastic Packaging
C. Batteries
D. Spoiled Food

2. When shopping at the mall for the newest fashion trends, what type of bag is the best to use to conserve natural resources and protect the environment?

A. Paper Bag
B. Brown Bag
C. Plastic Bag
D. Recycled cloth bag

3. Over the course of a year what is the amount of the environmental pollution caused by non-biodegradable, synthetic materials that are found in non-organic feminine hygiene products?

A. 1 Million
B. 45 Billion
C. 50 Thousand
D. 100 Million

4. About how many soda cans do you need to recycle to buy that elegant new flat screen you have had your eye on for months?

A. One million
B. Three thousand
C. One thousand

5. To produce your favorite newspaper about how many trees are used?

A. 100,000
B. One million
C. 500,000
D. Two Million

6. Which blonde starlet unwinds every night in a solar powered house?

A. Britney Spears
B. Cate Blanchett
C. Scarlett Johansson
D. Gisele Bundchen

7. Which of the following is a renewable resource?

A. Oil
B. Trees
C. Iron ore

8. Which of the following is the number one cause of tropical deforestation world wide?

A. Wildlife
B. Commercial Loging
C. Clearing of land for agriculture.
D. Gathering of fire wood

9. How much plastic do Americans throw away each hour?

A. 100,000
B. 1 Million
C. 2.5 Million
D. 3 Million

10. In one year, how many trees do Americans use?

A. 850 Million trees annually
B. 100 Million trees annually
C. 15 Million trees annually
D. 965 Million trees annually

Answers:

1-C
2-D
3-B
4-B
5-C
6-B
7-B
8-C
9-C
10-A

How green are you?

You scored 1-3 correct: Florescent Green
You are a florescent green girl. It is very important to become environmentally aware and active for yourself and future generations.

You scored 4-6 correct: Kelly Green
You are a Kelly green girl.You care about the environment, but could become even more educated.

You scored 7-10 correct: Forest Green
You are a forest green girl. You are very aware of environmental issues, and you care about the environment. Keep up the good work! Tell others!

I guessed on a few of these, but I scored a 7!

States I've visited

I took a couple of states off of my previous map (on my old blog) because the more I think about it, the more I think I didn't ever go there. I'll have to brainstorm with old friends and family, but this map below is probably more accurate, at least from what I actually remember. This is a fun and easy way to track where you have been. Check it out!

visited 19 states (38%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

Turning blogs into books?

Has anyone ever actually turned their blog into a book? I've been considering this for a while, and after a recent discussion in my homeschool group, I am seriously considering doing this! I usually put all my favorite pictures on my blog, same as scrapbooking, so it would be cheaper and faster than printing all the pictures out and putting them in a scrapbook. I am so far behind on scrapbooking too! It's killing me!

This is one site that was mentioned to use for turning your blog into a book. It looks really great! Does anyone have any other sites to recommend?

My original blog (unschooling101 - I don't want to link to it directly, but you can look it up by that name) that was started long ago, it seems, is just sitting there, waiting for me to do something with it. I have been wanting to transfer everything to one blog. So I think over the next few weeks (or months!) I will transfer everything here. So even if I backdate them, if you are subscribed through email, you will be getting a lot of *old* posts from me. :) I think you'll enjoy them if you've never seen my original blog. I tried to do some interesting activities and lots of pictures. I have pictures of our hula hoops on there!

We've been busy this week and will be again today and tomorrow, so I will have lots to post with pictures when I get a chance!

My family :)

I saw this on a friend's blog and decided to make one myself. I want to put something like this on our van! I didn't want to make one with our pets because there are not a lot to choose from on this particular site, and we have 2 dogs, 3 cats and a turtle! Try it out. It's fun! :)

Get your own Family Sticker Maker & MySpace Layouts.

Sharing a blog

I just stumbled upon this blog that I wanted to share with you. This lady is quite offensive in some of her posts......I LOVE IT!!!!! :)

Okay, that probably sounds wrong. LOL! I don't think she is out to offend people and make them mad on purpose, but she is passionate about certain topics and not afraid to say so! Like me, only I wish I was more bold. She has a great sense of humor too.

Now, I haven't looked at her entire site yet, so I can't make a blanket statement that I love her whole site......but the parts I have read so far are great! I love it enough to post it here! :)

Some of the topics that she blogs about are attachment parenting, baby wearing (slings, etc.), breastfeeding, cosleeping, elimination communication, frugality, gentle discipline, baby sign language, UNSCHOOLING......and a few more! It looks like I may have a lot in common with someone else in the world after all! LOL!

Ah, I know there are many more crunchy people out there......somewhere. I just don't know anyone quite as crunchy as me IRL. Well, maybe a couple, but no one that I see on a regular basis, at least.

New buttons on the sidebar!

I've gone a little crazy with making buttons for my blog! Come check them out and see just a few of my passions (or at least interests) in life. :)

(For those who are not blog-savvy, a "button" is an image with a link to another web site of a particular thing someone is interested in.)

Another, perhaps better idea, and a picture. :)

This is another idea for backing up a blog. This may even be better and just as easy as the other idea I had. I will probably do both. What can it hurt?

So just create another one or two Google accounts (or whatever blog you're on) and share ownership (administration) between all of your accounts. That way if one account does get deleted, you can easily get it back, even though you may not be able to have the same sign-on name, as in my case!

One thought though. I'm sure a company as big as Google would never have this problem, but ya never know.....If something were to happen to their servers, you could lose all accounts at the same time. So I think I'll do the email as well!

And another thing I just thought of, if you upload your images to your blog account, they will only be on one account. So you still may have your blog if that particular account is closed, but you'll lose your pictures. It's an extra step though to upload them to another site, so I'll just be lazy and do it the same old way I have been! I've got my pix on the computer (and backed up) anyway, it's the text I want to be sure to back up somewhere!

I just don't want to go through this again!!! Any other ideas I'm not thinking of? I'm sure there are many other ways to save your blog.

Oh, great news though! I was over at my BFF's house tonight. I noticed on her Google Reader she had my old blog on there, the one I just lost. It was still there!!! So I copied the entire thing and emailed it to me! So I got it back! Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And for some reason my very first ever blog is still online, perhaps because I ended up not deleting the original account that I intended to delete. It doesn't have administration priveledges though, so it's just sitting there. I will likely not add anything from those blogs to this one, I'll just start over, but I wanted to have them for my own "memory" for when I scrapbook! Thank You, LORD! :) And Chrysinda. :)

I'll end this with a very funny candid picture of Jonathan. I'm sure it would embarrass him to know I put it on here, but what are moms for? :) I was trying to take a picture of Jacob but he wouldn't let me and kept turning away. So as I started to press the button, I turned the camera toward Jonathan and surprised us both! I laughed so hard I cried!

Blogging tip!

So I'm starting a new blog because of what happened yesterday. I have no other choice since I can't recover it or use the same name as before. :( What happened was I had logged out of my Google account that I was using regularly, logged into my old account to delete it, and then it read the wrong account or something and deleted my newer account! I was devastated! So because of that, I decided to do something new with my blog that I thought I'd share with anyone who reads this. A tip to back up your blog in a very easy way.

Most of you are probably aware that you can have your entries emailed to you when they are published. I just recently discovered (either this is new or I haven't checked this in a long, long time) that you can send it to up to 10 email addresses now! So I have some email addresses I use for spam and rarely check them. They are just web-based email I've used in the past and never deleted the accounts so I could use them for junk mail like newsletters that I really don't want to read but have to sign up for it to get something for free.....things like that. I think I put a total of four addresses on there, so I shouldn't have to worry now about completely losing everything if something were to happen again.

So it's really easy to do. You just go into the 'settings' tab of the blog you want to put them on. Click on the 'email' tab and it is at the top. You can enter up to 10 addresses separated by commas. And if you only have one email address, there are tons of places you can get more for free, like gmail, hotmail, and Yahoo.

HAPPY BLOGGING! It will be happier for me knowing I won't have to worry about losing this now! :)