When relevant, posts are sponsored or contain affiliate links.When relevant, posts are sponsored or contain affiliate links. As of today, there are 42,280 plugins in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone. With that many plugins available, it can be confusing to … Read More
Since Valentine’s Day is on a Sunday this year, many restaurants are going to be crowded with rushed service. Skip the crowds and celebrate with a home-cooked meal. I’m a big fan of restaurants overall though, so definitely take a “rain check” on that dining out date! Meanwhile, I want to share the recipes for these 10 easy comfort foods to make for Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!
At the end of each year, my family has an annual tradition of talking about the things that we want to have, do, be, make and give in the upcoming year. It has been really encouraging for all of us to see how many of those things come true over the years. As 2015 came to a close, Michael (11) and Sean (8) mentioned that they wanted to make extra money. Michael wanted to eat out more with his friends after school. Meanwhile, Sean primarily wanted to save money for a big purchase. I asked them how much they wanted to be paid and they each asked for a certain rate. (Sean’s first lesson was learning not to ask for too little. Learn it now child. Learn it now.)
Here’s the thing…my husband Reggie and I don’t pay our kids for a lot of things that many of their friends’ parents do. We don’t pay our kids for the following:
1. Household chores (making their beds, cleaning their room, swiffering, dusting and taking out the trash)
2. Schoolwork (homework, getting great grades and such) – Time Inc. even had a related cautionary post, Why Paying Kids to Do Homework Can Backfire, back in 2013.
Rather, we think that the main incentive for those types of positive things is that they get to be a part of this family. What? It has its perks! 🙂 As part of this family, Reggie and I do a lot. It’s good for our kids to help out at home too. Besides, we don’t want to raise them to be people who lack personal motivation for doing anything that doesn’t involve a reward.
At the same time, we wanted to give them what they wanted (additional money) so we figured out that they could be my work assistants. Although it initially gave me additional work to come up with things for the kids to do, they have actually turned out to be really great little workers. Perhaps you can “outsource” some of these tasks to your kids too…
In this installment of “Fix My Site”, I am going to address some of the Pinterest tech questions that I have received from readers and clients. Note, that I’m primarily focusing on how to use Pinterest from a tech perspective in this post. Even though Pinterest is the biggest social media referrer for this site and I took a “Pinterest Pin Perfection” workshop with a community manager from Pinterest last year, I haven’t really focused on this social media platform to grow my business. That is changing though and I will be focusing on learning Pinterest (overall) in February. I’ll share a second post at the end of February. If you are a blogger or business owner, below are 10 tips on using Pinterest from a technical standpoint.
1. Set up Rich Pins. Rich Pins show metadata (descriptive information) right on the pins. There are currently six types of rich pins – app, article, movie, place, product and recipe pins.
I read a book from cover to cover! Pre-2015, my excitement over this fact would have been laughable. I was the girl who “always” had her nose in a book. Up until last year, I was also the woman who was constantly reading. It was one of my favorite things. My love for reading was contagious…both of my sons love to read; my husband Reggie developed a love for (non-academic) books last year and I take great pleasure in helping friends learn to enjoy reading by matching them up with just the right book. With all of that love and history with books, 2015 slipped by and I did not read a single book from start to finish except the Bible. While I listened to several audiobooks, it’s not the same. That is why one of my minor goals for 2016 was to read at least 12 books. I thought that it would be easy, but it was actually a little challenging to pick the habit of reading books back up.
I’m glad that I started my book reading challenge with Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person book. Ms. Rhimes is a very talented writer. The 15 chapters of the book were funny, vulnerable and easy to read. To stay focused, I jotted down notes for each chapter – including my favorite quotes and any particular reactions that I had to her words. There are certain subjects that I think differently about than she does but overall, I felt challenged in a good way. At the end of the book, I asked myself, “Will you say yes to everything that scares you for a year?” My answer was a conditional “Yes”. As long as the things that scare me don’t jeopardize my top 3 relationships (God, husband and kids), then I’m all in.
There were so many nuggets of wisdom in the book, that I’ll just share the things that especially stood out to me:
I decided to do a weekly “Fix My Site” series to help answer some of the most commonly asked questions that I receive as a website and blog developer for bloggers and small business owners. I will start with one of the easiest things – how to easily make a custom WordPress favicon.
A favicon is simply the icon that viewers see displayed beside your site’s URL when it is typed into the address bar of various Internet browsers. Favicons also show up next to your site’s name when it is in a bookmark list.
While you don’t have to change your favicon, it just tends to make your site look more polished. When your favicon complements the look and feel of your site, it shows an attention to detail.
Will Winter Storm Jonas come to New York City? I’m not sure. I hope not, but it is best to be prepared. First, you want to be certain to pick up storm essentials – “Water—at least a 3-day supply; one gallon per person per day and Food—at least a 3-day supply of non-perishable, easy-to-prepare food”. If you have extra time to shop, I suggest that you also pick up the ingredients for some of my favorite winter recipes below:
Chilies, Soups & Stews
1.CHICKEN SOUP TO WARM THE SOUL
2. CHICKEN, SPINACH AND PORTOBELLO MUSHROOM SOUP (OR STEW!)
3. CHUNKY TOMATO VEGETABLE SOUP
4. GLUTEN FREE SLOW COOKER TURKEY CHILI
I tried…
Yesterday, I went to donate blood as an act of service for Martin Luther King Day 2016. (January also happens to be National Blood Donor Month.) After filling out my paperwork, I had my finger pricked in order to test my iron. Unfortunately, my iron was too low for me to donate. I’ll admit that I was sad-happy to hear that – sad because I really wanted to donate but happy because it tends to be difficult for my blood to be drawn.
Nurses have a really hard time drawing blood from my mom, my son Sean and me. It usually takes several needle pricks before they are successful. Before the nurse on the New York Blood Center’s bloodmobile checked the iron in my blood, she said, “Show me your arms.” I turned my arms so that she could see them and she said, “Oh, I see that you have bad veins.” Alrighty then!
For the last decade, blogging has been such an unexpected gift for my family and I. The income from blogging has allowed me to remain a work from home mom for the last decade. That is no small thing since my family lives in NYC and my husband is a (great!) teacher. We have also been offered so many amazing opportunities that we may not have been able to experience financially due to the fact that I chose not to return to my job in corporate America after the birth of my first son. Friends, family and readers often share that they want to have a blog and I definitely encourage it. Personally, I think that everyone should have a blog – for fun and/or for profit. There is something special about having your own little corner of the world wide web. You can do whatever you like with it!
If you have ever considered starting your own blog, try it. It’s not brain surgery…if you don’t like something, you can always go back and change it. 🙂 If you are a “do it yourself” type of person, you can even set up your own site. In this post, I will show you how to start a Genesis Framework blog in only 5 simple steps. Let’s begin.
Recently, I “bribed” my photographer friend to come over and take a quick photo of me for the blog. Since it was such short notice, I said that in addition to paying her that I would make lunch for her … Read More