Friday Follow: April 30

Welcome to the April 30 Friday Follow celebration hosted by One 2 Try,  Hearts Make Families and Midday Escapades! We invite you to join us every Friday to get more blog followers and to follow other interesting blogs. It is all about sharing and having fun.

Here's how YOU can join the Friday Follow celebration:

--Link up your blog name and URL using the MckLinky below. Only need to add on one blog to be seen on all the blog hops. 

--Grab the Friday Follow button and include on your Friday Follow blog post.

--Follow the Friday Follow hostesses listed in the first 3 slots.

--Follow as many other blogs on the linky as you'd like.

--Take a moment to comment on the blogs telling them you're from Friday Follow.

--Follow back when you get a new follower through Friday Follow.

This list is new each week. The links do not carry over. Please link up each week for new participants to find your blogs. The list is only open to add your blog links on Fridays. It will be visible all week to visit the blogs listed. 

Friday Follow: April 16

Welcome to the April 16 Friday Follow celebration hosted by One 2 Try, Hearts Make Families and Midday Escapades!  We invite you to join us every Friday to get more blog followers and to follow other interesting blogs.  It is all about sharing and having fun.

Here's how YOU can join the Friday Follow celebration:

• * Link up your blog name and URL using the MckLinky below. Only need to add on one blog to be seen on all the blog hops. 
• * Grab the Friday Follow button and include on your Friday Follow blog post.
• * Follow the Friday Follow hostesses listed in the first 3 slots.
• * Follow as many other blogs on the linky as you'd like
• * Take a moment to comment on the blogs telling them you're from Friday Follow
• * Follow back when you get a new follower through Friday Follow

The list is new each week. The links do not carry over. Please link up each week for new participants to find your blogs. The list is only open to add your blog links on Fridays. It will be visible all week to visit the blogs listed.

 Due to the overwhelming number of entries each week, we understand everyone, including ourselves, may not be able to follow every blog.  To keep it fun, follow what you can at your own pace.  


Now, add your link, and get on out there and have some fun!

Free (or almost free) Ad Space

Want to be one of my sponsors? Interested in learning what that means? Or maybe you just want to trade ad space? I'm down with any or all of it!

<---- Down the left column of this blog, I have ad space available. These are what I call my "sponsors". Ad space is available for your shop, blog, fan page, etc for super cheap. 

Or, if you prefer, we can trade ad space for free. I will put your ad here on my blog and you put mine on yours. 

If you're interested in buying space, working out details or learning more, send me a message at tara@waterwaif.com! 

The Sunshine Blog Award!

What a sweet surprise it was to be awarded the Sunshine award by Owlsome Blog!


The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blog world.
The rules for accepting this award are:-

Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
Link the nominees within your post.
Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.  




So the 12 I am nominating are, in no particular order:

Beth at The Ruby Blog
Tracie at Dean Designs
Elycia at Love Elycia
Elizabeth at Paradise Purls
Kimberly at Poppy Luxe
Laura at Bright, Bold, Beautiful
Reduce Footprints
Tracy at Braggin Rights
Kerri at A Little Piece of Me
Natalie at Paper Flora
Stacie at Gingibersnap
April at Autumn Rain Creations

So there you have it! Please go check out my nominees, give them a follow or a comment, and tell them waterwaif sent you!

Are you a work-at-home mom (or just want to network)?

There's so many of us and I think and hope we can do more to support each other. Being a work-at-home mom is a tough job! But oh so rewarding. 


I've been a stay-at-home mom for a few years now but only recently have I started to "work" at home. I recently opened an Etsy store to market and sell my jewelry and my artwork. My kids are older now so my job is easier in a lot of ways (but oh so much harder in others. teenagers. oy) I have the utmost respect for moms who are able to pull it off successfully!


So if you are a stay-at-home mom or a work-at-home mom, please leave your blog link below so we can all follow back, network, and support each other! And hey, even if you're not a mom, or not at home, or don't work, just want to network, or just want some more followers, that's cool, too! 


Feel free to follow me on Twitter and leave your links for that, too!

Tutorial: How to Take a Screenshot

Being a seller on Etsy, I sometimes find my items in treasuries that other sellers make. These are always such beautiful collections that I want to take a screenshot, or screen capture, and share these with other people. In talking to a few of my friends the other day, I realized that some of them did not know how to do this. It's super easy. Watch!


Make sure you have the webpage that you want to capture centered on your screen. Look at your keyboard and find the 'Print Screen' button. This is usually somewhere near the top right, to the right of the F12 key.


In some systems, it works fine for you to just press the 'Print Screen' button, but with mine, I have to press 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Some systems require you to press 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' at the same time. Try one, test it with the next step or two, and if that doesn't work, try it the other way.


After you've captured your screen, you need to have somewhere to put it!
The easiest place is in your Paint. If you have Windows, you almost certainly have Paint. Look in your start menu.
Start Menu --> All Programs --> Accessories


Once Paint is open, you will see a blank screen. Perfect for pasting your screen capture!
Up at the top in Paint, you will see the Paint menu. Click on Edit and select Paste. Your screenshot will be pasted right there! If Paste is not an available option, that means that your screen was not captured. Try capturing it again with the step I listed above. Try 'Ctrl' and 'Print Screen' together or 'Alt' and 'Print Screen' together, and test it by checking the Edit menu in Paint.


Now that you've taken your screenshot and found somewhere to put it, you could be done! If you like using images as bitmaps or find that it doesn't matter to you either way, then just save your screenshot and you're done. 
If you want to crop or otherwise edit the photo, save it and reopen it using your photo editing software. When you save it after editing, it's best to save it as a jpeg. How to edit the photo is a tutorial for another day. I hope this post helped someone!

Tutorial: How to Add a Grab My Button!

I have been talking with other bloggers lately about trading ad space with each other for free for 30 day blocks. I think it's a fantastic idea, a great networking tool, and a way to support each other while still getting the word out for your shop or your blog.


But rather than have to email each other attachments every time you want to trade ad space, I realized that you can just add a Grab My Button! ad on your side bar for them to just, well, grab!


On the right is an example of a Grab My Button! and please, feel free to, um, grab my button.





Here's how you can add this to the sidebar of your own blog for easy grabbing:


1. First, make sure you have an ad or a button. The easiest way to do this, as I did, is to take a photo of one of your products and add your name or link to it with photoshop or a similar program. It's best to keep the image size under 200 pixels wide so it will fit in most sidebars.


2. Upload your new ad to any hosting site. I use http://photobucket.com because it is free, but there are a lot of options out there for web hosting.


3. Now, open a new tab or window and go to your blog. This tutorial only works with blogspot as I have never tried anything else. Log into your blog, click customize, then Layout, then page elements. Click 'add a gadget' and then select 'HTML/Javascript'.


4. Copy and paste the following in the text area:


<img src="http://YOURADURLHERE.jpg" /> <br /> <textarea style="text-align:center" rows="5" cols="20"><a border="0" href="http://YOURBLOGURLHERE.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://YOURADURLHERE.jpg"></a></ textarea>


5. Keep that window open and go to Photobucket, or whichever photo hosting you are using, and copy the direct link URL for your ad. Then come back to your blog window and paste that URL in both places where I've written YOURADURLHERE. Make sure you leave the quotation marks as that's what keeps a link active in HTML.


6. Then, see where I've written YOURBLOGURLHERE? Put your blog's URL there. Or your shop. Or whichever site you want to link to.


7. Make sure you save.


8. Go forth and multiply.