How to Change your Background

Okay. Ready for this super easy "How to Change your Blog Background" tutorial? Let's Do it.

Blogger's has a sweet Template Designer that eliminates the need to play around with that messy HTML code! It helps you change lots of options on your blog such as font colors, links, borders, templates, AND backgrounds!

This is especially nice if you want to create your own background from Digital Scrapbooking kits in Photoshop or another editing program and upload them directly through blogger. Or, you could just as easily choose any photo from your computer or on the web.

Here's how to change your blog's background:

1. From your blogger Dashboard click on "Design".

2. You should be taken to the "Page Elements" page under the "Design" tab. There's this nifty little "Template Designer" button. Click on it.

3. In the left column click on "Background" and next to the background image is a little down arrow. Click on that too.

4. A window pops up that looks like this. Click on "Upload Image" at the top left. Then you can "Browse" through your files to find an image for your background. They recommend 1800x1600 pixels.

I made my background image at 1600x1100 px/in and it ended up being too big and gets cut off on the bottom of the screen. Then I figured out that my computer monitor has a resolution of 1600x900, but in my browser window I have all the toolbars on top and bottom so the actual height that I can see is probably only about 675px. so that's why I can't see the whole background.


*TIP- If you are designing your own background from scratch*

Depending on other people's screen resolutions they might see more or less of the background than you can. A helpful tip  *You should try designing your website for your audience. But you might not know what type of screen resolutions your visitors have if you don't have analytics set up for your site..... That's okay. I have found that 1280x1024 and 1024x768 seems to be the most common sizes and I'll show you how to optimize your design for all screen types by tiling your image. So that, for instance, even I can see your design across my entire screen at 1600px wide.

Anyways, back to the tutorial.....

5. After your image has uploaded, click on it so it is highlighted in orange and hit "Done".

Now you should see this:

6.  Click on the drop down arrow next to "Alignment". Select the top middle button (which will pull your background up to the top of the window and center it).

7. Then click on the next drop down arrow below, mine says "Don't tile", I'm not sure if this is the default so yours might say something else.

Okay here's where it will matter what screen size other people have and how much of your background they will be able to see.

I think the best solution is to "Tile" your image. This means that your image will repeat on the sides and bottom of your website, which works out nicely if someone has a larger screen than your background image.  *If you choose "Don't tile" then other people with larger screen resolutions than your photo will see white space (mine is gray space) around your background image. Which doesn't look very pretty and appealing.   ;-)

Here's a few examples:

Tile Vertically *notice the gray areas to the sides where it is not tiled

Tile Horizontally *notice the bottom is gray, (the top is not because we aligned our image to the top).

Completely tiled (looks like 6 of the same picture)

"Don't Tile" option

Now keep in mind that in the above examples I have my browser zoomed way way out to see so much of the background.

8. Now this is a personal preference, but I like a "static" background, which means it doesn't move when you scroll up and down, so I leave "Scroll with page" unchecked.  But if your background has a nice repetitive style you might want to experiment with it. On the other hand, if your background is busy it might distract too much from your content with so much going on.

Play around with that for a second and decide which way you like best.

Almost done...........

9. Last thing to do is make our blog transparent so your background shows through. In the left column click on "Advanced", then "Backgrounds" in the second column.

 

Now Change all the color settings to "transparent".

**On a side note, if your background image is dark, or too busy and distracting you might want to leave these settings alone, but this is where you could change their color if you wanted.

 

10. Just click on "Apply to Blog" in the upper right hand corner to save your changes.

Yay! You're done! Good Job!  Now Click on "back to blogger" and it will take you back to your "page elements" tab. From there just click on "View Blog".

I hope everything worked for you and this tutorial was helpful, not confusing! :-) Aren't you so excited now that you can change your blog background as often as you like? I SURE AM!

Do you like?

So, I just learned how to change my blog's background, header, font, and font colors!!

It's about time too! I've been playing around with Photoshop long enough now to know a thing or two about Digital layouts..... which is exactly what I used for my background and header!!!

Do you want to know how I did it?? Guess what, it's SO easy! And tomorrow I'm gonna give you a walk through on how to do it.

BTW, the picture of my family in the Header is from 1 1/2 years ago, we all look a little different now.... and I am a brunette not blond anymore. :-)

Party Planner and Event Designer- Handouts

So now that I've decided to give this party planning idea a go, I made up these hand-outs in Photoshop of my previous parties to give to the ladies I threw the parties for so that they can hand them out whenever anyone comments on their baby showers and asks about it.

(You can click on the pictures to see them larger and more details)
Carolyn's Baby Shower

So, the more I play around with Photoshop CS4 the more I LOVE IT!!  I scanned in the invitation from Carolyn's shower and extracted elements from it. Like that black scalloped border, it is made by a paper punch I have that I bordered the envelope with and the pink paper is the actual paper I used to make the envelopes out of. And the pregnant lady, that's a $1 stamp from Michaels. The blacked out umbrella is from a Cricut cartridge that I used on the banner then extracted out of a photo to use in my title. If you think about it that way you're not limited to just using digital images and fonts available on the internet. I literally have thousands of options between all the scrapbooking tools that I have and all the Cricut cartridges I own!!

These two are basically the same but I wasn't happy with  the way the left one turned out so I revised it into the one on the right and I included some more information about my services.
The font I used on these and the baby shower decorations is called Christie.



Melissa's Baby Shower

Same thing with these ones, I did the left first, didn't like it, changed it to the right one. I'm just including both of them on here to show the different aspects of the parties.

Now here's my Photoshop details: The title is actually the font on the Life is a Beach Cricut cartridge. I didn't even have to cut them out and photograph them, I just arranged them on my Cricut Design Studio program and pushed the Print Screen button to copy-paste them into Photoshop. Easy Peasy!

The It's A Boy charms are all from photos of the actual banner!! It was a little work to extract them cleanly from the photos but it was worth it, so cute! Thanks for looking (and making it to the end of this boring technical post). If you see something you like feel free to say so... I love comments!!

Staphylococcus Aureus - Staph infection

Our first run-in with a skin infection, which is supposed to be very common for individuals with Netherton's Syndrome, was last November. The skin culture showed two different types of Staph on her skin and it was obvious that something was not right. She was in agonizing pain, wouldn't let anyone touch her, hug her, pick her up, even pulling down her pants to use the potty was too painful.  The infection started on her legs, at least that's where I first noticed the discoloration and bumpy appearance, but soon began showing up on her torso, back, and arms.

The last time it was most likely contracted from a dog with a staph infected wound we had been around. I say most likely because it is VERY rare for a human to be infected from canine staph. A google search, which believe me isn't always accurate, gives many reasons why humans don't contract staph from dogs. The first and most important one is that humans have a skin barrier. Your skin keeps harmful bacteria out of your body, and since staph is not airborne it doesn't get in through your nose or mouth. The rare occasions are when humans have an open wound around the infected animal. EmmaLee doesn't have this skin barrier. She is that rare exception when staph becomes contagious from dogs through her open skin.  Now, I'm not a doctor...or even an expert on infections and types of bacteria...but I know more about my daughter than any professional ever will. I don't claim to be smarter than them, just more intuitive to my child's needs... "a mother's intuition" sums it up.  Granted, there is no proof nor evidence that the last infection came from that dog,... but I just feel it.  It makes sense.  The only logical source for the infection.  Coincidence?   No.   Maybe in these circumstances it is normal human behavior to find something to blame for someone's pain and suffering,...that's fine. I'll admit I just need to make something responsible for causing this trauma in our lives.  If I have nothing to explain this, how will I ever know when or how it might occur again?

It has. Saturday night EmmaLee was in so much pain that I took her to the E.R.  I think it was quite easy to diagnose this time since we now knew what a skin infection looks like, feels like (to her) and it's course of action.  It started hurting several days before. I knew something was happening, and her skin was different than normal (for her).  I feel so bad because I am the type of mom who says, "quit crying", "just get up and walk" (even when it hurts), and "okay, if you won't let me help, do it yourself".  Yes, bad mom.  I just know that the second I feel for her, really understand that she is in unbearable pain, I can't hold it all together anymore.  I've felt like a wreck these past few days, puffy eyes and always on the verge of tears. I can't stand to see my baby hurting like this.  We were changing her clothes to go to the hospital and she said something that just broke my heart. She says through sobs "I can't believe this is happening to me. I can't handle this."  Yes I know... me either.  Just writing about it makes me cry again.

Anyways, we got her on some antibiotics which seem to be working already. She still hurts, but she's not crying.  She's tough.  I hope I am helping her become a strong individual, but it sure feels wrong sometimes. I don't let her feel bad for herself, or make excuses why she needs special preference.  Don't misunderstand, I love my daughter more than anything, but I don't want her to become someone who feels like they were cheated in life and can never be happy or have a normal life. I want her to understand her uniqueness and then get over it, not dwell on her differences and wish for better things.  Acceptance, that's what it is.  I want her to accept it, and move on.  I'm sad to admit, but it took me a long time to accept our situation.  Trust me, dwelling on why things happened this way won't change anything. Wishing for things to be different, leads to disappointment and anger. I love her and I have to be strong for her, even though it's hard for me. 

Sorry for my random train of thought, I just needed to get it all out. I'm sure she'll be better in a few more days and back to her usual silly self again.

Oh, and she now wears glasses. At first I was apprehensive about the whole thing.  I mean, doesn't she have enough to deal with without adding this?  But I want her to have good vision, and now that she's been wearing them for a couple of weeks I can't imagine her not having them. She's just so darn cute. Anyways, it seems like glasses are becoming so commonplace nowadays that it hasn't been an issue even once. I remember when I was in school, yeah I say that like I'm old :-), and kids were just plain cruel to kids in glasses. I guess we will see what the school year brings, but for now hopefully we can get past this infection and just enjoy our beautiful Alaskan summer... except for that darn rain! Lol.

For the Kids

Okay, you know the Backyardigans right? No? Well they are great! So cute and creative, it's by far the most imaginative show my kids watch. It's on Nick Jr. You should check it out if you haven't seen it before.

Here's a block puzzle even my kids can figure out.

The whole gang.

Tyrone the Moose

Tausha the Hippo

Pablo the Penguin

Uniqua the... Ant (i think)

Austin the Kangaroo

I found the images online somewhere of just the characters, but I didn't want them on plain white backgrounds so I used PhotoShop to create cute patterned backgrounds. It also helps to figure out the puzzle because they can look for the color on the blocks as well as the characters.
I didn't do the background on the group shot, it was like that already.

These are really fun to make, Someday when I have a house... and a coffee table in my living room, I'm going to make one out of our family photos to sit on the table for guests to play with.
(We live at my mother's house, for those of you who don't know me.)

I love PhotoShop. And I really love the fact that I can use it to make crafts too!

Here is a cute website where they PhotoShop several pictures into a collage for each side of the puzzle. Someday, mine will probably be similar. Next I need to make a tray to hold the puzzle pieces.

If you are arriving here from the linky parties, check out my first block puzzle by clicking on the picture.

Hooray for Naked Day!

Today was Naked Day at our house...

Although I did joke that I was getting kinda cold, it was actually only Ethan who ran around Naked all day. When my husband called during the day and commented that I sounded unusually happy, I told him it was Naked Day- which means we all run around naked... and of course he told me to take lots of pictures... Dirty Man! :-)

Well, we have been trying to POTTY TRAIN Ethan For...um....EVER! On Monday my friend Carolyn suggested that we try a Naked Day, and it TOTALLY WORKED!! Sweet Success! All day we only had 1 accident. Which is amazing for Ethan considering all the days we have tried "Potty Training In A Day" which basically means he wears only underwear all day and I sit him on the seat like every 30 minutes. On those days we have Nothing BUT accidents. In fact on those days he usually doesn't even use the potty ONCE, just the couch, floor, kitchen chairs... you got it.

Well today there was ONE accident, the first one, and then... NO MORE!!!! Can you tell how excited I am about this?? I did hit a point during all this that was too funny not to giggle out loud about when he started running into the bathroom to go, Seriously, every 45 seconds after finishing the hand-washing, putting a sticker on the chart routine. Think maybe he just really wanted those stickers?? Which, mind you, he only got if there was some actual byproducts in the potty. Wow, now I'm getting a little too detailed I think.

Well, I did as my husband instructed and took a few pictures... don't worry I tried to clean them up as much as I could...

Although I will say this, even though he's only 3 there were several occasions that my daughter and I felt kinda awkward... I mean it's a BOY... running around NAKED. Eeeeewwwww!! :-)

My Layouts

Okay, so these are really old pictures in the layouts but I've never scrapped them on anything. And...I actually made everything for the layouts myself!! Pat. Pat. Yes, I'm patting myself on the back.

And yes, I realize that these still need some journaling or explanation...at the very least, a date.

Learning to Design...

I am slowly but surely learning how to design Digital Scrapbooking items. I have been using a trial version of PhotoShop Creative Suite 3 Extended. Technically it has expired so now I have to find a way to purchase it, or something lesser and cheaper! Here is what I have made so far...

A brown wavy paper.

Oops, it looks like I may have some stray shadow at the top, I'll be fixing that.

A brick wall scene.

I envision a graffiti saying next to a photo of my daughter doing something artistic. Or maybe just playing in paint! Actually the only funny picture I have so far is one with her eating a green crayon and smiling with big chunks of wax in her teeth!

Snowman Scene Paper

Let it Snow Word Art

The Snow letters have really cool texture too!

Just a few buttons too.

It's not much but its a small start I guess. I never knew how much you can do with all the tools in PhotoShop!! It's really fun to play around and learn. Plus there are some really great websites out there that offer tons of tutorials on how to make your own stuff!

Here's one:http://www.ellies-treasures.com/scrapbooking-tuts/scrapbooking-tuts.html