18 July 2021: So much can happen in a decade or two: See the “About” page for the stream-of consciousness ramblings that give a broad overview of my actual life.
The current theme (July 2021) is
SandalwoodVersion: 1.0.7
ON THIS PAGE: The most-recent changes to the site itself are changing to https for added privacy and security if you visit the site, re-enabling Matomo analytics and some additional behind-the-scenes upkeep, adding a privacy statement (see the Privacy Page in the menu), and switching to a theme that includes a header image but simple text blocks with a single sidebar. I have a backup theme that I prefer because it shows a lot more posts at once, but is based on a “card” approach to layout and is minimalist in terms of visual impact.
At one point I found a cool site that generates a Disclosure statement. Here’s mine:
This policy is valid from 05 February 2011/renewed 18 July 2021
This website is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions. We write for our own purposes. However, we may be influenced by our educational background, occupation, religion, political affiliation, or life experiences.
This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.
The owner of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog owner’s. If we claim or appear to be experts on a certain topic or product or service area, we will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.
This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.
To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org
Welcome again! Sit back with a cup of tea or glass of lemonade, and enjoy!
To see older updates (the most-recent was from 2008!) see below.
7 May 2008: Most recent changes: same layout for the page, but changed the background image (now wide pink and green vertical columns instead of thin pink and white stripes), the links are now a dark green (more visible than a dark pink), the large “S” logo does not appear in the current header, and I have re-ordered and eliminated some of the additional pages. Trying for a more logical flow to things. One of these days I want to have drop-down tabs for the multiple pages on the site, rather than listing them all out sitemap style in the sidebar. That would free up space for some small widgets pointing to images I have posted in picasa and such.
Mostly, this school year has really sucked up all my energy between working in Mother’s school and occasionally with the children’s schools. And after-school activities. And occasional visits with friends (and the lovely trip to see my grandfather in April). I am looking forward to the end of the school year, having a couple weeks to organize the house and rediscover where I put all my gardening supplies — it should be warm enough by then to do some planting — and pull out the art supplies.
16 October 2007: I have been enjoying working on the blog. Because I am now away from home at least part of four days each week, things are moving slowly. I have changed to using the plaintxtBlog skin by Scott Wallick because it allowed me to have an extra column on the side without being too cluttered. I have made a few modifications, the most obvious being the addition of PINK bars and accents, and the “S” logo in the header. I have also gone ahead and added stidmama on my business license as an umbrella for my work, but I will keep the old names also (Quality Word Works and Happy Messages) because they are actually related to the services and products I provide. I have uploaded a search bar icon also — you should see my pink S with a black background whenever you access the site. At the moment, I cannot connect to the server to upload the icon post-changes. It should be there soon…
9 June 2007: Well, I launched my newest domain, stidmama.com last month. I thought it made sense to “brand” the name I use for almost every online encounter, and since I can tie it to other blogs and such, I intend to use this as the primary jumping-off point for multiple projects. Considering letting my business domain lapse when it expires and put it all under this umbrella.
A few small notes, the skin I am using is called “Thirteen” by Beccary, the same author as the other skins I have used. I am going to try to write my own skin one of these days, but until I have the brain-power and time, this will do.
5 October 2006: I have put some new cards up at the HappyMessages portion of Quality Word Works. I have decided that I need to spend an hour each day writing (the babblestory, see below); knitting or doing hand crafts; doing chores outside; and on “work” whether art proper, cards or research. That’s four hours a day. Leaving ten other “awake” hours for reading, inside chores, visiting… and on some days I know I tend to do just one thing or another. Other days I won’t do any of the things on my list. But if I can stick to my plan 60% of the time, I think it will keep things rolling through the winter, when I tend to have trouble getting motivated. We’ll see if it works… meantime, check out the new cards in the “One of a Kind” section!
7 September 2006: Tomorrow my grandparents would have been married for 69 years. Puts things in perspective when you realize they almost made it to 60… but they were always supportive of their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. And my writing each day would have pleased them. I am putting my story online on our family website, and will take an hour most days to add a chapter. Check it out at BabbleStory.com.
You will also see that I have started categorizing links in my blog and adding a few new links. There are so many things to explore in this world! 😀
30 Apr 2006: Tom fixed the buggy code, and I found some skins we could use to change the appearance. The one I have up now is called “Almost Spring 1.3” by Rebecca Wei and can be found at beccary.com.
Tom’s current skin is pretty, it’s called “Ocadia” by the same person. I am trying to keep on top of the entries, and doing better than I did last year, for sure!
6 March 2006: I have changed the settings on the main page to show just the last three posts, and previous ones can then be viewed from the archives. This will hopefully speed upload times and download times, and just make it a lot easier to keep up to date. 🙂
The next step is to see if I can fix the buggy code that generates these pages. It looks fine in IE, but really gets messed up in FireFox, my favorite browser. 🙁 Bummer!