The Easiest Christmas Decoration Ever

You know me, right? (And if you don't, hey, subscribe! I'm strange but endearing.) I am disorganized. A mess. And I don't really craft. Any craft I do with Libbie is either from Pinterest or laid out explicitly for me a la Truth in the Tinsel.

But I volunteered to host a table at our annual ladies' Christmas dinner at church. And that requires decorating a table. It may seem out-of-character, but I do like to do tablescapes. Back in the day, before kids, I loved making little centerpieces for our formal dining-room table.

On Tuesday I put together my table decorations and realized my crystal candlesticks were still packed away with my china somewhere. I wasn't about to dig through six or eight boxes in hopes of finding them. So I decided to put together a makeshift taper-holder from what I had.

Here's what you need:

• small Mason jar (8 oz.) or other small jar (I save glass jars and put EVERYTHING in them!)
• ribbon or cord of some kind
• rice or epsom salts
• glitter
• taper candle

Pour rice or epsom salts into jar so it is about two-thirds full. Sprinkle in some glitter and mix it around until even throughout. (I just used the candle to mix. Because I'm that kind of girl.)

Break off the bottom fourth of the candle and then push it into the rice/salt.

Tie a seasonal ribbon or cord around the top of the jar.

Tada! It's three minutes later, you're done, and you have done your crafty thing for the year.

I loved how my table turned out, and these little Mason-jarred candles were the perfect final touch.

Added to Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family and Show Me How at It's a Blog Party.



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Quick and Easy Potty Training? It Worked for Us!

We are exactly six and a half days into our potty-training career. Libbie hasn't had an accident since day 4. Now before you say anything:

• Yes, I know she is not done with accidents forever.
• Six days? I know I am not an expert.
• Sadly, we're experienced major regression in the area of sleep due to the potty success. 
• But seriously. NO MORE DIAPERS!

We are so very proud of our big girl, especially since on the afternoon of day 1, this is what I was Tweeting:

Libbie really is insanely stubborn, but I knew she was showing all the signs of readiness. She could go hours without having a wet diaper. She knew when she was going. She didn't like the way the diaper was rubbing her.

Encouraged by a friend who recently had a very successful potty-training run using the e-book at 3daypottytraining.com, I took some tips from her and a lot of advice from Little Llamas' Potty Training 101. (Much thanks to Amanda for sending me the link to Little Llamas!)

Here's what we did, and I hope you'll have the courage to take the potty-training plunge!

1. Wait. As Little Llamas puts it, wait for readiness (but not necessarily interest). Up until this point, our method had been to put Libbie in undies and see if she would go to the potty. She had gone a few times, but entirely on accident. Then we'd get frustrated and stop trying.

We decided to wait until she was good and ready—and until we got back from Disney World! Secretly, I hoped she would just get up one day and decide she wanted to potty. She really is that kind of child. But it didn't happen. At 32 months, it was high time to undergo the challenge and she was mentally and physically prepared.

2. Reward. My best friend and I took Libbie to the store to pick out a reward. You want something that has multiple pieces (a set of cars, a Lego set, baby doll accessories, etc). We gave Libbie several choices and let her pick one. Libbie chose a play purse set that has necklaces, bracelets, a perfume bottle, a phone, and a lipstick. (Similar to this adorable cupcake one!)

Libbie was also allowed to choose a salty snack, a kind of candy, new panties, and stickers.

We set up a sticker chart. For every time she got any pee in the potty, she got one sticker. (#2 also earned a sticker as well as a piece of candy.) (It's really weird to write a post about poop and pee.) For every 10 stickers, she got one piece of the reward item.

 

Often we reminded her, "Let's get another sticker so you can get your phone! Only two more stickers to go!"

The first day, I would occasionally give her small rewards for being dry—things like an M&M or a baby puff (something she loves but is supposed to be just for baby brother!). Mr. V and I instituted something we think we should copyright, the Dry Five. We often asked if she was dry; and, if so, she got high fives from everyone present, including baby brother. Dry Fives all around!

3. Timing. For three days, I set the microwave timer to go off every 20 minutes. When it beeped, she had to try to go potty. Occasionally she was resistant, but we just kept putting her there. (She did wear a Pull-Up for nap and nighttime.)

4. Push Liquids. I know this is not what everyone wants to do, but it's the path we took for the first two days. Feed salty snacks so that your child is thirsty. Let him/her drink a favorite drink. A lot of it! 

5. Accidents. Every time she wet her panties, we expressed disappointment. We did not try to shame her or discipline her, just said, "It makes Mommy sad when your panties are wet. You need to let your pee-pee in the potty."

 

6. The toilet-paper method. By the end of day 1, I was SUPER frustrated, because Libbie would sit on the potty, stand up, and almost immediately have an accident nearby. She hadn't gotten one drop of pee in the potty.

I decided to try a new trick: placing a piece of toilet paper in the potty. That way, I could tell if it were even the teensiest bit wet. Quickly, Libbie caught on and squeezed a few drops onto the toilet paper. We made a HUGE deal about it since it was her first success and she almost immediately went several more times in the potty. Woohoo!

7. Commitment. Libbie did not leave the house except for brief stints in our backyard for 4 days. I left briefly one day to run to the post office, but Mr. V was in charge. Mr. V was also able to handle most of the David duties so I could concentrate efforts on Libbie. We were all a little stir-crazy, but it was necessary.

You can't turn back, either. We started Day 1 by saying, "NO MORE DIAPERS." We chose a baby friend to give them away to. Be strong. As I said, for us Day 1 was awful and I wanted to retreat back to the changing table. But as we progressed the payoff was totally worth the pain.

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I don't want to write a book, so I'll stop there, although I feel like I should add 100 more things! Again, I HIGHLY suggest you read Potty Training 101 at Little Llamas. I used a lot of her wonderful tips.

These are some books we had been reading for months as well that helped Libbie get some of the potty-training concepts:

• Potty Time with Abby Cadabby
• Big Girls Use the Potty

I also recommend Gerber training pants, which are panties with extra padding in the middle; that way, if your child has an accident, the urine doesn't get everywhere.

What are your potty-training tips?

Linked up with Works for Me Wednesday and Things I Love Thursday (because I LOVE not having two kids in diapers!!!).
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How to Find Free Blog Design

When I wrote about ten tips for beginning bloggers, one of the tips I meant to include was about blog design. But I get distracted (SQUIRREL!). I was so full of ideas for that post I may need to make a part two!

For now, I want to talk about some easy and free blog design.

What Is Blog Design?

Blog design is what your blog looks like when someone stops by to visit. As much as we want it to be all about the writing ... honestly, if a blog looks bad, I'm probably not going to stick around.

I had a generic Blogger design when I started blogging in 2006--and for at least a year and half. I didn't know any better, and I didn't know that anyone was reading my blog anyway.

If you are just writing for family to keep up with your kids or a journal only you want to read, you can stop reading here. As with my tips for blogging, these tips are really for people who want to generate traffic to their blog.

That said, if you are interested in increasing your traffic and your blog looks like one of these:

... you may want to consider some design. (Any identifying information obviously blurred or distorted to protect the innocent.)

Blog Design Options

Your mind may go to paid blog design first thing. My current design I paid for, and I think it's well worth the money! (Jo-Lynne from DCR Design created it for me.) For a year or more before that, however, I had a free but very unique design.

I can't find it anymore, but it was based off this illustration:

For a blog subtitled Trying to Be the Housewife I'm Not, I think this was a GREAT find for a template. And I never saw another blog with the same design, even though it was free!

To recap, we have three choices in design: generic templates served by your blogging platform (Blogger or Wordpress, likely) [free]; paid design from a skilled designer [not free]; or free design found online [free, but takes time].

Where to Find Free Blog Designs

My favorite way to find free blog design is simply to Google "free blogger template." If your blog has a theme or niche, I would throw that term in there as well. Let's say your blog is about fashion and is hosted by Blogger. (Honestly, I don't know very much about Wordpress, so I'm going to stick with what I know here.) So you would search (on Swagbucks, of course!) for "free blogger template fashion." Let's see what we find.

Pretty quickly, I found all of these free designs.

The third one I found by going to a site that had "fashion" templates. On the sidebar, it listed their different themes, and I clicked on "shopping," since the two are pretty related in my mind.

I think all three of those are pretty cute and unique and would be way more interesting and relevant than any of those above.

Alternately, you can use backgrounds from a site like these, which may not be as unique but are at least a little different from every blog out there:

Cutest Blog on the Block
Hot Bliggity Blog
Blogaholic Designs

I will continue this next week with how to implement the design on your site!

I'm adding this post to Things I Love Thursday, because I love a blog that looks good! And don't forget to prepare your posts for Why I Friday! Also, I hope you will take this as helpful, not critical. There was so much I didn't know when I was starting out with blogging, and I want to share information.

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Ten Easy Blogging Tips for Beginner Bloggers; Or, What I Wished I Had Known in 2006

When I started blogging in 2006, I didn't even really know what blogging was. It seemed like a normal progression from those livejournal entries of my high-school days and the written journals I kept before - and after - then. I stopped journaling about the time I started dating my husband, unfortunately.

Most people today know what a blog is; I presume many have read one or even read one or two on a regular basis. So I think people who begin blogging probably do so with a purpose. Is it to inform your friends and family of what's going on in your life? Voice your opinions for the general masses? Try to make some money?

If your purpose falls into those latter two categories, here is some quick advice that I wish I had received five years ago.

Ten Tips for Beginning Bloggers

1. Buy your domain.

I was shocked at Blissdom '09 to find out that it only costs $10 a year to own your domain. Ten dollars! (Now it appears to be $12 if you want a .com and less if you could deal with a .us, .me, or .org.) It's super easy to redirect your site to a domain. I am always flabbergasted at the amount of sites that still have ".blogspot" in their URL. "Vanderbiltwife.blogspot.com" just doesn't have the same ring as VanderbiltWife.com.

If your domain is already taken, you might consider renaming your blog, inserting a number instead of a word, or something similar. Be creative!

2. And while we're talking titles, choose something with zing. Be original. What makes you uniquely you? What exactly is your blog about?

3. Make yourself accessible. 

Please, please make it easy to e-mail you from your blog's homepage. See that little "e-mail me" button on the sidebar? I wish everyone had one. Because sometimes I just have a burning question about you or a post that is too long to post in a comment, or maybe too personal.

Using Twitter and starting a Facebook fan page are great, too, if you're going to use them.

4. Set up a profile on Blogger (whether you use Blogger or not) so it's easy to comment on Blogger blogs. MAKE YOUR EMAIL VISIBLE. (If you use gmail or other Google apps, you already have an account ready, I think.) Lots of blogs are Blogger-based (like this one), and it's a pain for a blog author to compose a whole e-mail reply to someone who commented just to realize that their e-mail is not there.

I would respond to nearly all my comments if their e-mails were available! (I try to respond to many as long as that e-mail is visible. PLEASE MAKE IT VISIBLE.) Blogging is about conversation and we authors want to respond!

5. Blog hop. See what other people are doing. Leave comments. See if others want to guest post on your blog, or do a series together, or just chat on e-mail. Follow lots of people on Twitter, if you use it. Share links. Be generous. Be genuine.

6. For the love of Pete, unless you are Ann Voskamp (and that's still iffy), do not have music auto-playing on your blog.

7. Install Google Analytics. At some point, you might want to see how people are getting to your blog, what they search for to find you, or how many pageviews you are getting. Go ahead and do it now! I wish I had!

8. Apply some simple SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) This is MUCH EASIER to do on the front end than after you have 900 posts. (Not that I would know. Cough, cough.) Tara has two excellent slideshows with easy tips.

9. Link to carnivals. You know Menu Plan Monday, Top Ten Tuesday, Wordless Wednesday? Those are carnivals. Linking will bring you a little traffic and checking out others' links will expose you to blogs you might never have found otherwise.

10. Don't underestimate your worth. You probably don't have The Pioneer Woman's traffic, a book deal like MoneySavingMom, and the striking good looks of Jill. That doesn't mean you should settle for a toothbrush as payment for a review, or bend over backwards for a company that does nothing in return. Determine your worth and stick with it. Only do what you really want to do. And don't force yourself to write when you don't want to ... the content will never be as good.


If you're a veteran blogger, what would you share? If you're a newbie, are these tips helpful at all?

Added to Top Ten Tuesday at OhAmanda.
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Guest Post: How to Line Dry Inside

Tiffany is a fellow Chattanoogan—even newer to this town than I am! I've been blessed to get to know her over the last few months.  She writes a review/giveaway blog for moms and dads at Stuff Parents Need. Tiffany is a work-at-home mom and has one toddler daughter, Darah.

We have had a drying rack in our home for as long as we have been married (8 years ... can't believe that!). When the weather is warm and you aren't in a hurry to start wearing your freshly washed clothes, hanging them up to dry is a terrific option. It saves energy; it keeps the house from getting even hotter by not using the dryer; and, of course, it saves money. It also helps prolong the life of your clothes!

I live in the South, so it is warm enough to hang clothes outside pretty much between April and October, and there are days in March and November when I can dry clothes outside, too. But what do I do during the months where the weather is a bit more questionable?

Sometimes, I'll admit, I do turn to my dryer. If I need my clothes quickly, that's really just the way to go. It also will heat up the house when it NEEDS heating up (we keep our house on the cool side during the winter and just try to bundle up a bit more).

But more often than not, I just move my drying rack inside and also make use of my indoor clothesline. I've heard many people say that line drying during the winter, even inside, isn't really possible. I'd say that in general, this isn't true!

If you are using a heater indoors, then your inside air should be rather dry. This is the perfect environment for drying your clothes. I find that my clothes are dry after hanging up indoors for 24 hours (and sometimes less!). The clothes also add a little bit of humidity to your artificially dry air, and that's a good thing!

There are two tricks to making this work, though. First, throw your clothes in the dryer for 5 minutes, just to get them started. I've found that when I don't do this, it can take my clothes up to 36 hours to dry, so that little bit of energy I use is totally worth it to me.

Second, you need to keep up with your laundry on a daily basis (at least in my house). Since I don't have the space to hang up three loads of laundry—and since drying takes a full day—I try to tackle one load every single day, so there's pretty much always something on the drying rack at my house. We only have space for one drying rack, but if you have room for more, by all means go get more, especially if you don't like the idea of doing laundry every day.

I'd also strongly suggest that you hang an indoor clothesline, preferably the type that will retract when you don't need it. We have ours inside of our closet, and we string it all the way across our bedroom to the opposite wall.

So that's how I dry clothes all year with just a tiny bit of help from my dryer! Works for me!

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Super Easy Christmas Gift Tags

Want to know how to make the cheapest, easiest, Christmas gift tags in the whole world?

Of course you do!

What you need:

• Stack of old Christmas cards (not photo ones) - if you don't have any from last year, check out Goodwill or an antique store, or ask around!
• Scissors
• Pen
• Wrapping supplies - paper, ribbon, tape

1. Pick out cards that have any kind of fun design on front. Make sure there is no writing on the inside top of the card (on the back of the design).

2. Cut around pictures from the fronts of the cards. You can often get more than one cut-out from each card.

3. Punch or cut out a small hole in the cut-out design.

4. Wrap present as normal, but thread ribbon through your homemade gift tag.

5. Address tag appropriately.

I love that this:

• Recycles something old
• Doesn't cost a penny if you save some cards from year to year
• Is unique
• Is simple

If you use gift bags, you can tie these on to the handles with some fun curly ribbon.

{Believe it or not, these are my presents for THIS YEAR! I love to shop early and wrap early. Particularly when I have a baby due on December 22nd!}

This easy tip works for me!


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