A long time ago I hated writing blogs. It was such a pain. And to add pictures too? Fahgettaboutit.
The method of writing a blog through Blogger makes me cringe. Pictures take forever to load, and it’s just not a user friendly process. In my opinion anyway.
Then, it was as if the clouds parted and the angels sang, because my friend Mandy wrote a post on Windows Live Writer. I should have shared this when I found it, but I’ve now given it a test drive over the last year and wanted to share how pleased I was with it.
I had no clue what it was but after reading the tutorial, I was intrigued to give it a shot. I was willing to try anything to make writing blogs more of an enjoyable thing, than a chore.
I downloaded Windows Live Writer (it’s free!) and gave it a try.
Side note: Since I downloaded it last year, they’ve now created a whole Windows Live Essentials “bunch” of sorts of programs. It’s free, and WLW is included in that.
I was hooked.
What’s great about it is you sync it up to your blog, and you write your post directly into Live Writer. Then you just hit publish and voila! It automatically posts to your blog. And you can put in a post date and time if you want to publish now, but don’t want it to post until another day or time. You need an internet connection to post, but just to write it, you don’t. So writing posts on the road is a breeze. You can save it and post when you get an internet connection.
Here’s some screen shots.
This is the one I just finished, but normally it’d be blank and you put in the title and you can change fonts, colors, everything right in the post.
Then if I select Picture from the drop down at the top, I can select as many as I want at once, and this box pops up. I always select INLINE pictures.
Then the pictures load in immediately. It takes just a few seconds once they load to completely finish so they' may be blurry for a second.
Then I can move them by clicking and dragging or by entering down.
To resize a pic I just click on it and drag the corners. Easy peasy.
See? Bigger picture just like that.
Then once I’ve got everything how I want it and I’m ready to publish, all I do is click the globe at the top left that says “Publish”. I don’t have to login to blogger or anything. I never even go near blogger to post. I can also set the post date for a future time to auto post.
The best part about it is I can add tons of pictures at once and then resize, move around, however I want. I could not imagine uploading more than 5 pictures while using Blogger, but with Live Writer, I select several at once and it loads almost instantly.
I just wanted to share since it’s another one of those blogging tips that has made my life a lot easier, and more enjoyable when it comes to blogging!
Sunday we went to my Aunt Sandra’s for Easter “dinner”. Why don’t we call it lunch if it’s at 1:00? Oh well, I don’t care what we call it. As long as I get to eat it.
I will be eating dinner again tonight though.
Hah.
I took the time to curl my hair and thought I looked semi-decent for a Fashion Shoot!
Earrings: Premier Jewelry
Shirt: GAP
Shorts: Old Navy
Sandals: Target
PS- I curled my hair using my 1” flat iron. I have bought a curling iron and a curling wand, and can’t get either to do right. I consistently get pretty curls with my flat iron though. If you want to know how, Youtube videos for “curl hair with a straight iron”.
Anywho, I toted my camera to my Aunt’s but didn’t even pull it out of my bag.
I only managed two pictures on my phone.
One of my food.
Yum-o.
And one of my Momma and I.
I somehow didn’t get around to taking pictures of the other 10+ people there. We filled our bellies, we talked, we soaked up the sun on the beautiful day.
It was fabulous. David joined us like old times.
I hope everyone had a Happy Easter!
A few weekends ago our Doctor who has also become a family friend invited David and I to join him at his beach house on Alligator Point for the day.
Yes please!
The day started out kind of overcast but ended up being beautiful.
The first set of pics are beach side. We made the hike over from the house.
Scout and Lucy
Scout runs like the wind.
See Scout run.
Back at the house, Bay side.
<3
Just beautiful!
View from the top deck.
Dinner out. Buffalo fried shrimp. Yummmm
And back for sunset. I love living in Florida.
A lot of these have gone on Facebook over the past couple of months but here’s some of my favorites to share with my non-facebookers 
Well, well, well what do we have here?
Good spot Rem.
And this week on Animal Planet, the black labrador retriever sees a turtle for the first time.
Spring flowers make me happy!
A good hair day.
A rough day at work called for a midday milkshake.
Walking the dog, in style.
Glorious clouds.
After looking at these I see most of them are Remington or myself. Hmm, perhaps I should get a life. And some friends…oh well!
So remember a few months ago I posted about how unhappy I was with my Camelbak waterbottle?
Well imagine my surprise when I got an email that said “Greetings From Camelbak”. The representative Eden went on to tell me they came across my blog post and wanted to reach out to me since I was unhappy with their product.
Say wha? How in the world did they find my blog? Who knows! Product search I’m guessing? I was a wee bit excited!
She said if I gave my address they’d send me some new products to try. I hemmed and hawed for a week or so because let’s face it, I thought it was a spammer or stalker trying to get my address! I was scared to send it! I talked to my Mom about it and she said well have it sent to their address. So I finally did.
And boy was I glad that something actually showed up and I didn’t give their address to a random person and nothing come of it!
Here’s the goods:
Pretty awesome right?
I kind of freaked out. I mean in the store, the insulated ones are $19.99 each and the Camelbak Groove is $24.99. That’s a lot of free product!
I was not asked to post a blog review or anything, but after having time to try them out, I thought I owed it to Camelbak to give them a pat on the back.
They done good.
I love the new bottles. And the best news is they don’t sweat like Niagara Falls all over my desk. The insulated feature is the bomb dot comb.
Thank you Camelbak!!
In February, I participated in Fat Mum Slim’s Photo A Day Challenge.
Well, I did the same for March! (See key below)
It’s been a lot of fun. And now I’m starting April’s Challenge!
Wanna play?
Head on over to Fat Mum Slim’s for the how-to!
