On Saturday I woke to discover neither of my sites, Domestically Speaking or Power of Paint, were there.  I discovered an email from my server host that my sites had been suspended… WHAT!

Of course 2 out of my 3 kiddos had games that morning… so my first priority was getting the family fed and to the field on time.

In the afternoon I was able to chat with my host server and within  about 20 minutes the problem was solved.  The darn culprit was spam!!!  I use a plug-in to filter my spam, and it catches most of it.  The spam that had shut down my blogs had never even been published, but was still sitting there in my spam folder.

With over 2,000 spam comments it was affecting the servers and the speed which triggered something on the servers end.

So what did I learn?

I asked the nice lady at Blue Host (my server host) what she would recommend to help prevent this from happening again.  Her recommendation… delete those spam comments every week or 2.  Something so simple, but something I just hadn’t done for a while.  I figured as long as they weren’t published I was good… boy was I wrong.

Another thing I highly recommend doing is backing up your blog.  If you are with wordpress there are lots of great plug-ins that you can use where you can schedule your back-ups hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.  In blogger you can download your blog.  I would recommend that too, since your blog is sitting on their server and if blogger decides to shut you down you won’t have your goodies.

One finally blogging safety recommendation is to back-up your photos and anything else blogging related.  I have an external hard-drive to back-up my goodies… but there are plenty of online back-up services available too.

We, who have blogs, know the time, energy and love we put into these things.  It’s easy to forget these important things until something goes wrong… but hopefully these reminders will help prevent something going wrong for you.

Any other blog safety tips you guys want to add/share??  Leave a comment…

I’m so sorry that we had no Power of Paint Spotlight on Saturday.  I woke Saturday am to find out my sites were down.  Of course we had baseball and softball games that am that we were rushing to get out the door to.  I’m share what I learned from that experience on my next post.  There is nothing more stressful that hearing your account is suspended!

Thankfully all is better now!!!

So… I was hoping to show you guys a cute painted pillow tonight, but I just didn’t get it finished.  I’ve spent the last few days just relaxing and hanging with family.

I did find a super-fun quiz.  I am a quiz person… LOVE them.  I found this one over at Southern Living.

You can click on the image to go to the quiz.   It’s a fun quiz with all sorts of random questions. 

Here’s my results…

Pretty… summer colors!

What colors did you get?

So what have you been painting?

Power of Paint Party Rules:

#1… This is a PAINT party… so pretty please, link-up only paint related projects.

#2… I’d love if you put my nifty POPP button (you can find it up in my menu bar’s BUTTONS) in your blog post or a link back to this party somewhere on your blog… that way others from your blog can check out all the paint projects too. (not a requirement but always appreciated)

#3… Share the Love… visit the other paint pals.

Check these out…

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“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  ‘Honor your father and mother’—which is the first commandment with a promise— ^‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’ ”

Ephesians 6:1-3

So… I thought what a great way to start my summer prep than with a cute poolside memory… a lifesaver wreath.

I used a under $1 piece of foam tubing (found that great idea on Pinterest) and chopped it a little (maybe 10 inches) and then used some Gorilla Glue tape to create a circle and hold the two pieces together – instant, cheap wreath form.

I used 2 different ropes to create the contrast and hot glued it to the tubing.

I’m thinking of adding some starfish.  What do you think… should I… or keep it simple?

Do you have the summer bug already?

I’ve got the Countdown to Summer Party starting on  May 27th… so start getting your summer goodies ready.

A few months ago I shared with you guys how I created our Family Sign.  This really was a cool, fun way to make it. (You can check out the tutorial here).

After staring at it for a few months I decided I really wanted to the letters to be darker.  So out came my little paint brushes and some black acrylic paint that I really watered down… probably 2 parts water 1 part black paint.

This was a tedious job.

For me working quicker on detail tends to come out cleaner, but it still took  me about an hour to do.

Now you can read it better.

Still need to hang this big sign.  You can check out my plywood art I created a few years ago too.  They are a beast to hang.

I might sand the letters a bit???  Just to roughen it up a bit.

So what have you been painting?

Power of Paint Party Rules:

#1… This is a PAINT party… so pretty please, link-up only paint related projects.

#2… I’d love if you put my nifty POPP button (you can find it up in my menu bar’s BUTTONS) in your blog post or a link back to this party somewhere on your blog… that way others from your blog can check out all the paint projects too. (not a requirement but always appreciated)

#3… Share the Love… visit the other paint pals.

You guys know I LOVE paint and I think one of the coolest things to paint is your own personalized rug.

Check out these cuties…

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I really want to paint a rug for our family room!!!

Thanks for stopping by friends…

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Hebrews 11:8

Let’s check out the oh-so-hard-to-pick Spotlight this week.

Check out this cute planter made from pallets.

You’ve got to check out this kitchen transformation.

Such a pretty side table.

Such a pretty vanity.

Love this island created from 2 nightstands.

And the most clicked paint project at this week’s party  is…

this dresser turned console table.

If you happened to miss the rest of this week’s Power of Paint Party you can check it out here.

If you were featured in the Spotlight this week make sure you grab yourself a button up there in the menu bar.

And don’t forget… keep those AMAZING paint projects coming over at my other site, Power of Paint!

I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your weekend!!!

So I thought I’d do a recap of some of the highlights of April.

I started the month sharing our built-ins that we backed with burlap.

Shared 10 things that I think make a room.

I spray painted some plastic Dollar Tree fruit to create some faux ceramic.

Gotta have a burlap sign… April I made a Mother Defined and Grandmother Defined.

Some tissue paper art… made cute shell art.

My black desk got an avocado makeover.

I shared a flashback to a popular post… M & M Teacher Appreciation gift.

And I finished the month with one of my favorite projects… my new pendant light that I created with a trash can and a light kit.

I love looking back on what I got done.  Sometimes in the middle of the craziness of running from working in the kiddos classroom, softball, PTA, baseball or soccer I feel like I haven’t completed much on the creative end.  It’s nice to take a glance back.  I hope you enjoyed reflecting with me.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!