Southern Hospitality

Photo Editing with Photoscape

Rhoda — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

There’s been a lot of screaming all over blogland when recently, it was announced that Picnik photo editing is closing down in April. Lots of bloggers have been using Picnik for a few years and have enjoyed the ease of use and all the fun bells and whistles that this online photo editing software provided. I have used them many times myself and really liked some of the special effects.

So what are the alternatives? I am not an expert on all of the alternatives out there, but there are a few. Kate wrote a post about options and so did Susan, so there are certainly plenty to choose from out there that are free.

So, I’ll give you my option. For most of my photo editing, I have been using Photoscape for a few years now. It’s a free download and once you have it on your computer, you don’t have to be online to use it. I really like that part! I’ll talk more about how important pics are in blogging when I get more into my blogging story, but photos and editing have become a huge part of my blog.

Here are all the categories available when it opens up for use. I use Editor and Batch Editor the most. I have no idea what Splitter and Screen Capture does, but this program does a lot. It does combine photos too, but I don’t like just the straight across or straight down combining. I do still use Picasa for collages of photos, Picasa does those really nice. I’ll take you on a tour of how I use Photoscape.

You open up the Editor and it brings up all your photos on your computer, so just find the file that has the photos you want to work on. You click on one pic at a time to edit individually. I usually rename my photos inside my computer files before I bring them into Photoscape to make it easier to see the ones I want to edit. When you use the Batch editor, Photoscape saves all your work in a new Output folder, so they are easy to find if you use the Batch feature for resizing and watermarking a group of photos. If you save one at a time, it will keep them in the same folder, but you can see the ones that are resized by hovering over them.

Under the Home tab, you can see all the things this program can do, from Bright, Resize, Sharpen, Filter, Bloom, Backlight. Under the Bright tab, there are all sorts of things you can do there, from Color Enhance, to White Balance, and brightening photos several degrees. I use that all the time and if I have photos that are too blue or too yellow, I will play with the White Balance to try to get it as white-white as possible. You can choose a spot in your photo that has white and click on that and it will automatically whiten your photos.

Under the Object tab are all sorts of shapes you can draw. You can use these for lots of features. Add in color or make them opaque, add Text inside the shapes, lots of things to do with these. You can draw lines and arrows too. And this is where Text is added with the large T to individual photos. Choose from many different fonts and you can probably even add more fonts to use, I haven’t tried to bring any in yet. When I do batch edits, I automatically add my watermark on my photos like you see on these. You can choose where you want the watermark to be and the size, color, etc. You can see I added this one in the top right corner.

Under the Crop tab, you can obviously freely crop your pic and save it.

Under Tools, you see Red Eye Correction, Mole Removal, Mosiac, Paint Brush, Clone Stamp, and Filter Brush. I’ve used the Clone stamp to add in something in a pic that was missing or to cover up a vent or something by painting over it with the wall color. You click on a correct spot in the photo and then to cover up a blemish or spot, click over it with the Clone stamp. I haven’t used all the other features here, but they are there waiting!

Under Batch Edit, you will see this screen on the right side of the page. This is where you can choose Text to add. Click that box, and then click on the yellow pencil and it will bring up the box that allows you to add text. Choose your Font, Size, and Color, where you want it placed and it will add text automatically to all the photos you are Batch editing.

Here’s the whole screen you will see in Batch Edit for adding Text (box on the left). I usually edit each pic individually for Color, Contrast, straightening, etc. and then drag them into Batch Edit to resize and add my watermark as a group.

Here’s a Before pic. You can see it’s a little pinky in color, so I want to brighten and whiten it with the Brightening tool and White Balance.

It’s also a little crooked so under the Home tab, I click on the Arrow that brings up this handy-dandy slider, which opens up and I can move that slide tab back and forth to straighten the photo. It’s amazing how much better photos look when you straighten them. See the grid that comes up on the photos? This helps you line up the lines inside your photo with the lines on the grid to make a photo straighter. Slide it to straighten and click OK.

And here is the photo after Brightening, White Balance, and Straightening have been applied. Much better, don’t you think?

For Batch edits on resize and adding Text, set that number where you want it (my blog holds 500 width pics), then click Convert All.

It works like a charm for resizing a whole bunch of pics at a time.

And the conversion is complete. It will resize and add text to as many pics as you want all at one time. This is my time saver!

I tried out Kate’s trick with the opaque band with text across the bottom and it works great too. You can do all sorts of things with those shapes.

So, that is my little tutorial on Photoscape and how I use it for my photo editing. It has worked well for me for a few years, so I will probably stick with it for the most part.

If you are looking for a photo editing alternative to Picnik, I would highly recommend Photoscape. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Coming up next week for my 5 year blogging anniversary, I’ve got a whole week of giveaways lined up for you, starting Sunday evening! There are all sorts of fun things coming up for grabs, from jewelry, original artwork, bedding, sheets, and so much more, so I hope you’ll be here with me in the next few days and take advantage of all the great products that will be available to win. I have had an absolute blast the last 5 years with this blog and all of YOU have been a huge part of the fun for me, so thank you all SO much for your support and for coming by to visit day after day. All of that has been a huge blessing in my life!

Please visit my fine sponsors for those special finds for your home:
*Hadley Pottery: Handmade blue & white pottery
*Willow House: Distinctive gifts & home decor accessories
*Miss Lucy's Monograms: Personalized gift ideas
*HomeTalk: A site devoted to everything you want to know about the home! Check them out.
*Ruby Lane:Unique items for the home
*Southern Hospitality shop:Buy my favorite beadboard wallpaper directly from my shop!
*Fabricadabra:Beautiful organic pillows and linens
*European Vintage:European vintage treasures
*Cutting Edge Stencils:Beautiful stencils to create feature walls and more in your home.
*Janery:A celebration of fabric.

Feature Friday: Carmel at Our Fifth House

Rhoda — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:00:13 +0000

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Another new blogger that I have met this past year is Carmel, who blogs at Our Fifth House. Appropriately named because she and her family are, in fact, in their 5th house. Carmel has been busy making her house a home and has done a fantastic job of DIYing it and really stamping her personality on their space.

This brick Traditional home changed on the outside too and you can see Carmel’s home tour here.

“Be Nice or Leave” in the foyer coming in. Love those dark floors. I can tell Carmel is sassy just from this saying she has on the wall.

The family room is comfy and cozy and check out those drapes hanging there with the Ikat design.

She stenciled those on the ever-famous drop cloths. You can check out her tutorial on that too. See what a fab DIYer she is!

Her office space is very stylish and I love the zebra rug.

This dining room is my very fave in her whole house. I spotted this last summer when I did a post on stencils and never got over how pretty this room turned out with one stenciled wall. Isn’t it gorgeous?

She really puts it all together so well.

Just an overall pretty dining space.

She added this oh so pretty marble backsplash to her kitchen and it is still a work in progress.

And she also painted and glazed the cabinets.

Another DIY project, these painted stripes on the chairs with Words on top is a cute way to personalize a space. This was probably done with drop cloth fabric as well, so if you are looking for ways to cut the budget, this is a fun one.

I hope you enjoyed yet another real-life home with a real-life decorator. Aren’t we all on the same quest of making our homes cozy and happy for our families? Carmel has certainly done a great job with her home-sweet-home. Stop by Our Fifth House and say hello!

Craft Room Update and $100 Lowes Giveaway

Rhoda — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:00:51 +0000

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January is an excellent time to be thinking about organization and it happens every year after Christmas. We all start thinking of ways to declutter and get everything in the house in tip-top shape.

You saw the pretty stencil yesterday and today, I’m going to show you the mostly finished room. The wall really does add a soft and subtle backdrop to the furniture in the space. My sister has been shopping on Craigslist, Home Decorators Collection, and with my new collaboration with Lowes, I was able to spend $100 Lowes card on helping her get this space organized.

Oh, what fun! Just for reference, the wall color is the same SW Comfort Gray that we used in her master bath.

Come along and I’ll show you where we are. We were hoping to get this table and chairs painted, but we didn’t get that finished yet. The table and chairs are a Craigslist find for $100. We are planning to paint it a fun Barcelona Orange color in Annie Sloan Chalkpaint. Won’t that be happy down here?

You can see how big the space is in their basement. Really a nice room to use for this. That’s my black bookcase and chair to the right.

Rug was ordered online.

That’s my brown leather sofa too that she is keeping safe for me. Those mirrored closet doors hold all her stacked Christmas bins neatly away. She has so much great storage at her house.

And she’s keeping my island for me too. Lauren painted that cute fleur-de-lis painting.

Here are the really fun organizing pieces she added. The Martha Stewart piece on the left came from Home Decorator’s Collection and she is going to enjoy using that for her wrapping paper and ribbon. The cute cube storage is what we found at Lowes. It came in a box and we put it all together ourselves. It was a bit like Lucy and Ethel do Tool Time, but we made it through. Those fabric storage drawers are great for hiding the clutter and they came from Lowes as well.

We also found these pretty rattan baskets at Lowes and they are another great option for hiding the clutter. Pretty and functional, you gotta love that! Check out Lowes Creative Ideas website for lots of great ideas.

She’s going to really have fun with all this organization at her fingertips.

She also found that pretty bookcase on Craigslist for $75. That’s a deal, I love it.

So, are you doing some organization yourself this month? Did you feel the unmistakable pull of de-cluttering like everyone does this month? It seems that the first of the year is the optimal time to start the year off right and start putting “stuff” in its place.

If you are ready to organize and declutter, now’s a great time for YOU to get in on the fun too. Lowes is offering a $100 giftcard for one of you to spend at your local Lowes store. You can grab whatever your heart desires!

Follow Lowes on their Facebook page too!

All you have to do is leave a comment and tell me what you “think” you might buy if you are the fortunate winner of this $100 giftcard?

Leave one comment for an entry.
Tweet about the giveaway and come back and leave another comment with your Tweet url for a 2nd entry.

I’ll choose a winner in a few days!

{I am partnered with Lowes Creative Ideas blog team to do DIY projects and share them on my blog. I was given a $100 giftcard to purchase products from Lowes.}

Diamond Damask Stencil: How-To Stencil a Wall

Rhoda — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:18 +0000

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I gave you a sneak peek a few weeks ago of my sister’s basement craft room that we are working on. She has this great space down there and after they got floating engineered hardwood floors installed, as part of the “great flood” of 2011, she was excited to do something with the space. She decided on a craft room. Never mind, that she is not that crafty. She does enjoy parties and having a place to store wrapping paper and supplies.

Besides a pretty craft room is a huge perk!

It’s really hard to show a stencil project and do it justice, but I’ll try to describe this one. This stencil is by Cutting Edge stencils, one of my sponsors. They make very fine stencils too and I enjoyed this one. I love the feathery feel of it, along with the diamonds.

The one difference in this stencil and the one we used in my sister’s bedroom is the first one had registration marks and this one does not. I do prefer registration marks. This one overlaps, meaning, you add the paint where needed after taping up on the wall, then remove the stencil, move down the wall or over to the right or left and overlap part of the stencil that has already been painted. So, it just takes a bit longer to line everything up this way. There are more points that have to be lined up before you begin painting again.

We used a pretty Folkart pearlized paint in Ivory and small foam rollers.

Because there was more stencil to cover with this pattern, it took us a little longer on this one. Probably around 4 hours total, still not that bad. We started in the middle top of the wall and moved to the side, then back down below the first one. The paint dries fast, so you don’t have to worry too much about the overlap part, but to be safe, we alternated back and forth, left to right, and down.

It actually goes pretty fast once you get started.

Isn’t this a pretty pattern. Diamond Damask at Cutting Edge.

All finished! We had to tape the stencil close to the ceiling and on the baseboards to cover the entire wall, but we made it all work. The good thing with stencils is, you can make some mistakes and they really don’t show up. We learned how to work it and make it work as we went along. There’s a leveler that comes with the stencil too to help keep everything level. We didn’t use it, but it might help.

Overall, we really loved the stencil and I especially loved the pattern.

Stencils give almost a hand-painted look to a wall and I just love that. Again, I’m ga-ga over stencils these days and would love to do more. My friend, Debbie, wants to do a dramatic one in her powder room, so that is on the list too.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you the room in progress. My sister got a few pieces of furniture in there, including Craigslist finds, Martha Stewart furniture and some fun organizing ideas. I’ve got a great giveaway tomorrow too, so don’t miss it! We have a few more things to add in here, but it’s coming along.

Are you loving stencils yet? These large ones are so fun to work with and are the perfect way to accent one wall. I really like just doing one wall with them or in a small powder room, I would do the whole space. So much better than the commitment of wallpaper!

Are you going to use a stencil anytime soon? Have I convinced you yet?

The Screen Door: Thrifting in Asheville, NC

Rhoda — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:38 +0000

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Back to Asheville, it was a great time to revisit The Screen Door and Tobacco Barn, as well as a few other thrifty stops along the way. We hit some thriftstores and those were where we found some super slamming deals. But, how to get them home?! My friends, Kristin and Tracey, had to give them up, when they just couldn’t find an affordable and easy way to transport them back to Atlanta.

That’s when you gotta wish you had a truck! I have wished that a few times myself. I do have a Dad with a truck, so that helps too if I find something close to home.

I took you all to the Screen Door last August, when a group of bloggers went to the Cottage with Angela and we all went out shopping. It’s a great place to browse for goodies.

Old doors and plenty of vintage things are found at the Screen door.

Lots of eye candy and inspiration.

Old silverplate.

Chairs and art.

Shabby fireplace mantel, I think this was $150, not bad at all.

While browsing in Screen Door, I met up with a reader who stopped and introduced herself. I love when that happens! If you ever see me out somewhere, please come and say hello! It was great to meet Diane with Cottages Wishes.

This was a pretty shabby chic booth and it looks like they might be using chalk paint on these pieces.

Grays and whites.

How about that funky turquoise sofa there in the background. Wouldn’t that be fun to decorate with?

Art, chairs and manzinita branches. Love that as an accent!

Lots of fun things in this booth.

All you girls who love reclaimed wood would go ga-ga over all of this.

Especially this wall! Cool, huh?

This mirror was pretty cool too.

Love these old corbels. Those are one of my weaknesses.

Tracey bought this big glass float for $28, not a bad price for a large one. After I showed her my post about ripping the carpet off stairs, she went home and ripped her’s all off in a couple of days. I took before pics and when she gets them all painted up, I’ll show you. She had perfect stair treads underneath for painting. She is so excited to get that done. I’ll do a little photoshoot on her pretty house in Woodstock and show you what she did with the glass float.

Loved this blue lantern too.

And this tripod lamp was snazzy.

We stopped to take one pic of the 3 of us. Tracey, Kristin, me.

A wall of old spools.

Some words of wisdom.

More eye candy.

Yep, I have had to do this a time or two myself!

Great idea for bulletin board and storage. Check out the baskets attached.

More ideas for hanging things.

And these cute little holders up on the wall would come in handy too.

Just down from the Screen Door was a thriftstore and I can’t remember the name, but if you are there, you will find it. Here’s where we found the deal of the century. We walked by this beautiful huge chest of drawers. I opened the top drawer and lo and behold, it is stamped Ernest Hemingway by Thomasville. OH MY Goodness! The top is marble (or a marble composite). Check out those pretty lion’s paw silver feet and the hardware. Sticker price: $40. Tracey was really, really interested in getting it, so we went up to the counter and then about fell over when the lady told us it had come from an estate sale and she had to get it out.

All furniture that day was 1/2 price!!

$20!!!

What a sinking feeling to know that it’s going to be almost impossible to get it home. And although we tried to brainstorm all sorts of options, we just couldn’t come up with a viable one that would justify the bargain it was. So, we left it for someone else to take home.

I know!! The one that got away. It was a little beat up, but could have probably been touched up with stain or would have looked great painted with chalk paint too.

Kristin spotted this retro bamboo table and chairs that she dearly wanted to haul home. It would have been $32 that day! She wanted to paint it a poppy bright color.

We stopped for lunch at Tupelo Honey Cafe and it was out of this world. Tracey had heard about it and I’m so glad we looked it up. There is one downtown and one about 5 miles out, so we drove by both and after seeing the long line at the downtown cafe, we chose the other one.

They bring out homemade biscuits and blackberry jam for the appetizer. Oh my gosh, was it good!

I ordered a delish chicken breast sandwich with sweet potato fries and it was lip-smacking good.

That was part of our thrifting time and I’ve got more to share too! I know you all love these adventures as much as we do.

My Blogging Story: Part 3

Rhoda — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:00:46 +0000

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If you want to catch up with my story so far, read Part 1 and Part 2. Get settled in comfortably, this is a loooooong one.

We begin Part 3 at the end of 2008. I had been blogging nearly 2 full years by this point. I’ll start this post by giving some of you new bloggers some tips on how to start your blog. When I began, most everyone I knew started with a free Blogger blog. We chose a name and set up a Blogger blog and all ended in .blogspot.com. That was the norm and still is a good platform for starting a new blog. So, that’s what I did too, when I started mine in February of 2007. I was doing it for fun and a hobby and didn’t know that in a couple of years I would feel compelled to move from Blogger.

(via Etsy)

Blogger was a great platform to learn on. That first year was a complete learning experience for me as I learned how to size photos, change my background, make a really lame header, and play around with html. Blogger does a really good job of walking you through the process on adding things to the sidebar, etc. Learning html has been such a challenge and I’m not there yet, trust me. I know enough to be dangerous and I leave the real technical stuff to people that have a clue. I can run my blog all day long, but behind the scenes stuff, with coding and html? Way over my head!

I have been fortunate to learn all my computer experience with on the job training. I got my first computer in the corporate world around 1985 or so and after being initially resistant to learning it all, I completely embraced my PC and learned many programs along the way, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and many other programs during those years. So, all those years in the Corporate world prepared me for blogging too. You younger girls can’t relate to that, since you all grew up with computers from grammar school on up, but we older gals did not have that luxury. I was already very comfortable with computers and had always been online since the beginning of the internet. If you are computer savvy at all, you can learn to blog. And even if you are not, you can learn. Computers are part of everyday life now and I would definitely encourage you to learn as much as you can about computers and how they work. I am not really young anymore, but I’m young at heart when it comes to staying up with current technology.

Although I still don’t have an I-phone.

(via Sitsgirls, Blog design article)

So, that is something to pass along to you if you are serious about blogging as a business. If you have aspirations to make it more than a hobby, then you may want to think about this:

Get your own domain name right from the start, (.com or .net), pay for a host service (I use Bluehost), and get yourself set up on WordPress. I didn’t do any of this until I had been blogging for 2 1/2 years (mid-2009), so if I had known at the beginning that all of this would grow and evolve like it has, I would have gone ahead and at least gotten a domain name and set up from the start on WordPress. Getting a domain name is less than $10 and paying monthly for a hosting service is not that much either, around $100 or less per year. Not bad at all. So, many want to know WHY you should move from the free Blogger service? Well, for me it was a matter of having complete control over my own blog. I did not like the idea that Blogger really owned all my content.

If you do decide to sign up with a hosting service, I have been very happy with Bluehost and I signed up as an affiliate, so if anyone signs up with them using my link, I get a small commission:

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM

If anything happened to their site and servers,then all of us on Blogger were affected. And those glitches did happen pretty often back then and probably still do. There were problems with loading pics at times, problems with leaving comments and loading posts. Blogger could even take down a blog at their own discretion at any time and I sure didn’t like that at all. So, after experiencing a few things like that those first 2 years, I began to make plans to move and finally get off Blogger and get my own domain name. That was definitely the smartest thing I did in 2009. It was scary, but the best thing I did. I hired a blog designer who could move me over and got all of that completed. At the time, I am not sure that everyone had it figured out how to not lose subscribers and I had to start over with my RSS subscribers at that time, but it quickly caught back up to where I was and surpassed my original number in a few months. I think now that many blog designers have figured out how to not lose anything on a move from Blogger to WordPress, so if you are contemplating doing this, I would say GO FOR IT! You won’t regret having complete control over your blog and WordPress is a wonderful blog platform. Make sure you choose someone who is very savvy on moving to WordPress. I still have no idea how all of that works, but I do love working with WordPress. Here are the advantages I see, that aren’t necessarily just WordPress, but things that I have learned:

Easy to use for posting. Once I got used to WordPress, it was just as easy as Blogger to learn. Blogger is really user friendly, but if you can learn Blogger, you can definitely learn WordPress. And WordPress has a lot of advantages that Blogger does not.
WordPress has built in SEO. If you are a new blogger, that might be a new term for you. SEO = Search Engine Optimization. You want people to be able to find all the great stuff that you have written and SEO is how they find you. So, when you are writing posts, make sure you title your posts something that describes what that post is about. Don’t use fluffy titles that are cute. You want to be sure those search engines can find key words that you are writing about to bring people to your posts. This is especially good for us home bloggers who post a lot of decorating projects. So, WordPress has built in areas that you can add your own tags and titles to optimize the search engine traffic to the max. I get a lot of organic traffic from Google, when people search for projects that I’ve already done and documented on my blog. Spray painting furniture black is one of my most clicked posts.
Name your pics. Another thing that I have just started doing diligently this year is labeling my pictures. If you keep the default pic name for your pics, no one will be able to do a search and find your pics. So, get in the habit of naming your pics so that they can be found easily in a search and they will show up in Google Images. This will get more traffic to your posts also. It took me a long time to get in the habit of doing this, but I have finally started to stick with it for the most part.
Resize your pics. My blog will hold a 500 pixel photo and I resize all my photos to fit my space before I upload. That ensures that they load as fast as possible too.
Watermark your images. This is another one that I just started this year. With the way pics are floating around the internet, if you watermark (add your blog name) to your pics, then they will be easily seen as coming from your blog. Just one more way to get your blog out there and protect your pics too.

Windows Live Writer: I started using Windows Live Writer when I was still on Blogger and when I moved to WordPress, I was advised not to use it (was told it adding extra coding in a post), but I have heard differing opinions on it and have recently gone back to using WLW for my posts. It’s the fastest way to load photos that I have found and it makes writing a blog post so much easier to me. Read my post on using Windows Live Writer that I wrote back in early 2009. Once you get it set up, it is easy to post pics and save the Draft to your blog. I post TONS of pics and this is by far the easiest way to post them that I have found. While I was still on Blogger, I ran out of picture space with Picasa albums, which is where pics are stored for Blogger blogs. I did have to purchase an upgrade for pics, since I host my pics on my site and don’t host them on Flickr or elsewhere. These are now hosted on my server. That post will give you all the low-down on using Windows Live Writer and I do really enjoy working with it. Speeds things up for me!

My blogging story may become a little out of whack as I go along, but I’m trying to think of real tips that I can pass on too as I write this series. Tips that will help those of you who are new to blogging as well as those who have been at it for awhile. My knowledge has been 5 years in the making and none of this was learned overnight. I still feel that I have SO much to learn at times! One thing with blogging, there is always something new to learn and learning keeps us sharp!

(via Etsy)

So, back to 2009! Going into that year, there was a new blog conference that had just been around for a year or so. Blissdom! Many of my peers were going and I really wanted to connect with them in real life. I made plans to go to Blissdom in January of 2009. If you get the chance to go to a blog conference, I would definitely suggest you do it. It was a perfect way for me to jump into learning more about blogging, where I wanted to go with it and to connect in real life to many bloggers that I had rubbed shoulders with the previous year. Meeting other bloggers in real life has been without a doubt, the most positive and energizing thing about blogging. We are all on the same journey. Those girls get blogging and how it works and learning from and being around them all was such fun. That first Blissdom conference, I met many women and most of them are still blogging to this day. You can read my experiences at my first Blissdom here and see all the Home bloggers that were at that conference. Compared to today, it was only a handful. (Emily, me, Jen, Sandy, Melissa, Kimba, Nester) This group was the beginning of the Home bloggers and we enjoyed that first year at Blissdom (actually 2nd official year, the very first one was really tiny) and have gone on to forge our own blogging paths. It was so fun to actually meet in person and connect with those girls whose blogs I had been reading for over a year.

(This was my first time to meet Julia, with Hooked on Houses too and it’s been great to get to know her.)

Blissdom is a great blog conference with many various types of bloggers. Many women who started in blogging way before I did began as moms and writers, those who were aspiring to become writers and share their stories on the web. Many of those bloggers we heard on the panels at Blissdom were coupon bloggers too, so that 2009 Blissdom was a time of learning and figuring out which direction to go next. Many of us who were there definitely fit in the home niche and we bonded over that. We were not mommy or coupon bloggers, but had a whole different slant to our blogs. We wanted to share our home decorating ideas with the world and that was the commonality we all had. There were only a handful of us at that conference, but it was a great start. Since that year, the home/DIY niche of blogging has just exploded, as I’m sure you have noticed!

(This sweet girl, Susie Harris, was there too. We are still great friends and I can’t wait to see her at Haven this year!)

Some of the things we heard at the conference was way over my head. I had already been with BlogHer ad network for almost at year at this point, making a few dollars along the way, as I mentioned in Part 2 of my story. I was certainly not looking at blogging as a full time job, but still just a fun hobby that earned a small little income. At that time, I didn’t feel the absolute need to grow my blog and make it work. I was married at the time and didn’t rely on my income to make it. But, going to Blissdom gave me more confidence to try to grow my blog for the fun of it and why not? If I was going to stay home and do it for fun, I figured that if the possibility was there to make it more and make a little more income, then why not? I still loved the whole blogging community and sharing on my blog and leaving Blissdom gave me the push to add my own personal sponsors on my blog. So, when I came home that year, I did just that. I added small business ads in my sidebar and opened it up to see what would happen.

I did get a few advertisers that first year of starting my own sponsors, but certainly it wasn’t huge. Still not anything close to a sustainable income. I started off by charging sponsors only $20 per month, certainly not a lot of money, but it was a start. Later that year, I went up to $40 and then $50, which I stayed at for way over a year. I have recently gone up to $60 per month and will probably not go up too much from that. Many bloggers charge different amounts for ads and I have tried to stay competitive and reasonable at the same time, for my blog size. Back then, I’d say my monthly stats were around 50,000 hits a month, and over 100,000 pageviews. I currently get over 600,000 pageviews per month and per most blog advertising formulas, I could charge much more than I do, but I would rather keep those sponsor ads reasonable. Most of them are small business owners like myself and this helps both of us to grow.

In July of 2009, I officially moved from Blogger to WordPress. I chose my new domain name and moved. I didn’t understand all of that at the time, but quickly learned that I would need to pay for a domain name (less than $10) and then find a host service. I ended up on Bluehost after moving from the first one. I am still on a shared server at Bluehost, but if I keep growing, will probably have to move to the next tier up to make sure my blog loads and runs smoothly (I think the next tier up is a VPS server). I’m still fine for now, but that is always an option. Many of the bigger blogs are on their own servers, to handle the traffic that their blogs get. I would love to have that problem, but for now, the shared server is fine.

I hired my blog designer, Darcy, to do that for me. She is one of the prominent blog designers out there and did a lot of my blog peers blog designs. At the time, I still had not had a complete blog design makeover and it wouldn’t be until Spring of 2010 that I would get that done (also by Darcy). Darcy with Graphically Designing is a very saavy designer and she helped me walk through the scary process of moving over to WordPress. That meant that all my content, 2 1/2 years worth, would have to be moved over. All the posts, comments, pics, everything had to be moved. We successfully did that with minor inconveniences and I still have it all with me now, thank goodness. I did have to go in and manually fix some broken links, but for the most part, it was very easy. And as I mentioned, I had to start over with my RSS subscribers (those of you who sign up to read by a reader or by email). I do think that has changed now and most that move over to a new domain name, can take it all with them. Be sure to get a really savvy designer and technical person who can do it all for you. If I had tried to move myself to WordPress, it would have been a complete disaster for sure. That is not something I would ever feel comfortable doing myself.

I did things a little backwards and moved to WordPress before I got the whole shebang blog makeover to make my blog pretty. My old banners were way too big and once I got a new design, I was really happy with it. The new blog design was about 6 months after the move to WordPress. So, word of advice. Get it all done at the same time! Don’t drag it out like I did. If you can afford to get a blog design and move, that’s the best time to do it all. I may eventually do a new header, but for now I’m still fine with it as it is. It really expresses who I am and what my blog is about and that is the most important thing with a blog header. Does it portray WHO you are?

By the end of 2009, I felt very good about where I was going. Still not getting rich by any means, but making a decent part-time income. My income more than doubled from 2008 to 2009, I’m not going to continue sharing how much I’ve made over these last couple of years (most people don’t go around talking about their $$ income), but I will say that it has grown tremendously. As my blog traffic has grown, so has the monetary compensation and that has been the biggest blessing in my life at the moment. I’ll get more into all of that in later posts, so stay tuned.

I hope that sharing my story this way is not too disjointed. All this information that I want to share pops into my head and I’m trying to make it somewhat cohesive and easy to understand. I thought the best way to share my story would be to describe it as I lived it, one year at a time. If any of you have questions along the way, please feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll be glad to answer.

Waynesville Countryside: Cute Goat Alert

Rhoda — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:00:19 +0000

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The mountains of NC are some of my favorite sights to see and it’s a thrill each time I visit. Waynesville is equally beautiful, matching any of the mountain views I’ve experienced before. A small town feel, rolling hills and trickling streams, it’s a wonderful weekend getaway.

This was our view on the way to the cottage. Pretty horses grazing in the field.

A homemade event sign.

Not exactly a little cottage, this stately home sits on a small pond with a trickling stream in the front yard.

These horses have it made.

These don’t have it bad either.

Spotted a local truck.

As we passed this stately gate, we couldn’t help but notice some furry adorable goats on the other side.

So we stopped for some photos. They all ran over to the fence to greet us and we snapped away.

Aren’t they pretty?

Goats have such fascinating faces.

Character filled expressions.

The babies are my fave!

Mr. Llama came bounding up the hill to see what was going on.

Such pretty faces.

Spotted babies

Beautiful creatures, all of them.

This one must be Billy, he was the biggest and I guess that makes him a ram.

Heading to the cottage on a winding road, this little garage was all decked out for Christmas still.

Nothing like the sparkling mountain streams in NC.

Just love them, water falling over the rocks. I did my share of wading in these NC mountain streams growing up.

Beautiful

The Cottage is so pretty and ready for guests.

Love this blue door.

We had a couple of amazing sunrises, with wispy clouds and fog.

And enjoyed a soak in this hot tub, stars hanging low.

A great girl’s getaway spot. Hope you enjoyed hanging out with us in the cottage and thrifting. I’ve still got some thrifting posts to share from our weekend in NC.

I’m very excited to announce that I will be speaking at SNAP, the brand new creative crafting conference, that will be in April near Salt Lake City, Utah. There will be so many bloggers there that I’ll be excited to meet and I’m honored to be a part of it. If you are out in that part of the country, I’d encourage you to try to go. It is sure to be a creative event that you’ll really enjoy being a part of. You can read all about it at the SNAP conference site. They will have a few ticket giveaways going on too, so be sure and read up at the SNAP site, as well as blog.

This is my very first live in person speaking engagement for a blog conference and I am thrilled to be there. I am happy to support this new conference and it will get me ready for our own Southeastern DIY/Home conference, Haven 2012, here in Atlanta, that I’m heading up in June of this year. Talk about pressure! We are working hard to have a fun and inspiring conference as well and I hope to see you there!

Feature Friday: House Beautiful 1940′s Cottage Update

Rhoda — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:00:21 +0000

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This beautiful updated 1940’s suburban cottage update in Charlotte, NC really caught my eye this month in House Beautiful. It’s fun to see so much color done well and I think you’ll enjoy the tour as much as I did.

Designer Lindsey Coral Harper did a great job of adding a sofa in the kitchen, she painted some dated old wood bright blue, and used upholstered headboards throughout.

There are lots of great ideas to take away from this feature and I loved seeing all the colors used throughout the house. Color is not dead!

The entryway sports new hemp grasscloth above the dark brown below. This looks like a stencil and could easily be done on a budget.

Here’s the old paneling painted up in a cozy blue shade.

The family room gets a good dose of color too, but not too strong.

This pretty Benjamin Moore Stem Green livens up the guestroom. See, she is not afraid of color. I love a gutsy mix.

The master bedroom is more subdued in gray.

The dining room is a nice mix of traditional with modern touches.

Master bath is serene in cool marble.

I love the kitchen in grays and yellows. I could definitely wake up to this every morning.

This photo from the cover is my favorite of the sofa in the kitchen. The vibrant yellow walls really liven this space up and mixed with gray is still serene.

Curtain panels in the living room in fabric by Kathryn Ireland is where the color pallet was drawn in this room.

Another guestroom is splashed with bold blue walls and lightened up by the white and red accented bedding. I love this look.

I really enjoyed the color and how pretty each room is. This is a great looking update and she didn’t use all the same color palette, so see how you can mix it up and break the rules? You can read the entire interview with the designer over at House Beautiful.

How do you like this updated 1940’s cottage?

Special thanks to Young House Love for featuring my sister’s glam master bedroom makeover yesterday!

Easy Canvas Prints Giveaway!

Rhoda — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:00:13 +0000

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You’re in for another treat today. Easy Canvas Prints contacted me about trying out their products and I got the opportunity to order a wrapped canvas print from them. Of course, I jumped at the chance.

I knew just the picture I wanted to put on canvas.

This last minute photo that we snapped with my camera during Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house turned out so nice that I knew it would be perfect for a wrapped canvas print. I ordered my free 16 x 20″ canvas print and waited for it to come in. I didn’t tell my mom that I had ordered it and you should have seen her face when I took this out of the box.

Her sweet face lit up and she immediately found a place to hang it in the den, front and center on the wall that they look at every single day. It captures my whole family together and even though it wasn’t color coordinated with our clothing or even planned out, it turned out to be a very special picture that will now be treasured forever.

I opted to do a black border instead of wrapping the photo around the edges, but you can do whatever you choose. This 16 x 20″ size really shows up nicely on a wall.

So, you guessed it! One of YOU will get a free 16 x 20″ print too. Go over to Easy Canvas Prints and look around.

Come back to this post and tell me if you have a special picture in mind that you’d like to capture on canvas.

Who will go on your canvas print if you are the fortunate winner?

You can find Easy Canvas prints on Facebook and Twitter.

Leave a comment for one entry.
Tweet about the giveaway, linking back to this post and including Easy Canvas Prints in the Tweet for a 2nd entry: @easycanvas. Leave a separate comment for your Tweet here.
U.S. residents only, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, due to shipping costs.

If you don’t win this one and really want to order one for yourself, you can still get a good deal by going here and entering SouthHospitality12.

The promo expires at midnight on February 4th, 2012. You will receive 50% off plus FREE shipping on your order.

The TJ Maxx/Marshalls giveaway winner is posted here!

Updating a 70′s Bedroom Suite

Rhoda — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:22 +0000

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We are about to do some decorating around this place! And you know how I love a good before and after.

My parent’s master bedroom and bath is not that big, but it’s time for an update. The bathroom was built in the 70′s and it hasn’t been updated since the mid-80′s when we were cuckoo for wallpaper. Smack me if I ever do wallpaper like this again.

Yikes, does it need a fresh start about now.

Cue the happy music! I’m very excited to have been chosen to join the Lowe’s Creative Ideas blog team and we are getting the opportunity to redo some spaces and blog about them. And we’ll be giving away some giftcards along the way too. I know y’all won’t mind that!

February is bathroom month and since I don’t have my own house right now and I GET to redo a bathroom, guess who benefits from this great perk?

Yep, my sweet mama gets a whole new bathroom! I’m so excited to be able to do this for her and she is tickled to pieces to spruce up this old space.

This house was built around 1973 or so and the vanity has not changed in all that time. We have a speckled green and white laminate in here with a hand-made vanity that my dad built all those years ago. You can imagine how excited she will be to get a brand spankin’ new vanity, sink and faucet in here? My Lowe’s perk of $500 will cover the new vanity and countertop.

There’s me in my fancy schmancy work clothes. See how I look most days.

It is nothing fancy, but has served them well for about 40 years now, but the new one is going to be beautiful. Oh, and the wallpaper, it’s coming down too. It is WAY past its prime. I asked mom if she would miss it. She assured me she would not.

Neutral tile in the shower, so that is good.

We are getting a pretty new glass shower door in here.

Mom and I went shopping and found this bedding at Belk Home store. It’s a beautiful botanical with cute birds and branches on it. I think she will really enjoy this bedding set and it’s cotton and not all shiny like many of those bed in a bag sets.

It comes with the quilt, 2 shams and bedskirt and she got a really good deal, on sale, extra % off because it was the last one on display and a coupon, brought it to $162 total.

Love the colors and this sweet bird.

We had already planned to redo their bedroom and bathroom way before this opportunity came along, so this will just be the icing on the cake to get to replace their old vanity and countertop. It’s going to be so nice! Of course, my dad was completely happy with it just the way it is.

Men!

So, the wallpaper is coming down this week and we will begin painting. I’m putting my wonderful beadboard wallpaper in here too with a chairrail and we’ll be painting above with Sherwin Williams Quietude. It’s going to be such a change!

If you have never stripped wallpaper, it is such a pain. You are supposed to be sure the wall is primed underneath before putting up wallpaper, but apparently this one was not done. This paper is coming off in big and small strips. Underneath is the paper backing, which will then have to be sprayed down with hot water and scraped off. The backing is not hard to get off once you get to that layer, just takes some effort to remove it all with a scraper. That cream stuff on the right is the backing which will be wet down and scraped off to get down to the sheetrock. Then we’ll paint!

Some of it comes off in big strips, but not all, so it can be a tedious job. We are all 3 working on getting it down and have made huge progress already.

Here’s the bedroom as it is now and it is going to be much lighter and brighter feeling with the new bedding. We’ll keep the walls creamy and get rid of the border. New drapery panels too. Not sure what color for the panels, but maybe a chocolate brown or we could go with that soft blue/green as well.

It’s time to lose the blue swag light fixture too and probably will add a pretty lamp on the nightstand.

They are not fancy people, but I know my mom is going to enjoy her newly decorated spaces. It’s going to feel like a new house.

Here’s what our plan looks like so far. New bedding and the rug that I received from my Shaw campaign will go in the room. We looked for bedding that would work with this rug and I think it is going to be pretty. We are painting the bedroom Antique White and the bathroom Quietude by Sherwin Williams. The vanity and countertop are both from Lowes and we will find a light fixture and faucet there too.

Of course, I’ll show you all the details when we are finished, sometime at the end of February.

Edited: Several of you made me 2nd guess the bedding and rug and after brainstorming with my sister and looking at it in light at home, we agreed that the bedding wasn’t working. We’ve already found a great choice, a striped Tommy Bahama set at Steinmart. Stay tuned for the final later on! Thanks for all your comments!

Isn’t decorating fun!?

{Disclosure: I’m part of Lowes Creative Ideas blogger team and we are being given $500 giftcards to redo a bath space. The giftcard will cover the new vanity and sink. You can also follow Lowes on Facebook.}