Well well well! It’s about time we got some snow here! *shaking it off my paws* Good thing I’ve got the wood burner in the burrow, or it might be a little chilly! And Carrie made me a little quilt for my bed, so I’m snug as a rodent in a rug!

Today we’re going to talk about Blavatars. What on earth is a Blavatar? It’s the WordPress version of a Gravatar. So let’s dig in. (get it? dig? woodchuck?)

=)

Ok, right where you see the big blue W? Yup, that’s where our blavatar is going to go.

So first, lets pick out an image. I’m going to use this one. Mom took my picture last year on February 2nd. Don’t I look handsome?

Now it’s not too big, but it’s also not square. No problemo. WordPress is going to let us fix that.

Go to your dashboard, then Settings> General.

You’ll see this graphic.

Go ahead and click Browse, then navigate to the image you want to use. then upload.

The next screen will let you crop your graphic. Just move the white box around with your mouse.

Click crop image, and tada!! You have a blavatar!

It may take a moment or two to appear, but it will. It will also show up in the URL bar of browsers, and as a favicon on browser tabs. If someone creates a bookmark with your URL, it will show up there too!

Is that not cool? =)

Enjoy your new Blavatar!

=)

Oh and one more thing …..

HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY A DAY EARLY!!! hehehehe

Carrie Spencer Author - Smart Ass Romance

Sometimes I need outlets for creativity. Then you should write more, Carrie! (I can hear those words in my head, even if you didn’t actually say them out loud)

So, I design.

Sometimes it’s stupid stuff. A t-shirt with a goofy saying. An origami dollar bill. A tower made out of cheese.

And other times, I actually make things worthwhile. Jewelry, book covers. A tower made out of cheese.

=)

So, here’s what I’ve been up to lately.

Lord Midnight A book cover for Donna Cummings	A website for a small town near here.	The outside sign for our restaurant.

Carrie Spencer Author - Smart Ass Romance

So, you’ve been thinking about moving to WordPress eh? You’ve played with Blogger and decide it’s time to move on, bigger and better things. Kind of like when you got stuck with all those Beta tapes when everyone else went VHS.

Well, no more. I’m sneaking from my burrow to share a quick tidbit or two. Thank goodness for warm weather in Iowa, or there’s no way you’d get him from in front of his fireplace!

So, first of all, go to WordPress.com and sign up. Ah ah ah! Before you starting whining- Woodie HOW do I sign up, read here…
WordPress for Non-Techies
Once you’re signed up, then go back to your blogger account, and click export blog from the Settings/Basic tab.
Save this file somewhere super duper important. No, not there. Not there either! Yes, there…that’ll do it.

Now go to your brand spanking new WordPress.com site you just opened up.
Go to Tools> Import and choose Blogger. (see how easy this is?)

Now on the next screen, it says Have a Blogger export file? Well, of course you do!

Remember where you hid it? Click the browse button, find it, then click Upload file and import.

On this next screen, make sure you tick this box.

And th-th-th-that’s all folks. =)

Now if you’re thinking of moving from Blogger to WordPress.org?

That’s a whole different bunch of pansies. Stay tuned for another episode of . . . dum dum dum!!!! Woodie knows WordPress!

=)

Carrie Spencer Author - Smart Ass Romance

Winter tends to make people . . . crazy. Granted, this has been a very mild winter so far, but still . . . craziness abounds. Polar Bear swims, golfing on frozen lakes, saunas followed by a nice roll in the snow.

Yeah, we have lots of Norwegians around here, and yeah, they really do that. Honest. Ask the UPS guy.

One of the ways people go a little bonkers is to start wearing ummm…inappropriate winter apparel. Warm, yes…but….ugly.

See what I mean?

Even Christian Louboutin gets into the act with his line of hairy shoes….

and the ever popular lion foot – only 5,000 pounds.

There’s the ever popular coyote trapper hat – complete with feet and tail

the oddly sexy leopard hood and mitts (also available in skunk and cheshire cat)

and the… the….. hmmm…

and of course, you knew they made fur pants yes? although from the look on this models face, I’d have to say maybe they itch..

seriously, check out the rest of the fashions by Chanel, yes Chanel on that page. It’ll stay with you for a long long time.

Even the animals bring out their fun fur…

and some people still think winter sucks! imagine!

pics on Sodahead

everyone knows you can buy heated gloves and socks…but did you know you could buy a rechargeable heated jacket?

and if you’re hungry, go get the scoop shovel and make yourself some snow ice cream…yummmmmbrrrrr

try barstool racing for a little excitement!

no? not so much? well then if worst comes to worst, snuggle up in front of the fireplace with a great book…

and you’ll get through winter juuuuuust fine.

honest.

=)

carrie

Carrie Spencer Author - Smart Ass Romance

Everyone knows it’s election year. All I have to do is turn on the big screen in the burrow and there it is. One candidate after another fighting it out. And the phone calls. Oy. The phone never stops ringing in here! (and burrows echo!)

Now suppose, just for instance, you wanted to have your own poll on your very own website! How cool is that? And so simple, even a candidate could figure it out.

=)

Okay, so first we’re going to go to our dashboard and click POLLS. This window here will pop up

If you’ve never created a poll, you’ll choose Auto-create a new account (recommended). And then click the DO IT! button.

Click on the blue Create a Poll Now button.

Okay, nobody panic! We’re going to take this one step at a time. Breathe into a paper bag over there lady, you sound like a freight train!

In the very top box, we’re putting in the question you want to ask for your poll. No question? No need for a poll. So our question is – Who would you REALLY like for president?

Now notice, on the right side of this box, you can add an image or what have you. Maybe a nice flag photo would work, but think small!

Now the next 3 boxes are your pre-given answers to the questions. So in the first box, we’ll put it ….say, Farmer in the Dell. He’s a great guy, really good with animals and has quite the repertoire of barnyard sounds. In the second box we’ll say Johnny Depp. Why Johnny Depp? He reminds me of a woodchuck. Big teeth, nice smile. Drooping whiskers. Now in the third box, we’ll put in *he says oh-so-casually* Woodie the Woodchuck.

Quit giggling over there.

Under the third box is a Add New Answer button. You can now have four choices, or five even for your guests to choose from.

Here’s what your page will look like now.

The little blue arrows on the side of the answers? You can use those to drag and drop the answers to a higher or lower position.

Now we’re going to pick a style. Use the big blue arrows to go forward and back between the 20+ styles polldaddy has.

Underneath it lets you choose wide (if you’re inserting it into a post) medium (for a small section of your post) and narrow (for a sidebar)

On the right hand side of your screen, you’ll notice these settings

The top one lets you show the results to the voters – after they’ve voted of course – or hide all the vote results or show a percentage.

The middle one I always choose block by cookie – or someone could stack the votes. Imagine if Johnny or Raquel found out they could vote non-stop? They’d be voting on my blog Every. Single. Day. trying to become president!

The bottom one is up to you, whether you’d like to allow comments or not on your poll. If your poll is part of your blog post, you can regulate the comments there as well.

Finally, we’ll save our post.

From here you have a few more options – do you want to let people write in their own option? Put a share this button with it? Allow people to choose more than one answer?

When you’ve decided, click the Save Poll Button.

Nothing happened, right? Aww..buck up little sailor, I’ll show you what to do next!

Waaaaay at the top of your page, right under your poll question is this

If you click “Embed poll in new post” a new post is created right in front of your very eyes and all you have to do is hit publish and it’s live.
OR
you can copy the shortcode which is listed in the brackets [polldaddy ] and copy and paste that into a post you already have made.

Voila! One poll made and ready to roll out the red carpet! You can see the final results here http://www.ccspencer.wordpress.com

Hail to Chief Woodie!!!

=)

Carrie Spencer Author - Smart Ass Romance