Just wanted to thank you all for sticking with me through 800 blogs!
Category Archives: Blog
6 Ways WordPress could make my life easier
Writing two ways. Some days I write my blog post long hand in CURSIVE! in a notebook. Other days I go direct to the computer. This is a picture of my brand spanking new keyboard. Ain’t she a beauty?
Dearest WordPress,
Thank you for lovely blogging experience (most of the time.) I really do appreciate your hosting my little daily nothings. But I wonder if I might bend your ear a tick and request a few tiny adjustments that would make my life just a bit easier. Perhaps my fellow bloggers could chime in with their own suggestions.
1. Could you possibly put the Add Media, Text Controls, Link Buttons and Spell Check along the side? Like, maybe add a Formatting menu under “Settings”. Would that be so hard? You could include all the stuff from the top. That way when we lowly bloggers write more than 4″ of text we wouldn’t have to constantly scroll up and down to add a link or put in an image.
Duplicate the functionality found at the top of the blog in a pop out menu to the left. (Please.)
2. Give us options on the ADS you attach to our blogs. You know in Widgets how there are about 50 options to choose from so we can customize our sidebar? What if you gave us a poll and let us choose, say 10 (or more) out of 100 types of ads that would best speak to our audience. Wouldn’t that be a better selling tool for you when you approached a potential advertiser? See I’m looking out for you too.
3. Make it easier to open a new file through the Dashboard. Experience has taught me that opening a new file by going to the drop down menu under my blog name then clicking on Dashboard / Post / Add New produces the best results with the least amount of grief. However, clicking on Dashboard is a wonky proposal at best. Sometimes nothing happens and I’m left hovering over the Dashboard waiting (im)patiently, or, more often than not, I’m shuffled right back to the main page.
4. How about a nice Character Style box for those of us who know what we’re doing with text? I wont abuse it, I promise. But it sure would be nice to have some choices on font and size.
I won’t even use Comic Sans. I promise.
5. If a person does a weekly article on a certain subject (say… Muffin Monday) would it be possible to have those previous post come up FIRST in the Related Article suggestions? Or how about this… ONE panel for MY related articles …and ANOTHER pull down panel for related articles from other WordPress bloggers! So say some one was writing about, I don’t know, Colin Firth, then one could easily link to all the other articles about Colin Firth one has done in the past… as well as other germane Colin Firth blogs on WordPress.
Just another excuse use this picture of Colin Firth. [Image courtesy: hdwpapers.com]
6. What’s a girl gotta do to get selected for FRESHLY PRESSED? You’d think one of my 528 post in the last 14 months would have piqued your interest, but I guess not. Sigh. [And yes I’ve read the FAQ suggestions, thank you very much.]
Anyway… thanks again for hosting the blog.
Cheers, Your friend,
ritaLOVEStoWRITE
ritaLOVEStoWRITE hits 200
Yeah, I can’t believe it either… but that blog you read yesterday — the one on my hero Robert F. Kennedy — was the 200th blog post for ritaLOVEStoWRITE.
That’s 12,641 views! and 128 faithful followers (THANKS GUYS!!!) — not counting those folks who read it on Facebook.
So…Who was your favorite Thought of the Day birthday profile?
My quest for “world domination” is still on going. On the imaginary the RISK board playing out in my head I still need Guyana and French Guyana in South America; Nicaragua, the Bahamas, and Haiti in Central America/Caribbean; Greenland for North America; Macedonia and Moldova for Europe; and a bunch more in Africa and Asia. (But, hey, I got the island country of Reunion and I didn’t even know where that was*, so I figure I’m ahead of the game.) So if you know any body in one of the gray countries in the map below please ask them to stop by ritaLOVEStoWRITE.com — it’ll really make my day. (Yes, I know how pathetic that sounds.)
So… a couple of things…
1.) NAME CHANGE: I’ve been calling my bioBlogs Thought of the Day with the date and birthday person. I’m changing that to the birthday person’s name, then the date then, Thought of the Day. (So yesterday’s blog would now be “Robert F. Kennedy 11.20.12 Thought of the Day”) Hopefully that will make it easier for people to find the individual blog posts through a search engine.
2.) FEED BACK: PLEASE talk back! I love it when I get a response. Cross my heart — I do! But please be aware that the spam filter catches a lot of stuff and if your comment doesn’t specifically reference the blog; if I can’t see a legit web page or blog; or if there’s a hint of anything blue in the content of the comment or your web page name I’ll delete it. Gotta be safe.
3.) NEW!!! Secondary Character Saturday — I’m toying with the idea of dedicating Saturday (or maybe Sunday) to profiling a fictional character instead of an actual person. It wont necessarily be on their birthday. And they likely will not be the main character. WHAT DO YOU THINK?????
4.) If you have a famous (or semi famous) person with a birthday coming up, and you’d like to see them featured in Thought of the Day please submit their name and birth date. I’ll see what I can do.
5.) I’m looking for guest bloggers. Want to be a featured guest blogger and write a birthday bioBlog about some one you admire? Don’t be shy just drop me a line.
I think that’s it from here. Thanks again for reading along!
Cheers,
Rita
* Reunion is off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Everybody loves a frog (and my plan for world domination)
A quick note to thank every one for stopping by today.
I should have known that a Thought of the Day about Jim Henson and Kermie would do well, but I was pleasantly surprised to log on this evening and see the spikes in today’s stats. [Drumroll please…] I’m happy to report that today ritaLOVEStoWRITE had its very best day ever! By 7:40pm the site had reached a whopping 153 hits, for an all time total of over 5,000 hits! Whoot!
Here’s a map showing where all those hits are coming from…
Map reflecting all time hits.
Actually this is about a week old. Ghana, El Salvador, Suriname, Algeria, Oman, Kuwait and Reunion have joined since then. I’m learning a lot about geography. (Reunion is an island nation off the east coast of Madagascar, btw.)
Personally, I would love to see a few more of the countries on this map get filled in. Not just because it is cool to see the continents fill up, or because it would give me a RISK (game) sense of satisfaction to pick up Greenland so I would have all of “North America,” but because I have something to say.
If I could actually send a message to the world it would be similar to the advice Kermit gave in a Men’s Health interview in November of last year.
- Challenge yourself to help others.
- Accept people for who they are.
- Roll with life’s ups and downs.
I would add
4. Live peacefully and with joy in your heart. And
5. Do something (small or large) to help save the planet every day.
So, thanks for stopping by the blog, and if you happen to know some one who might like ritaLOVEStoWRITE please send them a link and invite them to stop by (especially if they’re in Greenland.)
Cheers,
Rita
Mike & Rita make a Glorious Pecan Pie
This morning I stopped my buddy Mike’s house to do some baking since my oven is on the fritz. I had some rhubarb and Mike had some pecans… you know what that means… pies!
Since Mike has never made a blog I thought this would be a good tutorial for him. So here goes…
Pie Ready to Bake
Mike’s friend Gloria is from the South and KNOWs all about Pecans, so her recipe was perfect for our first venture into Pecan Pies !
Gloria’s Pecan Pie Recipe
- 3 eggs beaten
- 2/3 cup sugar
- dash salt
- 1 cup dark corn syrup
- 1/3 cup melted butter
- mix all together
- add 1 cup pecan halves or pieces
pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake 350 for 50 mins. pie shell can be frozen or refrigerator crust your choice.
Step By Step Pictures
First we add the eggs to the sugar so we can cream them together. The graininess of the sugar breaks up the membranes from inside the eggs and the eggs help liquify the sugar. This makes a smooth consistency that makes it easy to add the remaining liquid ingredients.
Cracking the 3 eggs
Adding the 2/3 cup of sugar
… and the sugar
And whisk together with a whisk
Beat It (MJ)
Add a dash of salt. (Yeah, we didn’t take a picture of that, we guessed y’all know how to do a dash of salt.)
Next comes the Dark Corn Syrup — we use Karo Syrup. That’s K-ROW syrup for y’all from the South who are following along.
Adding the Kara
Add the melted butter
Pouring the Melted Butter into mixture
Adding the Pecans…
“Natural Pecans” into the mix (as though there was another kind??)
Whisk and Mix together (“Whix”)
All the ingredients in one big bowl
Ready to fill ‘er up
Into the mighty pie shell at last !!!
The recipe makes one 9 inch pie and we made the recipe twice… (shhhh, the pics are from either batch)… After all, we’ve got college and high school kids to feed!
To paraphrase Julia Child … don’t keep opening the oven door to check on your baked goods. You just let the heat out and cause the temperature to go up and down. So look though the window in the oven door and time your pie carefully.
And here are the two beauties hot out of the oven …
- Ahhhh, wish you could smell over the internet, don’t you?
- Our pie was too hot to slice, but we found this awesome pie image on SouthernVegan.WordPress.com (You should go visit them right now.)
And now Mikey has learned how to make a great pecan pie, AND he’s also learned how to use our pictures and wordpress to make a nice blog about our Journey Together this morning 🙂 [Rita’s note: SWEET!]
ritaLOVEStoWRITE just won a BLOgcean Award!
To quote one of my favorite people in the world… “Awesome Sauce!”
BLOgcean just gave ritaLOVEStoWRITE a Grade 4 BLOgcean Award! (as in blog ocean)
So if you’ve been reading the blog thinking “you know this isn’t half bad” congratulations, YOU WERE RIGHT! And now there’s proof! So I’d like to share this award with you, my faithful readers.
And as a bonus reward… I can promise you a delightful Thought of the Day tomorrow. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, as that would defeat the object. But, I believe, it will be most satisfactory.
BLOGchean Award Winning Blog
Versatile Blogger Award
ritaLOVEStoWRITE 
