Polls and other bloggy stuff

So, thanks for answering my poll last week!  I learned that most of what I talk about is liked somewhat equally across the board.  I’m glad to know that.  There was only one thing that got significantly fewer votes than the other topics, and that was my interview series.  Well, maybe you’ll like it better over the next three weeks – I’m introducing a little twist.  Then I’ll retire it for a little while.

I appreciate the feedback.  It really does help.  You know how I love to tweak things around here, and having a better idea of your likes and dislikes can help when I’m considering directions to go.  So thanks!

By the way, I was thinking last week about ways in which we can support our favorite bloggers.  We crafty/slice-of-life bloggers do it for the love of it, but if someone wants to show their appreciation for good content in a gift-giving kind of way, then we should make it easy for them, don’t you think?  It was in that spirit that I wrote up this informational page for my own blog (but I think most of these options are available for a lot of us, not just me).  Feel free to read it, if the topic interests you at all.

Feel like weighing in on something else?  How about social bookmarking?

Do you ever read a good article and then share it with your friends on another network?  What’s your favorite way to do that?  I’m a Google Reader girl myself.  When I share something with GR, it shares the article with my contacts within Reader, but I also have it set up so that it displays right here on my blog sidebar and posts to Twitter, too.  It also posts to Facebook (or, at least it used to – I think that broke and I never bothered to fix it.)  So, essentially, I share here on the blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook, but I do it through one source: Google Reader.  For me, that means all I need is a Google Reader button attached to the posts I like, and I’m golden.

I’m looking to have the right mix of sharing options at the end of my posts, and it would help greatly if I knew what kinds of services you all tended to use when sharing content with your friends.  What buttons would you like to see?

I’ve been playing around with options, but really, I’m just stabbing in the dark here.

Ocean Grove, redeemed

Just popping in really quickly tonight.  I’ve been down on Ocean Grove lately, not because it’s not a wonderful place (oh, it is!) but because I haven’t had a lot of luck with taking pictures there.  I’m happy to report, there were no such problems on our most recent day trip.  It was smooth sailing.  I can’t say the same for the traffic, but hey, I guess it can’t be all perfect, right?

That last photo? It pretty much sums up the month of August around here: little brother does something to annoy big brother (like jumping in front of him when mom is taking a photo), big brother takes the bait and overreacts, bickering ensues.    I just love those last weeks of summer vacation, don’t you?

Rain in the forecast for tomorrow.  I’ve got crafty plans.  I’ll share soon

P.S. Almost forgot to mention… have you seen the new We Deserve This blog?  One of my photos was featured this weekend. Check it out!  (There are two Lisa’s there – I am the second one -  and both of us have coffee in our photos.  I’m not sure what that says about us…)

Friday Photo Love

Good Morning! Almost afternoon here… I’ve spent the morning working on some photos I took yesterday at the beach. I’ve had some frustrations in the process, though, it’s taken too much time, and I’m eager to get out of my pj’s and into the shower already! So, here’s today’s quick Photo Love post. I’m leaving off the Mister Linky widget as I mentioned last time. It’s not getting used much, and I’m not liking it from an administrivial point of view. So, out it goes!

Anyway…

Here are my flickr favorites for the week.  I’ve had pillowcases on my mind for a few days…  I’m thinking of making a new set for my bed, to go with the quilt I have been planning since this time last year, but have not even cut into the fabric for yet. Ahem.

And speaking of my bed… Despite the disaster area that surrounds it, this is my favorite photo of my own for the week.  I took it using a technique known as HDR (or High Dynamic Range) photography.  It’s often used for spectacular landscapes – I mean really spectacular.  But, I’ve found that HDR with a tripod in my own house actually helps deal with the lousy lighting I have around here.  Look at how bright, crisp, and not-grainy this photo is – I assure you that is a real novelty in my house.

I’m considering writing up a little post on the topic of using HDR as a way of dealing with less-than-stellar indoor lighting conditions, if that will interest anyone.

Feel free to play along with the FPL this week – any photos of your own, or anyone else’s that have impressed you lately?  (In the absence of Mister Linky, you can just leave your link in the comments.)

Ok.  I’m off to get dressed and start this day finally!!

Summer Studio

It’s been a few weeks since I played along with Heather’s Summer Studio, so I thought I’d join in today.  Here’s what is on and around my worktable at the moment:

Beach pendant parts.  I think I have shown you various beach pendant parts all summer long… it might be nice to have some actual finished pieces one of these days. *sigh*  At the moment I am waiting for various mail-order components, as well as an opportunity to snap a few more seaside pictures.  Next week.  I’ll have something fun to show next week (right?  oh I hope!).

Here’s a sheet that is about to be cut up and turned into a skirt (or two or three).  I just need to shove all of the clay supplies out of the way so I can set up the sewing machine. Ah, the joys of being multi-crafty in a small space…

And this is not technically in progress, unless you count the time it spends wandering around my brain, being considered, and morphing into an eventual project.  I’ll be reviewing this book sometime in the next week or two (first impression? delicious, of course), as soon as I’ve had a chance to find the embroidery hoops I bought recently.  Oh, and I’ll need to learn to embroider, too.  That will be helpful.

That’s it for my creative endeavors at the moment.  Before I sign off, though, I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my poll!  It’s been fun watching the different topics duke it out for first place.  Some of what I am seeing is a little surprising, actually, but I won’t get into all of that now.  The poll closes on Friday morning, and after that I’ll be sure to yammer on about what I’ve learned and all of that good stuff.  If you haven’t voted yet, be a dear and go let me know what you think.  Thanks.  You’re a peach!

What do you think?

In an effort to get to know the interests of my readers a little bit better, I came up with this poll.

Generally, I just talk about whatever is on my mind when I come here to post, but I’m curious to know what your favorite things to read are.  I can’t say for sure that your answers will change anything, but you never know.

On those days when I have multiple ideas for topics, my choice of which to use can most definitely be swayed by public opinion!

You are welcome (encouraged, in fact!) to select more than one option:

If you are getting this in a feed reader or on the daily email, you may not be able to participate in (or even see) the poll.  I’d really appreciate you clicking over to vote.  Besides making me happy, you get the added benefit of seeing some of the little bits of redecorating I’ve been doing over the past month or two.

You just don’t get the full Polka Dot Cottage Experience in a reader

Thanks for taking the time to let me know what you think!  You’re welcome to elaborate in the comments, if the poll doesn’t encompass all that you’d like to say.

The poll will close in three days: 9am on August 20th.

The joy? of coming home

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled Monday Morning Coffee series to bring you this lazy post.  Morning Coffee will be back next week (with a twist!)  Today, you get pictures from my vacation.

Oh, stop groaning.  It was a one-day trip.  I’ve only got a handful of shots to share.  We stayed locally at an old, beautifully renovated inn (and it was free, thanks to my sister-in-law and her gift certificate winning & sharing ways).  Isn’t it pretty?

There are more images here, if you’d like to see them all.

Yesterday morning I awoke in this spacious, relaxing, light-filled room.  Ahhhhh:

Today?  Not so much. Aaaack:

I think it’s time to rent a dumpster.  Take me back to the inn!!

Activity, conflictedness, and a grand opening

You’d think with all of the clay rolling, image transferring, baking, re-baking, baking again, sanding, buffing, cutting, twisting, and assembling there has been around here, that I’d have something to show for it.  You’d think.  I’m not sure what made me think that image transfers could be my “thing.”  They have never been my thing.  We have never gotten along, image transfers and I.

The Mr. and I had a getaway last night, thanks to my lovely sister-in-law who passed along to us a gift certificate she won.  We had a lovely time at a local B&B.  It was a nice, cool night, so we opened all of the windows in the room, turned on the gas fireplace, put on the fluffy robes we found in the closet, and talked, and talked, and talked.  One of the many things we discussed was my current clay project, and how it would be so much easier to abandon the transfer idea and bring the pendants to life another way.

I’ve begun to give serious thought to that, going so far as to buy some of the supplies today on the way home from the inn.  Abandoning my clay? Oy.

And yet… even with part of the image sanded-off, I do really like the way the clay pendants look.  And feel.  So smooth and touchable.  I can’t help but think a little more experimenting will yield fabulous results.

But will all of the work required to make the perfect pendant price this jewelry right out of my usual market??  I’m conflicted.

More thinking and learning to do this week, it seems!

In the meantime, I just could not wait to open that new Etsy shop!  And so I did.  No jewelry in there yet, but I am selling prints of my favorite beach photos.  And for those who like to take their poison digitally, I’ve got desktop backgrounds available for download.  I hope you’ll check it out.

Thanks for all of your support and encouragement!  If you have any feedback or ideas for the new shop, suggestions for what other photos you’d like to see in there, thoughts on image transfers, etc.  I’m always interested in hearing such things.

Friday Photo Love

Can you believe it’s Friday again already?  Time flies.

I think this may be the end of the line for Mister Linky on Friday Photo Love.  It seems only a very small number of people are using it, and I have to keep deleting spammy links.  I’ll give it one more week to prove worthwhile, and if it fails, next week you can start mentioning your link in the comments instead.  No biggie, right?  Right.

OK, so on with the love!

This week was a study in aqua, pink, and flowers, it seems.  I suppose, though, the same could be said of many other weeks. You can click on the mosaic for complete photo credits.

I thought you might be interested in how I find my way around Flickr and discover the photos that become my favorites.  There are three main things that I look at (but really #2 is the method I use the most):

1. New photos from the Contacts page.  If one of them grabs me from the thumbnail, into the favorites it goes.
2. On the Recent Activity page, if I see that someone has favorited one of my photos, I check to see what other photos they have favorited.  Chances are, if they like my pictures, I might enjoy some of their other favorites.  I also sometimes take a look at their own photostream and find interesting things there.
3. Browsing through groups that have an aesthetic that appeals to me.  The groups I choose change based on my current interests.  Sometimes I’m going nuts over linen and patchwork, and other times (like now) I’m enjoying the Shutter Sisters group.

This week, from my own photostream I chose this Project 365 shot.  This is one of my favorite ways to do breakfast – on my bed with a cup of coffee and my laptop.  I love how it’s bright and nicely-lit – no small feat in my house, I assure you.

Want to play along? Grab the Friday Photo Love button from the sidebar if you’d like it, and leave your link with Mister Linky below.  What are some of your favorite photos for the week, and why?

The work of my hands

I enjoy my online time immensely.  I spend it writing my blog, reading other blogs I enjoy, browsing Facebook, processing the day’s photos & Flicking them (Flicking? The verb form of Flickr, of course), responding to email, processing orders, working on websites for design clients, working on my own websites… and many other things I could name if I thought hard enough.  Some of it work, some of it play.  Most of it enjoyable.  I could easily whittle away my waking hours, computer on my lap, in the same cozy chair, with nothing but minimal breaks for food, drink, and bathroom.  And I could be happy most of the time I am at it, too.

But here’s the thing: at the end of a day like that, when the computer is shut down, and I am safely settled into my pajamas, there is a dissatisfaction that creeps into my consciousness.  I look around and really see my surroundings.  I may have made great strides in the campaign to have a spiffy blog sidebar, but at what cost?  Piles of laundry strewn about the bedroom, dishes stacked in the sink, kids running amok, stress, crankiness, and pizza delivery for supper?

Sure, all of those things can happen even when I’ve been nowhere near the laptop (and they do!), but I find that my domestic life hangs by an increasingly precarious string, the more time I spend typing.  And the more chaotic I allow life to get, the more I retreat into my cranky self, feeling defeated by my children, and keeping my husband at arm’s length.

I’m very often guilty of trying to avoid housework.  Very often.  Being busy with the computer is an exceedingly effective avoidance mechanism.  Still, I eventually do notice that my presence in the virtual world is having a negative impact on my real world(tm), and when that happens, I am reminded of the value of physical work.

Throwing a load of laundry into the machine in the morning, straightening up the living room, doing a small repair job for a paying customer, washing a few dishes, folding the clean laundry, cooking a meal, spraying down the kiddie pool… this is the work of my hands.  This is something that has a profoundly positive effect on the well-being of my family.  This is something I can take pride in, something tangible, and something I need not run away from so often.

Today, my hands have been busy.  I feel good about how my time has been spent.  I am guilt-free.  I am content. I am inspired to playfulness and affection with my kids.  And with my husband, too, for that matter.  Using my hands to better my physical world makes me happy.

This idea is not news to most of you, I’m sure.  I wish it wasn’t so often news to ME!  It might be nice not to have to re-learn the lesson every couple of months…

Ocean Grove eats cameras

Or so I was beginning to think.

We took a day trip yesterday to Ocean Grove.  Or, more accurately, we took a late-afternoon-into-night trip, as is our usual m.o.  These are the only pictures I was able to take before my camera seized up, lens partially extended, and refused to come back on.  If you will recall, the event that led up to the purchase of this camera in the first place, was a lens failure on the part of my previous camera, while on a day trip to – you guessed it – Ocean Grove.

I’ve been to that place three times, and two of those trips have claimed my cameras.  Not nice.

We hadn’t even put down our beach blanket this time when the camera quit.  I tried several times to revive it, before giving up.  I put the camera away, allowed myself five minutes to wallow and feel sorry for myself, and then chose to have a fabulous time despite the loss of my favorite toy (again).

It really was a nice trip, and I only said to myself half a dozen times, “ooh, pretty, I wish I could photograph that.”

I won’t keep you waiting until the end of the post before I tell you that I changed the camera’s batteries when I got home and all was well.  Camera again in working order.  Whew.  I had never had dead batteries do that to me before – there is always some kind of warning, and the lens always retracts.  I’m wondering if the sea air has a wonky effect on rechargeable batteries. Or cameras.   Next time, I’m bringing backups.

Anyway, Ocean Grove.  We usually do our day-tripping at Point Pleasant Beach, but sometimes when we’re there, I really feel that the best parts are the ones related to the beach itself.  The rest of it can feel like expensive and unnecessary distractions.  Our last trip there, the boys didn’t even seem to be all that interested in the rides and games.  So, this time we opted for something much more low-key.

We’d been to Ocean Grove before, but only in the off-season (once in October of 2007, and once this past March) and I didn’t really know what it would be like in the height of summer.  I was pretty sure that – even crowded – it would be more low-key than Point Pleasant.

And it was.  Much less expensive, too.  The parking was free, and we got there late enough that the beach was free, too.  When we were finished beaching, we walked two blocks into town for supper at Nagles, the quirky and delicious place we went last time we were in town.  Back on the boardwalk later, we watched an orchestra rehearse for (get this) a Christmas concert.  Then we walked the boardwalk into Asbury Park, where we caught a bit of a free outdoor Peter Frampton concert at the Stone Pony, found some fun little shops to gaze into, and enjoyed some chocolate-covered-pretzels before hoofing it back to the car.

It was perfect.  Just the right speed for me.  The kids didn’t miss the rides at all.  We’re thinking picnic supper for next time.  And a back-up plan for the camera!!

By the way, on a totally different note, I forgot to mention the other day that Janet at The Craft Map asked me to be the Featured Blogger for August (thank you, Janet!)  You’re invited to read my interview here.