For today’s assignment, we were encouraged to post a comment on at least four blogs we’ve never commented on before. I’m going to cut corners, however, and focus on just three. Discovering new blogs and bloggers is something I look forward to: finding amazing new writing and incredible photography is something I greatly enjoy and has the potential of introducing one to wonderful new friends. Our Readers open many new doors!

On The Wild Pomegranate, Grace wrote of her struggles as a single mother and her desire to live the lifestyle of her more affluent friends and provide the same kind of things and activities for her children that other ‘stay-at-home’ mothers, in my opinion, sometimes take for granted. Much of what she wrote resonated with me because I was a single mom, struggling to make ends meet, until my son started college. I yearned to live as many of my friends did: the clothes, the shoes, going out and having fun. But doing these things created more problems than they were worth. I was in debt much of the time and worried constantly how I was going to make it all work out. Her post reminded me of that time of my life and I very much understood the angst that propelled her writing.

I was all smiles reading a post on Midwestern Kitchen. Julie works in a nursing home and while taking down the Christmas decorations, she decided to leave one of the trees in place and covered it in red lights and ribbon. As the residents came in for breakfast that morning, she dimmed the lights and played romantic music in the background. She promised the residents more to come as Valentines Day approaches. What a thoughtful, lovely gesture!

Some really great food photography tips can be found on a blog that streamed across my Reader feed called The Pinay Va. Food isn’t something I normally think to photograph (other than to capture meals on some of our vacations!) but the ideas and tips are sure to stoke my creative ‘juices’. I tried making ciabatta bread a few years ago (it turned out great!) and I took photos of the process from start to finish. The pictures weren’t too bad but I’m anxious to give it another try, armed with April’s fantastic recommendations.

Assignment: Blogging 101: Be a Good Neighbor

Today’s assignment actually answered one of the customization questions I’ve been puzzling over as of late.

Background: I purchased the Promenade theme several months ago and was happy with the look. The top of my home page displayed a banner with a selected photo squarely in the middle. Two weeks ago, my blog started to display with the photo blown up to huge proportions. No more banner — it was all photo. So much photo, in fact, that you had to scroll down to get to the content of my home page: the posts, sidebar menu items, etc.

One of my blogging buddies suggested I navigate to the Appearance / Header menu item in my Dashboard but no such animal existed. Turns out, as I learned via the information in this assignment, only certain themes support making modifications to the header. Apparently, Promenade is not one of those themes.

I did post a question to the WordPress forum regarding the change in size of my header photo and was told that the developers had recently made a change to the theme. Aha! I knew something must have happened since I had made no customization changes whatsoever. Now, however, I’m told to just use a thumbnail size of the photo I wish to use.

Can someone explain how I go about doing this? I know how to insert a thumbnail (or other) size photo into a post since the interface clearly gives you the option to do so. But to take an existing photo and change to thumbnail or any other size? Not a clue. Fellow Bloggers: Can someone help me out here? Disclaimer: I did insert a smaller-dimensioned photo into my header, for the time being, that was already in my Media library but it isn’t the one I want to use and besides, knowing how to convert to larger (or smaller) sized photos might be useful later on.

Oh!  And I also added an Image widget toward the bottom of the home page.  All kinds of fun stuff going on here!

Keep on bloggin’ everyone!

Assignment: Blogging 101: Keep Personalizing