A Daily Life

I enjoy using prompts for finding ideas to write in my blogs and journals, as well for my daily devotions and even conversation starters. One of the prompts I’ve been enjoying each month has been the joy dares from Ann Voskamp, author of the book “One Thousand Gifts”.  I’ve shared in different posts how I’ve [...]

The A to Z Challenge for 2012 starts today.  The goal is to blog a different letter of the alphabet (sequentially) in the month of April.  You can use a unifying theme or not.  You chose the word.  It’s that simple. Over 1600 people have signed up to participate!  It’s a great way to make new [...]

Ollin Morales, at Courage 2 Create, had a great post titled, “11 Ways To Get Over Feeling Guilty About Following Your Passion“.  I found it to contain valuable advice and when I contacted Olin, he granted me permission to publish it in its entirety. Ollin posts about creativity, writing technique and inspirational topics.  If you haven’t [...]

I believe that prompts have their place for the diarist and blogger.  One of the prompts I’ve particularly enjoyed this year has been the Joy Dares by Ann Voskamp, author of the book “One Thousand Gifts”. The purpose of the Joy Dares is to find three gifts a day from God in everyday, ordinary life.  The [...]

Looking for a challenge to celebrate women’s achievements?  Paige at The Authentic Me has a challenge going, inviting her readers to “remember the contributions of notable and ordinary women“.  I’ve already posted links to stories about my grandmothers & great-grandmother, whose ordinary lives shaped the generations after them. Here’s what Paige is inviting you to [...]

In hindsight, I’ve done challenges prior to last year’s daily blogging and photography.  I did a daily challenge when I was seriously into my needlepoint.  I improved my skill, learned new techniques, and made new friends just like with my blogging. I also did a daily challenge putting together a family history book, coordinating and organizing [...]

Today’s guest post is by Val Erde, an extraordinary artist who lives in Wales and shares her work at Art By Val Erde.  Val is an experienced blogger and recently went through my posts at A Daily Life and left a number of comments, clarifying or showing better ways of doing things (thanks Val!). Val [...]

I’ve been experimenting with a piece of software for writers called “Scrivener“.  It’s got a number of advantages over Microsoft Word for writing a book and I think it will make my process less frustrating.  At the bottom I also have a brief discussion about backing up your hard drive. There are several things I [...]

Ollin Morales, over at Courage 2 Create, has a great blog for writer’s and creative people.  He recently had a post in which he explained why he doesn’t think writer’s should use prompts.  It’s worth checking out.  To sum up, his reasons are: It only works because it’s acting as a mirror to what is [...]

When I changed my E-mail account, WordPress began sending me duplicate E-mails of my subscriptions as well as duplicates of some comments.  This did not help my desire to simplify my life by getting all my blog activity into an E-mail account separate from my regular E-mails (you can throw in a few expletives at [...]

From time to time I cannot get my lines to double space correctly in WordPress.  It sometimes happens around quotes or around the photographs.  When I did the post on embedding YouTube links, everything got really scrunched together. WordPress does not like blank lines.  If you try spacing down to create blanks, it will remove [...]

Today’s guest post is from Judith at the blog, Diabetic Redemption.  When I left a note at how impressed I was with the questions, she laughed and said “. . .unpaid student loans owed to a seminary that no longer exists at least taught me what questions to ask!” At the bottom, she does qualify [...]

Today’s guest post is by Chris Donner at Chris Donner, Mystery Writer.   One of the really great things about Chris’s blog is that along the left side she has chapters to her mystery book that is in progress. A few weeks ago, Chris did a review of “A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion [...]

Embedding a YouTube video into your blog isn’t difficult to do, but I find the instructions from the WordPress support forum to be difficult to follow.  It’s really not that hard.  There are two ways to do it: Using the “upload / insert”, choose “from URL”.  Then choose “Audio, Video, or Other File” and copy [...]

One of the perpetual struggles for bloggers, writers, parents, spouses, and everyone else is finding enough time.  Amy Lynn Andrews, from Blogging With Amy, has solid ideas and techniques in her book, Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free.  The book only has 30 pages, making it a fast [...]

One of the frustrating things about blogging, doing a daily challenge, or any other kind of a hobby is finding the time to do it.  For me, an additional problem is not be miserably tired so I can actually enjoy the process of doing something creative. The author, Iris Murdoch, once said: But for most of [...]

Today’s guest blogger is Cee Neuner, who posts over at Cee’s Life Photography Blog.  Cee coordinates a fun projected called, “Share Your World“, as a way for bloggers to get to know each other better.  I’ll let Cee describe it herself: About Share Your World I discovered Jesse Jaca’s blog and saw they had a Getting to [...]

Today’s guest post is reposted from JudithB at I choose how I will spend the rest of my life.  Although this isn’t the type of information I usually seek for this blog, I found her review of this book to be fascinating about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Since words are near and dear to the [...]

Comment moderation is a way to prevent spam in your comments, as well as stop trolls who want to leave off-topic inflammatory comments. Pingbacks are a way of tracking when someone has linked to one of your posts, reblogged it, or when you have created a link to one of your own posts.  It’s also a way [...]

Peggy Hostetler, author of the blog The Simple Woman, has a powerful set of questions to help diarists and bloggers record their life at the present moment in time.  You consider things such as what you are doing, thinking and wearing.  It asks about your plans for the rest of the week and invites you to [...]