A Requirement-free Giveaway: Make Your Favorite Picture a Poster

Abraham here.

If you’ve ever wanted to turn one of your favorite snapshots into art for your wall, you may be interested in the giveaway we’re doing this week for readers of this blog and 22 Words.

On Saturday, Molly and I will do a drawing for one free product up to $100 from Online Poster Printing. (And the shipping will be free, too, if you’re in the US or Canada.)

How to Enter the Drawing

All you need to do to be entered to win is contact us and tell us you want to participate. You can simply say “I wanna win” or “Pick me” or something like that.

How to Enter the Drawing Multiple Times

If you want to increase your chances, here are 5 ways to be entered in the drawing extra times:

1. Subscribe to this blog. (RSS or Email)
2. Subscribe to 22 Words. (RSS or Email)
3. Let people know about the giveaway on Twitter…
4. …or Facebook…
5. …or your own blog.

When you contact us to enter, include that you’ve done any of these 5 things, and we’ll put your name in the hat an extra time for each.

Thanks a lot for reading!

Subscribers, win my favorite read of 2008!

I have three copies of Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River that I want to give away to three of you!

Here’s how to win

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. (If you don’t know what RSS is, my husband can show you. It’s really easy.)
2. Contact me to let me know you’re a subscriber.
3. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday, January 14th.

Bonus Entries!

If you refer a person to this blog and they subscribe, let me know. I’ll enter your name again each time you do it! (I’ll just be trusting you, so play fair. )

Thanks-GIVE-ing: A giveaway for subscribers

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to do my very first giveaway! I know you’re not really supposed to give gifts for Thanksgiving—it’s more of a Christmas thing—but I want to take the opportunity to thank my readers!

I’m offering one of these lovely nursing covers, made by my friend Jenna from All the Way Home.

I know this won’t be relevant to all of you, but certainly you know someone who is pregnant or nursing, so anyone can win! I’m certainly using mine a lot right now.

Why I love this nursing cover

• The boning in the top gives you a line of sight to the baby under there.
• The D-ring clasp lets you adjust it to just the right length so you don’t have to tie it every time.
• The baby can’t pull or kick it off!
• It’s reversible!

Incidentally, this one I’m giving away is the exact same fabric that I have, so I’m dubbing it the “Molly” line.

Here’s how to win

1. Subscribe by email or RSS. (If you don’t know what RSS is, my husband can show you. It’s really easy.)
2. Contact me to let me know you’re a subscriber.
3. I’ll draw a winner on BLACK FRIDAY… MWAA-ha-ha-ha!

Bonus Entries!

If you refer a person to this blog and they subscribe, let me know. I’ll enter your name again each time you do it! (I’ll just be trusting you, so play fair. )

What Is RSS? A Step-by-Step Guide to Google Reader

(Abraham here. Thanks to Molly for letting me invade her blog. I hope this article will be helpful enough to earn me my keep.)

If you read even one blog regularly, RSS is for you. It will save you time, I promise.

Some of you may be wondering, “Doesn’t everyone use RSS?” The answer is no; less than 6% of internet users take advantage of this extraordinarily helpful technology.

I’ve read lots of posts on what RSS is and how to use it, but they’re limited in their helpfulness. There are just too many options out there to fully explain any one of them in a post that tackles RSS as a whole. So I am going to use the majority of this article to help non-RSS-users get started on Google Reader.

If you follow these instructions, you will be subscribed to your favorite sites and already saving time by the end of this article.

What Is RSS and Why Is It Worthwhile?

The acronym RSS stands for a couple things. The most helpful as far as a clear explanation of what it’s for is “Real Simple Syndication.”

RSS is a technology that allows you to subscribe to any website that has one of these in the address bar. You can then track every site you’re subscribed to without having to go to each individual site.

If you’re like me there are a couple websites that you love to read. Without RSS, I would be looking at these sites regularly to see if there were new material. Depending on how often I checked, I wouldn’t see anything new most times I visited.

With RSS, I never again have to go to a site that has no new material. I subscribe to the sites I enjoy and am updated every time they post.

This is especially helpful for keeping track of those bloggers who we want to read but who only post every 3 months.

Why I’m Focusing on Google Reader

If you’re not a current RSS-user and would like to be, my hope is that by the end of this article you’d have everything you need to begin. In order to do that, I need to pick one feedreader to show you how to use. (“Feedreaders” are the programs that people use to collect and manage their RSS subscriptions.)

I’ve chosen to use Google Reader for 3 reasons:

• It’s free and available to everyone no matter what computer or browser you use.
• It is by far the most popular feedreader that’s out there right now. On both the blogs I write for, Google subscribers are between 35-40% of the readership. The next most popular feedreader only claims about 5% of readers.
• It’s really easy to use, so let’s get started.

Setting Up Google Reader

1. Create a Google account.
2. Go to Google Reader and make sure you’re signed in.

Adding a Subscription in Google Reader

1. Select “Add Subscription” from the left column.
2. Type in the address of a blog you want to subscribe to and click “Add.”

Adding a Subscription from Elsewhere Online

1. When you are visiting a site that you want to subscribe to, click on the orange icon in the address bar or on a link provide on the site.

You will either see a page like this:

Or like this:

2. On either page, select Google as the reader you want to subscribe with.
3. On the first page, you will need to click “Subscribe Now.”
4. On either page, choose “Add to Google Reader.”

Reading and Managing your Subscriptions

Reading Options

You now have a few of your favorite blogs listed in the left column of your Google reader page. The best way to go through your feeds is up to you. Here are some options.

• Home, at the top of the left column, is where you can see new, unread posts listed with just a few lines of content.
• All Items, just below “Home,” is where you can see new, unread posts listed with all their content.
• Selecting an individual feed from the list in the left column allows you to see new posts as well as scroll down through older ones.

Scanning Options

In the upper right corner you will see tabs for “Expanded view” and “List view.” These allow you to decide whether you see all content as you scroll through your feeds or just titles and the first few words.

Marking as Read

You will mark a post as read when you click on it. Scrolling through posts will also mark them as read, although you can turn this feature off in settings if you want to. Finally, if you want to mark all your new posts as read at once, you can do so at the top of the “All Items” page.

Unsubscribing

When you change your mind about being subscribed to a blog, you can unsubscribe by going to the settings in the upper right corner.

You’re All Set!

As you poke around in Google Reader, I’m sure you’ll find more nifty ways to improve your RSSing. But for now, you should have what you need to go on a wild subscription binge.

You will, of course, want to subscribe to Molly’s blog and and to the blog of whoever referred you here. And then maybe even to mine.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. Happy blog reading!

About

A smattering of family goings-on, life experiences, and opinions.

If you want to come along, be sure to subscribe by RSS or Email. Thanks!

I am a Christian. I had grown up in church on and off for most of my life, but in December of 1995, I experienced a powerful encounter with Jesus Christ when listening to a pastor read from the Bible at a punk rock concert. I knew from that moment that Jesus really died for all the horrible things I’d done, though he didn’t deserve it, and that I couldn’t live the same way with that knowledge. God changed my heart and life that night.

I am a wife to Abraham since September of 2003. We met a year before that, began dating in March of 2003, got engaged in May of 2003, and got married in September. It was a delightful whirlwind to get caught up in.

I am a mother of three children–Orison with us, who is four years old; Felicity with the Lord, who was stillborn on September 22, 2007; and Morrow, born in August of 2008. I stay at home most of the time with the kids, enjoying all the moments of mommyhood that are precious (and even the one that are not so precious). I love being a mom.

I am a speech language pathologist. I work on-call at a children’s hospital. Right now it means I work whenever they need me. It’s very flexible, thus why I like it.

I am a knitter. I love it, love it, love it. I’m not awesome or anything, it’s just something I really enjoy.

I live in Minnesota. That is a sentence I thought I would have said a few years ago and now would be finishing with something else, but here we are. We live in Minneapolis, very close to downtown. I have fantastic friends here, Abraham’s faithful family, and a great church. This is a good place.