Count Your Blessings!

With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine Yim

Count Your Blessings!
Count The Garden By The Flowers, Never By The Leaves That Fall.
Count Your Life With Smiles And Not The Tears That Roll.
..... Author unknown.

Knowing me, Knowing you..... Aha.....!

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Friday, December 25, 2009

Roses, Recollections & Real Blogger Tips

Actually Roses, Recollections and Real Blogger Tips - the 3Rs !


1. With hardly a week left before we bid farewell to 2009, this is my last Blooming Friday post for this year. As you look at the roses here, select your favourite. Some are imperfect, some average and there are the gorgeous ones too, just like us, human beings living in this imperfect world.

I wish to thank each of my Followers, Commenters and Blotanists who has brought so much sunshine to my life, nurtured my first 0.5 years of blogging history and left me with so many memories to treasure for the years to come. By the way, you can see me in the shadows in some of the pictures below.
I have some messages for you and I hope it helps .....


2. To my Followers and Commenters, please check your avatar or icons. Some of you do not have a link where I can find you to visit your blog and communicate with you. Do update your profile so others besides me can find you too. This is important.


3. Remember to back up your blog and template. This is very important! Can you imagine all your efforts and your beloved garden/blog disappear into thin air without a trace? Would you want to start from scrath all over again? Can you recollect everything you have ever written ?

Backing up your blog enable you to rebuild your blog later. This includes all the comments too.
Backing up your template enable you to rebuild your blog design.

Diana of Voice In The Garden taught me this. For steps on how to backup your blog, visit our blotanist Jacqueline of Jacq's Blogger Tips. Her step-by-step instructions are easy to follow. You can learn how to sign with your own signature on every post and type the © copyright symbol.


4. Create another test blog to practice new formats, designs, widgets, HTML codes that you are unfamiliar with before making major changes to your blog. Believe me, it really helps. Sometimes, if you do many steps quickly or simultaneously, unexpected things happens. For example, Blogger may think that you are spamming and quarantine your blog for a week. Or you accidently press the delete key and important details are deleted.

Joanne of Joanne's Cottage Garden taught me this. She saved my blog life when I had my first close encounter being listed by Blogger as a spam blogger.

Scary huh? That's why we need guinea pigs for our experiments. Sometimes, Blotanists need to behave like scientists too.


5. Photographs are important in blogging. Afterall, a picture speaks a thousand words. Resize your photos to 640 x 480 pixels (36.4 kb) before posting to save storage space if you do not wish to pay more for the extra storage. Upload photos of big dimensions like 3968 x 2976 pixels (5.97MB) only when necessary. The difference is quite significant.



6. Download Picasa 3. I have learnt this from Tatyana, of My Secret Garden. It is free and you can use this program to create collages, slide shows, edit photos, insert water marks, file your photos and many other stuff that I am still experimenting. By the way, I haven't tried Photoshop yet, partly because I don't find a need for that at the moment.



7. If you are using Blogger, the new editor enable us to post X-Large photographs. But remember to add a few line spacing before you upload the next photo, otherwise you cannot insert any text later. Another way is to use the new editor to post photos, then revert to old editor for texting. Yet another way is to edit in Html mode which is a little bit tricky and you need to be more cautious.

Update from commens: Diana of Elephant's Eye has a brilliant idea when using Bloggers new editor. She key in the texts before inserting the pictures.


8. Finally, this porcelain white rose is for my blogger friend Ms Andrea from the Philippines of Andrea in This Lifetime. This post is dedicated to her, the first commenter of my previous post, "Wednesday Wishes - Merry Christmas 2009". This bright spirited lady's latest post is "Hedges Delights" and the flowers are blooming beautifully.

This is my entry for Blooming Friday, final week of 2009. The theme this week is "Christmas!" My grateful thanks to Katarina at Roses and Stuff for hosting Blooming Friday. To see what others have posted or to participate, click here.

Acknowlegement: The photos are taken at The Secret Garden of 1-Utama. My grateful thanks to Dr. Francis Ng.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

23 comments:

  1. Wonderful tips Autumn.
    It is so good to see roses. The oranges and peach are sp pretty. I can hardly wait until they bloom here again.

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  2. Lot's of great info! I need to back up my blog for sure!

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  3. Thanks for all these important tips, Autumn Belle. I think many of us need to back up our blog. Lovely roses....all the best for the New Year!

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  4. Thanks for those very useful tips! And for the beautiful display of roses! The last one is my favourite - love near white roses!
    Thanks for participating in Blooming Friday - hope to see you next year too!

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  5. Hey Autumn Belle, Its a thoughtful, informative post with a dash of colour being generously added with Blooming Roses. Its difficult too choose a Favorite from amidst them... coz they all are so beautiful.
    Happy Holidays !
    Will probably be back later to follow the instructions. They are helpful, Thx for sharing :)

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  6. Thanks for the eight pointers on blogging, great help for newbie like me.

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  7. This is the magic of the virtual world, it turns a botanist into a scientist.

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  8. This is what blogging is all about, Autumn. Sharing the wisdom of what Mr. Subjunctive calls "The Hive Mind" with one another. I've just come to know Picasa in the last week or so. I'm very tickled with it, but even more tickled with the loveliness of your rose photos.

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  9. Autumn Belle what great advice in this post of yours I will be taking note of some of this. I find photoshop quite hard and have to call one of the teenagers in the house to help me. I love picasa 3 - so easy to use. If you go to my blog you will see that all my snow collages are made using picasa 3...... Rosie:)

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  10. On Blogger, I do the text first then insert the photos where I want them. that is less daunting than fiddling with HTML.

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  11. Hey Autumn Belle! I'm having trouble getting all your photos to load..only 2 are showing..strange! Important messages you're sharing here..thank you! You know I learned the 'back-up' tip thru personal experience ;)
    Hope your year-end celebrations are as lovely as these beautiful roses.
    Lynn

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  12. It's lovely to see someone else who does Flowers on Friday posts. My roses here in Virginia are bedded down for the winter, but I have a stash of summer photos to help pass the time until spring returns. I look forward to spending more time here.

    Connie

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  13. Thanks for the generosity of your sharings and your beautiful photos of roses! I enjoyed finding your shadows too!

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  14. Dear Autumn Bell, wow!! thank you so much for all this blgging tips, I for sure will try them, specially backing up my blog.
    I loved the part you said "blotanists need to behave like scientists, too" how sweet Autumn Belle!!!!
    Wishing all your dreams come true for 2010, happy new year!!!!
    Maria Cecilia

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  15. Heisann!

    What a great list of gifts you give us!
    I will surely study every point as soon as I have time. Really impotant acctions!
    I link this side to my blog, hope it is ok!

    I wish you a nice, happy and peaceful new year !
    Welcome to visit me!

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  16. I love all your photos because roses are my most favorite flowers, ever!

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  17. lovely flowers,

    belated xmas greetings!!

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  18. To all my lovely blooming friends, thank you very much for visiting my blog and for your nice comments.

    First timers, Hartwood Roses, Vilt og vakkert, Jama, Ayie, Welcome to My Nice Garden. I look foward to see you here again.

    Lynn, I experience the same problem with other blogs until I updated to the latest version of Internet Explorer Version 8. Hopefully this helps.

    Diana, you have a brilliant idea here to load the text before inserting the photos. I will update my post accordingly. As for me, my writing inspiration (what words to use) only comes after inserting the photos. Before that, I have nothing to say!

    Vilt og vakkert, thank you for linking here. I hope it helps many other bloggers too.

    Lastly, Happy New Year 2010 to everyone and May God Bless You All!

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  19. Hi Autumn Belle, my favorite of all the beautiful roses in your post is the very first peach-colored one. Thanks for all your blogging tips. I have one anyone who gets a kick out of playing around with fonts might be interested in: if you go to www.fontcapture.com you can create a font out of your own handwriting. I did this to use as my photo signature. But now I have to sign off and download Picasa! Barbara

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  20. Hmm...all pics are beautiful, so rather difficult to choose a favourite! Maybe, the first peach rose does outshine the others for me ;-)
    Good blogging tips. Thanks for introducing me in your post, Autumn Belle...I appreciate that very much! Like you, I love sharing my knowledge!

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  21. Babara, Jacqueline, thank you very much for the nice comments.I too like the peach rose best, that's why I put it as my first picture. Thanks for sharing your blogging tips and experiences. Like you, I can't keep something good to myself and love to tell it to others. We are like minded bloggers!

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  22. Hi again Autumn Belle, that was a very caring post next to your post about your parents, care for us fellow bloggers. I remember my secret emails to you to ask how to do things here, and i already thought of something to ask you again secretly.

    Thank you very much for dedicating that lovely rose to me, and referring to me as "bright spirited". I appreciate that. Hopefully more people will visit and see my photos. I will still study how to make back-ups, as i am scared that all of these will be lost. Thanks for all the reminders. Even if i am late, it is better than never!

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  23. Andrea, I think that it is good luck for whoever is my first commenter, who wouldn't know when I will publish a new post but happen to be there at the right time. Therefore, I make it a point to dedicate my next post to him/her. May good luck be with you always!

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Words are like the voice of the heart... Confucius

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