Vacation, pictures, blog tips, and link ups!!

It is amazing what the beach can do for you.  Ah-maaa-zing.

I spent the last week on vacation in Maine right by the beach, and I can't tell you how relaxing it was.  It was so nice to have some down time before rushing back into school craziness again!

My husband and I went with my parents, my in-laws, and 4 Goldens--we had a blast! There were early morning beach walks, lots of clam chowder, and of course, card games (which the ladies won, just sayin'...).  

Here's some of my favorite pictures from the week:

Running to the beach.. they couldn't wait!

I love how they just dove into the water.. this picture says it all.  Might I add that the water temp was in the 60's? brrrr....

And here's my little lady.. learning from the big kids.

It's so hard to do the beach justice in pictures, but I try anyways.  This panorama doesn't even get close to how gorgeous the beach is on beautiful sunny days.

So my vacation was excellent, but I came home and realized that I am so behind in reading all of the blogs I subscribe to! I need to get back on track and connect again - I missed it!!  

Last week I did a link up about new tips for bloggers.  I am still learning so much, and I want to share something new for this week. I'm going to try the link up again and try to connect and learn something from other "more experienced" bloggers.

I want to give a big shout out to Shabbyblogs.com.  I am not at the point yet where I want to commit to paying someone for designing a blog for me.  I feel that's a big step and I'm not even sure what I want in a design.  I was googling blog designs and found Shabbyblogs.  They are a free (!!!) blog designer with many unique designs that you can put on your blog.  This is their homepage, which is super cute.  

 

If you click on designs, you'll come to this page:

My advice is to spend some time poking around and seeing all the designs.  I spent a loooong time browsing, picking one, changing my mind, and picking a new one.  (This process repeated for quite a while....)  I settled on this background:

So now, you ask, now what? WELL, the best part about Shabby Blogs is that they have it all layed out for you!  You click on get the code and it's all done!  These instructions pop up:

And there you go! A new beautiful FREE blog background! I had to play with my blogger settings and change the header to match my new background, but that just takes patience.  I went into my blogger settings and played with a background image that I was satisfied with, which happened to be polka dots (they match, right?!).  

I didn't know this was an option, but it's good to get into the "guts" of the blog and see how everything is designed and you can customize a lot of options.  My advice is to constantly save, save, save, because the worst thing that could happen is that you might change the blog into something you didn't intend and have a hard time getting the original back.  Let's not go there.. you'll be great!  

I also changed and designed my header, which I took from Shabby Blogs and edited in Power Point.  

Check out their site, and grab some cute buttons and designs for your blog! I hope this was helpful.  

If you'd like to link up and post another "newbie blogger tip" please do!!  The more the merrier!!

Enjoy the last precious weeks before school!!