I finished up another custom WordPress design today, this one for Kailani over at An Island Life. I have a little tweaking to do but overall it’s complete and so cute I just couldn’t wait to send you over to have a peek.

She basically requested a facelift on the design she had previously - separating posts, getting cute and creative in the comments, organizing and displaying her menu better. I threw my artistic touch into some custom graphics as well as a few stock images, updated her existing header, and the end result is a really fun summery beach theme. It was such a creatively inspired project, I had a lot of fun with it! Head over and toss her a beach ball!

Update: After I unbreak the search form. D’oh.

I just finished up this design for Nancy, this is her photoblog, 525600 Minutes. I did a whole bunch of stuff on this project, starting with getting her upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Then I did a quick and easy installation of Johannes amazing wordpress photoblog plugin, YAPB, and created a custom design for it. Similar to my own photoblog, it’s got the date archives and navigation making it really easy to browse either by date or category.

I added some custom templates and other fun plugins to make things really much more functional - these are really nice ones, if you’re looking to do something similar I highly recommend them:

• Custom posts per page
• Exec php
• Headline images (I gave her a special font from my own collection.)
• Imp Links for that really cool links page formatting.
• Live calendar
• Preview Frame (a must have for WordPress 2.2)
• WP-slimstat, like shortstat, only cleaner and takes up less room in your database.

A few custom graphics, and one purchased from iStock, and she’s ready to start photoblogging!

I YAPB.

They are too cool to go bad, in my own humble bloggy opinion. I had a formatting problem with the More Smilies plugin that just went totally south when I upgraded to a newer version of the plugin code. It hates the new version of WordPress (2.2) and will. not. play. nice.

The support in the forum - well, they tried. I know people like this plugin. This post is for you, in all honesty. If you have the more smilies plugin, it will not work in 2.2, and so far, no one is supporting it (not even the plugin author).

So, it’s gone. Disabled. That was scary, but I’m okay now. Why? Because I found this other smiley plugin, Custom Smileys. It LOVES WordPress 2.2! Yay! So I took my custom smiley set that I made for the more-smilies plugin and I threw them into the directory with the other custom smileys included with the Custom Smiley plugin, and I spent some time renaming them in the admin panel (yes, you can do it in the admin panel - no more package config file!), and then… you know what I did?

I added a few new smileys. (Look! Here’s a whole bunch! And here’s s’more!)

I’m not one of those anti-smiley bloggers. I pink puffy heart smileys. I’m creatively expressive that way, though.

So those of you looking for the fix for the more-smilies plugin for wordpress 2.2 because it broke your comment formatting, here’s your fix. Dump the More-Smilies plugin and replace it with Custom Smileys. You’ll be happy, and your headache will go away.

This happy smiley post brought to you by my new fantabulous smiley additions:

:woof: :eyebrows: :growit: :bird:

Our hummingbirds are back! This is a female ruby throated hummingbird. They’ve been around for over a week, but they’re still really skittish around me and my camera. This is the best shot I’ve been able to get so far with my upgraded camera - by the end of the summer I should have at least a dozen great shots of them, I’m a persistent little chickey momma.

Do you have peonies in your yard, or have someone living nearby who does? Are they slumped over to the ground? Go. Go grab your clippers, find a vase or a pitcher and cut them. (If they’re your neighbors, ask first, and give them a vase full, too!)

These are the most beautiful spring flowers, and they make such glorious bouquets. I stop by my peony bouquets several times a day and just breathe them in, their scent is so sweet and soothing. The girls do it, too.

There’s your Sunday Challenge. Go find a peony bush and cut yourself a bouquet before they’re done for the season. Don’t leave them on the plant to droop and wither unsmelled and underappreciated. If you find them at a neighbors house, ask them if they mind. Peonies are definitely meant to be cut, meant to be enjoyed. Their foliage is wonderful and full and lasts all season without their flowers, too.

Next years batch ought to yield well over 5 vases full of whites and pinks. I’ll be the neighborhood peony bandit, leaving bouquets on the doorsteps of (almost) all the neighbors. (almost. heh.)

Happy Sunday!

Bob Barker may as well have shown up on my doorstep the day before yesterday and exclaimed my prize, because this is the coolest toy I have ever played with!

It all started when my hubby was going over his Priority Club points. He has a ton, because he travels a lot and always uses the same hotel chain. He started browsing the cool catalog of goodies you could cash your points in on, and my eyes lit up when I saw this Dyson DC07 for mmmfty hundred thousand points.

See, he didn’t know that late at night, during several of my virtual shoppingcartaholic frenzies, I have added that exact model to my cart only to end my session before sealing the deal. I mean, I wanted it and all, but I have a perfectly wonderful Kirby that has served me well and I’m a little afraid of it, too, because it’s 100 pound engine has smashed my toes on plenty of occasions. Not to mention the mmmfty thousand dollars I spent on it years ago. I couldn’t justify it in my head. I’m justifiable, I am. And sometimes even certifiable, but let’s not go there right now.

I digress.

I pointed and giggled and gasped and then pleaded that he cash in our summer vacation worth of points on this yellow dirt sucker upper, and so he did. And so it was. And here it is, and I pink puffy heart it, and I am also a little embarassed because this photo means one of two things. Or both. You be the judge.

1. I suck as a housewife and/or
2. my Kirby has lost it’s ooompf.

Those are pretty sad options. Let me add one more. Yes. I must.

3. Dyson’s rock.

I called my good friend over to see it and be my witness to it’s awesomeness. I was still assembling the thing when she got here, and it took me a few minutes to figure out the Euro way of building something. Here’s a tip: Read the dang instructions. Don’t think that you can figure it out all by yourself because it’s just a vacuum cleaner - because it’s not. Heh.

Then the fun began.

I vacuumed the living room and woah. That picture? Is the dirt out of my carpet after cleaning approximately 80 square feet. Seriously. And ouch. That hurts. Quit glaring at me with those “don’t you EVER vacuum?!” eyes. I just buy really cool floors that you can’t see dirt on, so it tends to slip my mind until goo sticks to my feet. I might just consider vacuuming more often now, though.

So I flip the little bare floor nobbie and head into the kitchen and dining room. I flip the nobbie back to carpet and get the rug under the dining room table. All is going perfectly well and I am impressed as all get out with this thing. Until.

Yes there is an until.

I’m standing there looking at the thing, trying to figure out (all by myself) how to detach the thing to empty the container. I pull this doohickey and push another, and the front comes off. Great! Cool! Now where’s the thing to take the clear container off to empty it?! Well, just as I said that to my good friend, the bottom opened up - and all of the yucky junk I just picked up? It landed on my feet. I kid you not. That’s when I told her “great! I’m doing an infomercial now! Watch as the incredibly awesome Dyson picks up the dirt not just once, but twice! Woohoo!”

It’s my own dang fault. I should have read the instructions.

BEFORE:

ALMOST AFTER:

I call the second one an almost after because there’s still some work to be done. But wow, you know? It didn’t take much more than a lot of labor, a little lumber and a few cans of spray paint to do what we’ve done so far. The grass has filled in where the old flowers were on the left - the new raised planting bed is filling in with asiatic lilies, silver mound, iris, gerbera daisies, hydrangea, giant sunflowers (they’re about 6 inches tall in the left corner by the evergreen), nastrium (however you spell it), wave petunias, mexican sunflowers, bachelor buttons, stargazers, english daisies and a few other small annuals. I’ll get a better shot of that when the seedlings are further along and flowering.

The center blue bed is empty now aside from a few weeds, that one will go away and be replaced by a near ground level deck in the same green treated lumber, a small patio table or bench with a couple of hummingbird attracting potted plant arrangements.

The wave petunias and gerbera daisies in the planter box we built are really taking off. you can see the difference from then til now:

It’s doing just what I thought it would. I love it when that happens!

As for me and my brood, summer vacation has begun. I heard “I’m bored” and “I’m hungry” too many times the first 6 hours yesterday, so if my posts start to sound mumbly or incoherent, I’m sure those of you with children home on summer vacation will understand the multi-tasking brain power involved in working from home and mothering at the same time. I will try not to let them break me down. heh!

I’m not sure how it happened, but for those of you waiting to upgrade to WordPress 2.2 - you might want to wait a bit longer. The post preview that you know and love and have come to rely on to proof your posts prior to publishing has been changed. The post preview option isn’t even available until after you “save and continue editing” (even with the auto save feature), and then you notice a hyperlink to preview that opens up in a new window.

This, in my own humble opinion, was a big mistake.

These are the changes that were made in the core WordPress files. I am going to attempt to modify the code to see if I can’t get the iframe preview pane back - and I’ll let you know how that goes.

The crazy thing is, in the 2.2 list of changes this wasn’t even a suggestion. I can’t find any mention of it at all. In fact, what was mentioned was a request (here) to put the jump link to the preview pane back on the write post page. (Remember that?) If you’ll scroll down through the replies to that ticket (which reads “fixed”), you’ll see that it went completely south, the initial ticket wasn’t fixed - the whole function was changed to something entirely different than the original ticket requested.

I’ve opened up a topic on the Wordpress-Extend-Ideas forum to put the preview back inline and allow users the option to turn it on or off. You can view the thread here, and if you’re so inclined, please leave a comment on the topic to let the head guru’s know whether or not this feature is important to you. If you’re a member of the wordpress support forum, your login info works here. If you’re not, consider registering - it’s a beneficial give and take community of WordPress users.

UPDATE: Download the preview frame plugin written by Rob @ Roblog