A merry christmas 2010

I wish all my readers and visitors a very happy christmas.

Have a lovely time together.

Secret Santa

Sorry for not posting.
We've been very busy organising a Secret Santa event.

Because we have to deal with two timetables: Europe and America, we had to start early.

In The Netherlands the gifts are delivered in the night of december 5 to 6.

When you want to send us something, let us know in the comments. We always forget ourselves. LOL!

Topdroppers may 2010

Thanks a lot for dropping on our site, commenting and giving us feedback.
Special thanks to our topdroppers:

My gypsygoods
Winesworld The Amateurs Wine Guide
The Third Uncle
Winesworld's blog
Crimsonsparkle.net
Guitarbench.com
Laane on the World
Teen Suicide Talk
Computer Aid
Grampy's World

Thanks a lot!!

generating traffic to your blog

There are many ways to get traffic to your blog.
What worked best for me was and is Adgitize.

You can earn points each day by writing a post and by clicking on sites.
The maximum is 100 sites a day, but when you pay you only have to drop 50.

I was very hesitant to pay $14 for a month, but friends told me I would earn it back and they were right.
Until now I've earned it back every month.
In fact I even earned a bit more. Some months just 65 cents, other monhts a few dollars.

But I got lots of visits to my site.

Try it for yourself.

Join by using the graphic in the sidebar under "join here", or by clicking this one.




See you there!

March topdroppers

Thank you very much topdroppers.

Ofcourse other visitors, commentors and droppers are appreciated too.

These are our march topdroppers.

My gypsygoods
Funky Town Disco Music
Winesworld The Amateurs Wine Guide
The Way I See It
The Third Uncle
Guitarbench.com
Ruth's Creations
Blogotemplates
I Love-Hate America
The Sewing Mom

check your site's ads

Many sites display advertisements.
When you accept one, it has a certain look and a certain script.
You put the script on your site and conveniently forget it.

Don't!!!

Some images are changed after a while. And not all the changes were for the better.

I've even seen that visitors of sites were confronted with pop-ups and pop-unders the owner did know nothing about.

So make it a habit to visit your own site regularly.

one of our commenters wrote to us... Here's our reply.

Writing a blog in another language isn't easy.
It's a challenge, but to be able to communicate with people across the borders makes it very worthwhile.

Especially on the subject of autism it's important to work together with all parents and professionals all over the world, and I'm very proud to say that we manage to find each other, help each other and improve care.

Because the English language is a vehicle, and each person uses a personal vehicle, there are differences in fluency and writing skills.
Some native languages are far apart from the english language, both in grammar and in phonetics.
Some went to school almost 50 years ago, when English was not the same language as it is now.
But we don't care.
Like cars can get a flat tyre, a broken window, etc, we all write typos, constructions that reveal the grammar of the native language and we even translate words too literally or just plainly wrong.

As long as we're able to communicate and help each other to make life a little bit easier it's well worth the effort.

Until a few days ago I've met only respect for the fact that we all try to communicate with each other, and we've enjoyed writing this blog.

"We", as we are a group of women and 1 man from different countries and different languages.

And "until a few days ago", because at that date we found a comment.
This comment:

You need to proofread your posts. I don't know what you have against punctuation but you should at least check for typos.

Because it was Ava's shift she went to the site of the commenter and found a post about a 1,000 comments challenge, and she gave this reply.

Thank you for your com­ment at my site.
It’s fine you’re so good at punc­tu­a­tion. It’s always a happy event to deal with per­fect people.

I hope you can write my lan­guage 1% as good as I wrote your lan­guage.
Eng­lish is not my first language.

Well, that’s one com­ment more towards your 1000 com­ments.
What a nice way to reach that amount.

Thank you.

Today I found this comment:

At our site:

Dear Ava,

I’m Cana­dian. I spent years in school learn­ing French, writ­ing and speak­ing it. I also lived in a Span­ish speak­ing coun­try for sev­eral months and picked up some of that lan­guage too. I don’t know what lan­guage you speak. How­ever, I have yet to see a lan­guage where using cap­i­tal let­ters in titles and proof­read­ing for your own typos was as dra­matic as you make it out to be. Don’t use a sec­ond lan­guage as an excuse for sloppy writ­ing. The typos I caught were words you had spelled right in other places. You may post to my blog again, if you can learn to have some respect for peo­ple who have taken some time to give con­struc­tive feed­back to you. If you can’t han­dle that I will not post any future com­ments from you.

And at her site she replied to Ava's reply:

Using cap­i­tal let­ters to start a title isn’t hard in any lan­guage. I think it’s pretty stan­dard around the world. Glad I could give you the chance to rant at some­one. Thanks for the spew.

In case you want to read it yourself: this is the site.

The whole issue raised my eyebrows quite a lot.
We all have the freedom to do at our blogs what we want to do and to write the way we want.
Neelie Kroes hasn't called for a mission against typos on the www, and Blogger hasn't issued a rule against the lack of capital letters in the title of blogposts.
So I don't feel the need to comment on the individual writers at this blog at all.

In fact I want to compliment them on finding a tip/an advice every day so young autistic people have the oppertunity to improve their way of living on all sorts of subjects.

I do understand AVA's comment and I completely agree.

The way the comment was put on our blog was unkind.
And I also had the feeling that the intention was to lure people to her site so she would get her 1000 comments. I don't think that's the way Harriet intended the march comment challenge to be. But hej, who am I?

Ava's comment in no way deserved the reply it got.
She didn't rant at that Laura. To me it looks more that that Laura had a bad day and took it out on Ava.

I myself speak 8 languages more or less: Dutch, German, French, Swedish, Swahili, English, South-African and a bit of Japanese, and I'm sure I've made lots of mistakes, but all I've encountered was respect for the fact that I crossed the bridge and took the effort to communicate in the language of the other person.
Oh yes, I've been offered kindly some help when I asked for corrections.
But I've never ever had someone look down on me or others the way this person does.

I wondered why a person wants to push her own vision on such a rude way upon others.
It feels like bullying on the web.
We're not writing a Harlequin Romance here for women who've already played the housekeeper's role and had to find a new life as divorcee, and we sure are not writing for someone who mistakes rude comments for constructive comments.
There's a huge difference between those.

The way you dealt with this issue gives the impression you consider yourself better than others.
I guess you need that.
No problem with that. We're used to people struggling with their identity, and we respect the lack of self reflection some people have. It's a shame they have to learn about life the hard way.

It's a pity we've seen the worst side of you, and not the one you advert: One polite Canadian bent on World Domination, in a nice way.

So let us make our own mistakes as long as we don't hurt people.
Because, in fact, we're the real nice ones, who take our time to work for a good cause each day.

Thank you for your attention for this blog.


Laane

Topdroppers of february

Don't you feel welcomed when there's someone at the door, reaching out a hand?

Well, I love sites where the entrecard widget is on top. It feels like I'm welcome. Especially when I visit every day.

Well, not all of the droppers on my list are that welcoming, but some sure pay a visit to the site here.

I want to thank you all.

Here are the topdroppers:

The Sewing Mom
Crimsonsparkle.net
The Ad Master
My gypsygoods
Ruth's Creations
Funky Town Disco Music
Random Ramblings
The Way I See It
Melissas Homeschool
Laane on the World

.

A warning about your site

Do you run a spott advertisement?

Have a close watch on the images that are displayed.

There's a fin line between erotic and porn and I consider some of the images to be on the wrong side of the line.

I know some bloggers don't know what's displayed, so I'll wait with removing those sites from the droplist.

Until this weekend. OK?

laundry refreshener

Some detergents wash well, but they leave a strange smell in the laundry.

Ofcourse you can use expensive laundry softener, but you can also use in the last water: lemon, vinegar, or a small drop of mouth refreshener.


Thank you all who send us their comments, greetings and mails.
We've decided that we don't want to invest our energy in proving what should speak for itself.
In case you need to get rid of anger or energy, there's a ball shootinggame at the bottom of the site. LOL!

Thank you new subscribers!!

Right now I'm dropping partly from a list and partly from the inbox.
I want to have a droppinglist, so let me know when you want to be on it.

terrible accusation

Those on entrecard have read about the accusations of one of the member.
He thought it fit to pull people through the mud based on behaviour which is a TOS violation.

I would have appreciated it when the person would have informed me of his intention to degrade me to pavement level.

Because I'm not online all the time, I just found out. And I'm disgusted by his behaviour.

To my surprise entrecard has already looked into the matter and it's made clear that not cleaning your temporal files enabled you to drop on non-refreshed sites. This means om sites that used to have a widget but don't have a widget anymore.

Thank you entrecard for solving this matter surprisingly fast.

I heard that the sites of friends of my autism team were removed from his site today.
They commented on his accusations.
Well, I won't.
I don't have to answer to him.
And I don't like the fact that he stirred other blogging communities too and he always is able to get people to his site. I bet he's well compensated for the statistic downfall he says he experiences, but which I doubt he had.

He created a new blogpost with the comments.

Well, I don't want to be used.

Thank you entrecard visitors for staying as visitors of my blog.
And when you leave, please let me know so I can remove you from my droppinglist.

topdroppers

Thank you for stopping, dropping and talking.

Topdroppers of january are:


Marriage and Beyond
The Way I See It
Ruth's Creations
Laane Loves
Winesworld's blog
Just One Touch
Orica's Gentle Tones
Greetje greets You
Laane on the World
Crimsonsparkle.net

Thank you all very much!

I've won a give-away!

courtesy of Audrey

It was last month when I had the unexpected joy of winning one of the prizes in a huge give-away at Audrey's Country Crafts.

Soon after it was on it's way, but as always either the mail amazes you and a package even from Canada or USA arrives in a few days, or it takes a couple of weeks, or it takes 3 to 4 months.

This time it was the middle option, caused by the delay at customs because of the christmasmail.
In a way I'm happy it went through customs, because we're not the only people who enjoyed what we saw when the package was opened.

Out came a wonderful handpainted plate, which can either stand on the table or hang on the wall in a platehanger. The swirly way it was painted inspired one of the girls and I'm now finding her trial versions all over the place. She can't yet catch the movement Audry was able to bring into the painting. It's like the ribbon moves in the wind.

The picture Audrey has on het blog and which is displayed here (I hope with her approval) doesn't do justice to the paintings.
The stockings are so much more detailed and coloured.
The warm colours of the year will make them the prominent items of christmas this year, the plate won't reach the boxes in the attic, as we all like it too much to put it away.

So it's in the dustfree cabinet now, on display, beside the silvery snowman.

Audrey frequently hosts giveaways at Audrey's give away blog.

But when you're looking for a present of something beautiful for yourself you don't need to wait to win because she runs a very active etsy shop where you can find all sorts of items, including her hand painted tags and ornaments.

Her blog can't be skipped and is updated almost daily with interesting and inspiring posts.

Thank you Audrey for the lovely surprise.
It arrived just a few days for my birthday so it couldn't have arrived at a better time.

new avatar

I've made a new graphic for your sidebar.

Feel welcome........

topdroppers december 2009

Due to all the special days I'm late,
but here they are,
the topdroppers of last december:

The Way I See It
Funky Town Disco Music
Crimsonsparkle.net
Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife
Laane on the World
Greetje greets You
The Ad Master
Momspective
My second trial
Laane Loves

I want to thank each and everybody who visited my site, but especially all those who have become a regular visitor.

Happy new year!

I wish you all a happy new year.
May you be able
to create a home in your heart for many people.

.

Merry Christmas

I want to wish all my visitors a merry christmas!

I hope you're able to spend the christmasdays the way you wish, and you're able to make this world a little bit better.

Merry Christmas!!

Best Layouts

Creating a new look for your site shouldn't be a problem when you're a bit romantic.

When I saw the beautiful layouts from Ingrid of Cute Blog Layouts I had made my choice, I thought.
Until I had a good look at her site and saw so many beauties, that it took me quite a while to find out which one I wanted for my blog.

She uses materials from scrapkits of the best scrappers on internet, and the result is as you can see.

All you have to do is leave the number of the set you like, and your mailaddress and she'll get in contact.
No need to change the HTML or CSS of your site, as you can put a code in your page elements and that's it.

For those who only speak and read Dutch: She's Dutch and her site is bilangual.

topdroppers november

Topdroppers of november were:


The Sweet Life
Confessions of a Psychotic Housewife
Funky Town Disco Music
Laane on the World
A Little Boy's Blog
Secondary Roads
BeadedTail
My Life's Perception and Inspiration
Paperkraft.net
My Library

Thank you all very much for visiting so soon after this blog was opened.

I hope to see you often!

Welcome

Welcome visitors!

I hope to see you here often.

This blog is made to share tips or your home and housekeeping.

Do you want to write as a guestblogger, or do you want to share your tips?
Just contact me.

Don't forget to leave a comment, become a followers, bookmark this site, etc etc.

I'm in the middle of creating the site, so come back soon.