FIRST THINGS FIRST….PLEASE JOIN ME IN SENDING ALL YOUR POSITIVE ENERGY AND PRAYERS TO THOSE IN CHENGDU CHINA AND SURROUNDING AREAS FOLLOWING THE DEVISTATING EARTHQUAKE TODAY.  WHAT A THING TO WAKE UP TO ON MY BIRTHDAY.  I HAVE WRITTEN THE PANDA BASE AND AM WAITING TO SEE HOW THE PANDAS FARED AS WELL.  WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED

Well I have all sorts of news here today. First to all you mommies…a belated Mother’s Day!!! I’m a happy mom because I got to talk to my kids today and Steve took me out for Dim Sum brunch! YUM!

I am just getting ready to head out to the salon to get a pedicure and pamper myself a bit after a weekend of rooting around in the muddy garden! I was so excited my tree peony bloomed that I did a self portrait with the timer on my camera to show you how HUGE these blossoms are!! There are over 20 opening on the small tree and each the size of a dinner plate.

You will see a LOT of new changes on GRAFFITI GOSSIP!! OMG…Steve had been helping me get my blog up to date with all the fun bells and whistles.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE!!!

Another VERY fun new item I installed on Graffiti Gossip is my GARDEN JOURNAL at a site called MyFolia.com

On Graffiti Gossip you will always be able to find my most recent daily garden updates by clicking the MyFolia button in the left hand column. If you have a garden,it is totally worth joining this free service. It is a social networking and journaling site for gardeners all over the globe. An amazing place you can get totally lost in!!

So I guess for the moment this is enough news. I have more jewelry related bits but will save that for the next post. Have a super day everyone!!!!!

Graffiti Gossip has had a serious facelift and I am still working on it..but I couldn’t wait to show you what I have so far!! The technology of blogging has BLOSSOMED since I created GRAFFITI GOSSIP 3 years ago…I mean it’s a whole different animal!!!

Steve was creating his own blog this week and was showing me all the fun plugins in and widgets and I couldn’t resist bringing my own blog up to date as well. Because photography is such an integral part of my blogging I wanted to find a way to incorporate my Flickr albums here as well. OH BOY…they had a widget for that too!!! Woo Hoo!!! Flickr is the worlds premier photo sharing website in the world.

Below is a list of all the changes so far with more fun stuff to come. I still need to design a header/banner but that will come in time.

NEW BLOG FEATURES INCLUDE:

• EASY TO FIND ORANGE THOUGHT BUBBLES WHERE YOU CAN COMMENT ON EACH BLOG POST

• STARTING WITH MY NEWEST IMAGES AS OF TODAY…EVERY THUMBNAIL IMAGE IS CLICKABLE TO SEE LARGER AND VIEW DESCRIPTIONS

• EVERY IMAGE WHEN YOU ARRIVE AT THE LARGE VERSION HAS A COMMENT BOX BELOW IT WHICH IS INTEGRATED WITH MY FLICKER ACCOUNT. YOUR COMMENTS WILL SHOW UP IN THE BLOG AS WELL AS FLICKR WHICH IS FUN! THE IMAGE COMMENTS ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE POST COMMENTS WHICH YOU ACCESS VIA THE ORANGE THOUGHT BUBBLES
  

• IN THE LEFT HAND COLUMN TOWARD THE TOP IS AN 8 THUMBNAIL WIDGET SHOWING MY MOST RECENT IMAGE POSTINGS ON FLICKR. REFRESHING THE SCREEN WILL SHOW A DIFFERENT ASSORTMENT. CLICKING WILL TAKE YOU TO LARGER IMAGES AND DESCRIPTIONS

• YOUR MOST RECENT COMMENTS LEFT IN THE BLOG WILL BE IN THE LEFT COLUMN UNDER “YOUR GOSSIP” . HANDY WHEN I’M ON A TRIP AND THERE ARE LOTS OF NEW POSTS BEING MADE. YOU CAN SEE EASILY IF I HAVE REPLIED TO ANY OF THE COMMENTS THIS WAY TOO.

• LINKS TO MY ART AND MY PHOTOGRAPHY ARE ALSO IN THE LEFT HAND COLUMN

• POSTS ORGANIZED BY “TOPIC” AND MY ARCHIVES (OLD GOSSIP) TAKE UP LESS ROOM WITH PULLDOWN MENUS

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