Agustus 2013

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Events: Give Kids The World Blogger Bash 2013

Posted by dasfseegdse Kamis, 29 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

Last chance to register for the Give Kids The World Blogger Bash 2103! To read more about it, click here. You as well can attend as long as you are a blogger or a member of the media. A special online information page including registration information is available at www.givekidstheworld.com/bloggerbash. Along with the form, you’ll find links to FAQs as well as special hotel rates for bloggers coming in from out of town, or locals looking for a “staycation.” Feel free to email Mark Hoewing at MarkH@gktw.org with any questions.

Give Kids The World Village

210 S Bass Rd

Kissimmee, FL 34746

(407) 396-1114

Thursday, September 12th, at 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm

About Yelle
An event coordinator for a museum by day and an avid dinner party hostess by night. She loves entertaining for two and for a few, exploring new food and wine, reading and writing, traveling, and collecting along the way.

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Seeking Guest Bloggers!

Posted by dasfseegdse Senin, 26 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

Happy Monday Florida bloggers! We want to extend our gratitude for your follows, tweets, and subscriptions to Sunshine Bloggers. We want to give you an opportunity to share your voice here at SB so we've decided to search for guest bloggers. Here are a few guidelines to get you started

Who Can Apply to Guest Blog at Sunshine Bloggers?

We are looking for female bloggers in the Florida area!

What Can We Blog About?

We are looking for blogs of the following topics:

Blogging Tips
Design
DIY
Event Tips
Fashion
Florida Travel
Food
Health/Fitness
Photography
Small Business/Etsy Shop Features
Social Media
Tourist Tips

If you have a topic that's not covered above, feel free to suggest and we'll let you know if it fits onto SB or connect you with a Sunshine Blogger who will allow you to guest post.

I'm Available! How Can I Blog?

Just shoot us an email. We will work out all of the fine details and get you scheduled to post. I'm excited to be working with local bloggers to showcase a variety of topics to get our out of state readers to know who we are. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

About Angel Y.
Angel Y. is a freelance graphic designer and web developer living in Orlando, FL. She co-owns a branding agency, Sevenality, with her husband. Angel is also an avid lover of all things inspirational and enjoys sharing inspiration through her blog, Static-Romance.

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Blogging 101: Justifying Your Text

Posted by dasfseegdse Jumat, 23 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

Happy Friday! This week's Blogging 101 article is just a quick tip on how to justify the text in your blog. There are only four ways to align text: left, right, center, and justified. Most blogs utilize left-aligned text or centered text. Justified text is a way to extend your text along the entire width of your content so that your text always ends on the same line.

Above is an example of the justified text on my blog. See how the end of the paragraph lines up? That's an example of justified text. There are a couple of ways to make your text justified.

The Easy Way

I really do not recommend this but it is the easy way. Most CMS platforms utilize WYSIWYG editors. While editing your text in Compose and not HTML mode, your editing toolbar will have a paragraph text option.

The selected option above from your text-align options is to justify your text. You can use this option but you would have to do it for every single page and the code output isn't clean.

The Recommended Way

For Blogger, you will want to go to your template menu option and select EDIT HTML. Do not be afraid! You can totally revert changes which is a good thing about Blogger's template editor.

CTRL (CMD) + F and look for .post-body
You should see some CSS code depending on your template, it could be really short or extremely long. If you already see text-align your theme may already have a text-align setting of centered or right. If not, that's ok! We're going to add it in.
On a line below add in the following code: text-align: justify; So your CSS may look like: post-body { font-size: 110%; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; text-align: justify; }
Save your changes. Your text should be nice and justified. If it isn't, you might want to check your individual posts and see if you manually aligned them as we discussed above. If so, you can edit each post that has the settings. However, try not to align your text manually in the future. It will override your CSS.

For Wordpress or any other CMS, we are doing the same. You want to find your CSS file. In Wordpress, this is usually located in your theme/appearance editor. Hopefully you are using a theme that is well documented in showing you how to find your post's text CSS class. It's usually something with .post, .content, .entry, etc. In my theme, the class is below:

Not all Wordpress themes are created equal so if you have no experience with editing WP themes, you may want to read up on your theme's documentation or ask the theme creator. They're usually very helpful in assisting users to find things to edit in code. Browsers also offer a lot of built-in code editors that make it easy to find CSS classes. Chrome's "Inspect Element" feature is an easy way to find your post's CSS div class.

So that's it! Hopefully this can help you understand justified text. Again, it's not anything you have to do. Left-aligned text is fine the way it is, but I like justified text because it's easier to read on blogs.

Feel free to leave any questions below or suggestions for next week's Blogging 101 article!

About Angel Y.

Angel Y. is a freelance graphic designer and web developer living in Orlando, FL. She co-owns a branding agency, Sevenality, with her husband. Angel is also an avid lover of all things inspirational and enjoys sharing inspiration through her blog, Static-Romance.

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Blogging 101: Designing A Blog

Posted by dasfseegdse Jumat, 16 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

First of all, thank you so much for reading Sunshine Bloggers. The ladies and I are consistently in awe of all of the amazing feedback we get and the opportunities we have with this blog. I can personally say I have really enjoyed the past few months and look forward to the months to come.

Secondly, don't run away! This post is all about your blog's look and feel. I know I won't drop in any CSS or JavaScript during this post (as tempting as it is) but I am just offering a few tips to help you better understand the blog design process. I just finalized the design for my blog's re-brand so this topic couldn't have come at a better time.

I just spent months looking at hundreds of blogs and while some were extremely inspirational, there were a few that were slightly overwhelming. Design is overwhelming! I just wanted to share some things to help you with designing your blog or what to discuss/look for when you're hiring someone to design a blog.

We chatted a few months ago about branding your blog. I cannot stress how important this step is when starting to design your blog. It's easier to have an idea of colors, fonts, and elements beforehand than after you begin to set your blog up. It's ok if even this step is overwhelming. Not everyone has an eye for design. A bitterer reality is that not everyone has an eye for good design and that is completely fine. I would like to encourage first time bloggers who have never dabbled into design to seek out a designer or a blog theme shop. I'm pulling together another blog resource list to share some of my favorite designers and blog theme shops so be sure to look out for that soon.

Lay It Out

You typically want to have an idea of how your blog is laid out before you dig into every thing else. Some blogs utilize sidebars or footers to place information that are not included in blog posts. This information can include social media links, RSS links, contact information, blogroll links, contact forms, widgets, or all kinds of other fun things! Below are a few of some popular layout choices among blogs in case you need a visual.

Color Theory

One of the first things we talk about as children are our favorite colors. Pink has always been one of my favorite colors. It's cliche but it's one of my favorites. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning of my blog was incorporating pink. It had absolutely nothing to do with my branding. I just couldn't stick behind it. Over the years I've tried forcing pink onto my blog design but it never stays long. I came across this psychology of color chart and it all made sense. The pink I was drawn to is seen as exciting, vibrant, and stimulant - however, I was seeing the negative word: gaudy. Check out some of the words that are attributed to the colors of brand. Color charts and color palettes are great ways of finding out which colors work for your brand and how they work together.

Type Talk

Is it legible?

Choose a body text font that your readers can understand. While you may enjoy League Script as your header font, it may not be the best font to write paragraphs with.

While you can probably read this, it's not the easiest on the eyes. You may want to try something like our option below.

Now Cat Ipsum is completely legible.

Does it match your brand?

Remember to keep your font choices brand consistent. We use Archer in the Sunshine Bloggers branding which lead us to choose Josefin Slab for our web font. It would have been a bit silly, besides legibility reasons, to choose League Script as our main web font. It would be out of brand.

Fonts are confusing.

I agree! The world of typography is a crazy world. If you want to get the basics, I cannot put into words how amazing this Jessica Hische article about Upping Your Type Game. She goes through the basics, choosing font families, and there are fun illustrations to catch your attention.

Be Unique!

One of the things to remember when designing your blog is to keep your individuality. It can be hard to do when there are so many popular blog design trends to choose from. I would love add confetti to my blog design but it would be completely out of brand. Your blog design should be a reflection of your taste applied in a reader-friendly format. It may be tempting to change your blog design to match what seems to be popular but will that help you stand out? I enjoy reading blogs who create a unique environment for their readers which is hard to find among hundreds of thousands of blogs. Also, feel free to be inspired by good design but make sure your blog's design is your own. Do not steal another blog's design. It's ok if you're using the same template, which happens a lot in the blogsphere. However, don't copy unique features detail for detail. Try to make everything you design your own. These are just a few tips to get you started. Feel free to chat about what you'd like discussed in a future Blogging 101 article or if you have any questions.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Psychology of Color

About Angel Y.

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Events: Give Kids The World Blogger Bash 2013

Posted by dasfseegdse Rabu, 14 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

Let us introduce you to the 70-acre whimsical resort where you can experience first-hand the happiness that inspires hope for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. If you have never been to Give Kids The World Village, or would like another look, come be a guest for an evening of tours, interviews, entertainment, great food and even door prizes!

Angel, Kristyn, and myself were invited to the inaugural Give Kids The World Blogger Bash on Thursday, September 12 from 5-9 p.m. They realize the tremendous impact bloggers like all of us have on audiences across the spectrum, and would like to honor the work we do by hosting us at our Village in Kissimmee, Florida. Be a guest in this wonderland of love, laughter and smiles where these precious children and their families enjoy accommodations, donated attractions tickets, meals and more for weeklong, cost-free fantasy vacations.

You as well can attend as long as you are a blogger or a member of the media. A special online information page including registration information is available at www.givekidstheworld.com/bloggerbash. Along with the form, you’ll find links to FAQs as well as special hotel rates for bloggers coming in from out of town, or locals looking for a “staycation.” Feel free to email Mark Hoewing at MarkH@gktw.org with any questions.

By attending the Blogger Bash, you’ll be equipped to spread awareness of the Village through the eyes of the wish children and their families. So, join the chorus of “Awareness Angels” who have already seen this magical place where the worries of wish children are wiped away with the spin of a carousel or ice cream for breakfast. Come to Blogger Bash!

Give Kids The World Village

210 S Bass Rd

Kissimmee, FL 34746

(407) 396-1114

Thursday, September 12th, at 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Liebster Award!

Posted by dasfseegdse Kamis, 08 Agustus 2013 0 komentar

Hi friends! Sweet Mia over at Earl Grey Days nominated Sunshine Bloggers for the Liebster Award! We are so thankful and happy to receive it, thanks Mia :) Here are our answers and nominations. We thought this would be a fun way for all of you to get to know each of us a little better!

Angel = A, Kristyn = K, Milynn = M

1. What is your biggest goal currently?

A: Re-branding my blog and opening my print shop by October 1.

K: Reaching 30 sales for my jewelry shop so I can help orphans in Africa.

M: Continue working hard on my career to eventually get into a position that is most ideal.

2. What inspired you to blog?

A: My passion for design. I just wanted to share as much design-related stuff as possible while learning web development along the way.

K: I love writing, and I knew I wanted to share my words with others.

M: I started my blog as a creative outlet since I love writing and photography. Blogging has been a great way for me to share my snaps and be inspired by a community of like-minded people.

3. If you could walk in anyone's shoes for a day, who would it be?

A: I'm not sure if I would walk in anyone's shoes. Can it be someone from the past? If so, I'd love to experience life as Coretta Scott King during the 70s.

K: Jane Austen. She was just wonderful.

M: I’d love to walk in the shoes of any world traveler. I can’t say anyone specific, though I would like to think being in the shoes of any traveler would be full of adventure and beauty.

4. What is your TV or movie guilty pleasure?

A: I think True Blood is definitely is a TV guilty pleasure. It's not extremely good but since I read the Sookie Stackhouse series I can't stop watching.

K: TV: Dawson's Creek. Movie: Pride & Prejudice.

M: I am sometimes caught watching the Real Housewives. It’s interesting the drama they live.

5. Favorite place to visit and why?

A: I love going back to Atlanta because it's never the same whenever I visit. There's so much growth and so much to do! In Florida, I think South Beach has been my favorite place.

K: I love Germany and wish every day I could go back.

M: Definitely Chicago. It’s where I’m from, but I didn’t grow up there so I love every opportunity to go and visit my hometown.

6. If you could have any wild animal as a household pet, what would you choose?

A: If baby pandas could stay the same size they are at birth, I'd love one.

K: An elephant :)

M: I’d love to have a cheetah as a pet. I love kitties, what can I say? :)

7. What is your dream job?

A: I'm working my dream job. My alternate-dream job would be a child psychiatrist.

K: What I'm working towards, actually--I write stories and want to have them published.

M: My dream job has always been a TV weather woman.

8. If you made a cocktail, what would you call it?

A: Legacy.

K: Lavender Lush.

M: Passion Punch, a little fruity and a lot of character.

9. Favorite college or high school memory?

A: I loved playing sports in high school, during my sophomore year. I miss being a part of a team.

K: The time I had a dance-off with the men's soccer team and won.

M: My favorite part of college was going on road trips with my friends to different cities every semester and meeting new friends in the process.

10. Where would you love to vacation?

A: Fiji!

K: France or Greece. Someday, please.

M: Paris!

11. Who is your largest inspiration?

A: As a designer, so many people including Louise Fili, Lotta Nieminen, Jessica Hische, and Veerle Pieters just to name a few. As a person, my husband inspires me to be the best and we get a little competitive which is great for our business. We are always growing.

K: My mother. She's absolutely amazing.

M: My parents are my biggest inspiration. They have moved from their home country and left everything they knew behind to come to the States. Without knowing the language or the culture, they learned and worked hard to put me through school so that I could live a better life. They continue to inspire me to work hard so that I can make them proud.

Our Nominees:
1. Krystal of Krystal's Kitsch
2. Melissa of Blush & Jelly
3. Jeanette of OM the Moment
4. Megan of Megan Elizabeth Photography
5. Heather of Hopeless Notebook
6. Victoria of Becoming Who We Are
7. Linda of Tapas Lifestyle
8. Carrie of Waiting With Joy
9. Lisa of The SweetTalk Shop
10. Latisha of Eccentric Designs
11. Loi of Oh My Goods!

About Kristyn
Creator and editor of Sunshine Bloggers, and recent transplant to Florida. She writes her own lifestyle blog called Poppy and loves stories and travel. When she’s not blogging, you can find her doing yoga, reading good books and drinking tea. She lives in Tampa with her boyfriend Eric, where they enjoy cooking and exploring downtown.