First I would like to announce that the free Wordpress themes are back. Yes, oh yes! My host, as mentioned previously, finally renewed my domain so the links are back to functioning properly! Download away.

Speaking of Wordpress themes, be sure you keep up with my design site, So Chic Design. Not only do I offer affordable custom prices for Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot.com themes, I also provide several premades and even freebies (all new WP freebies will be located there.. once I start releasing them). I’ll soon be adding some premade and freebie banners for other blogging platforms, as well as Etsy shops.. so check it out.

Last, but certainly not least - don’t forget about my current contest, where you have a chance to win a set of lovely kitchen towels.

You don’t want to miss out!

I woke up to a glorious email this morning. Well, perhaps glorious isn’t the right word, but it certainly satisfied me to some degree.

The domain I was worried about, that’s hosted with Host Once, has finally been renewed. Shooo! I honestly didn’t expect it to be renewed. Not after paying for it on the 10th of this month, it expiring anyway, and sending in a support ticket (that went unanswered) and several emails to billing. Oh, not to mention the phone call too. I’m not sure what changed their mind, but I’m wondering if it’s because one of my last emails was CC’ed to myself, ICANN and DotRegistrar. The email included both my paid invoice receipt from Host Once and my transaction summary from PayPal which clearly showed completed, with a description of the service I’d paid for. Then again, maybe in the deepest pit of their soul, they found a way to be nice and provide the service they’d been paid for. I sure hope so, because this has been such a nightmare!

I have some work I need to get through tonight. Plus several quote requests, blogger freebie emails and various other emails I need to respond to by morning! I should probably start making in dent in that stuff.

Our internet keeps flickering because of the high winds. It’s very annoying. I have work to do, which requires I be connected (for the purpose of testing designs) and every time I’m ready to view a change, it flickers off! The weather is simply rotten here right now. The air is chilly, it’s quite windy (gusting near 100km/h at times) and it’s raining. Best of all though, (sarcasm) is that the forecast is calling for flurries tomorrow! I don’t even have snow tires on my truck yet, and Jo has an appointment 45 miles away with a back specialist! I’m really hoping that this one time, the meteorologists are horribly wrong. Sunshine and warm air, please!

In other news; I finally got a hold of a human when I phoned the 877 number for “Host Once” (or Host Never, as they’ve been dubbed). I spoke with a very rude woman named Tracy, who kept insisting she couldn’t handle my issue but she would refer it to the domains department, which she told me she’d do the first day I emailed her (October 15th or 16th). My domain is still showing “expired” and my support ticket is still unanswered. Since I paid via PayPal and kept my receipt of the invoice being paid from Host Once, I filed a complaint against them with PayPal. I also contacted ICANN and the BBB. The BBB replied to me this morning and provided me with information on filing with the courts. I mean, you can’t just take someones money and not provide the service you were paid to provide. That’s just ridiculous to think. If they keep treating their customers this way (do a quick Google search of Host Once), they’re never going to get their head above water again. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising, in my experience, but it can also be your worst!

I am seriously irritated as snot with Gmail right now. I’ve had to request resetting the password for my So Chic Design account three times today. Why? Well the passwords just stopped working! The first time it happened, I thought I might have had caps lock on, or didn’t have num lock on. Nope! A quick check of that and I knew it wasn’t either of the two. I knew I was typing it in correctly. I mean, I couldn’t imagine that I’d mistyped it two dozen times in a row. Once.. sure. Twice, OK. Three times? Maybe. More than that? Doubtful! I decided to pull out my little notebook where I store my passwords. I typed slowly, making sure I hit each key correctly. It was still no use. I was still getting that daggum error! I was honestly ready to punch Gmail, but then that wouldn’t be fair to my monitor.

Ugh! So I’ve reset the password again, for the third time. Will this one hold up? It better, because if it doesn’t I’m just going to find a better provider. :p Gmail has just been such a pest for me over the last couple of months. I’ve never had issues like this before.. with any email provider, including Gmail previously. A lot of REAL messages make their way to the spam folder. Some messages don’t even come through, some never go out. So dern annoying, I tell ya!

Now that it’s fixed, I’m going to get back to work. Hopefully I won’t be ranting about this again!

I’m taking a 30 minute break from design work. I’ve just finished up another photoblog design, which should be launching this weekend. I’m stoked (stoked, not stocked lol) about it, especially the color selection the client chose for her logo and design. It looks fabulous! I’ll be zipping it up shortly and sending it her way. Her husband is going to help her get everything installed per her request, but I’m going to be available just in case they need any assistance.

Thanks for all the thoughts, emails and comments regarding my previous entry! They’re all hanging in there and doing pretty good today!

In other news; I think I broke my baby toe or something. I stumped it yesterday, which obviously hurt like you know what. I looked down hoping I hadn’t ripped the nail from it, and thankfully hadn’t. I thought it would hurt for a little while, maybe bruise a little and it’d be OK. Well today it’s definitely bruised, but on top of that I can’t really move it and when I do…. well, you don’t want to know what’s slipped from my lips. I’m going to give it another day or so and see if anything changes, and if not I’ll just have it seen about.

Well, I’m going to hop off of here for a bit. I need to email my client’s new photoblog design and turn off the TV that’s blasting a commercial for acne treatments. No one is watching it, no point in it being on!

I’m really tired of having to stand up for myself because of the “rumors” that are floating around. I want to put an end to it all right here, right now.

- Like I said in a previous entry, I have never been fired from any job in my life. The last position I held with another design company (out of respect for the owner and the clients, I will not name it) is no exception. I left on my own. I don’t want to go straight into the issues I had, but I will say this; many things lead to my decision to leave.

I wish nothing but good things for this person and their company. I am really disappointed in them, yes. And really hurt by their lies and their petty attempts at trying to ruin my reputation as a designer. I’m trying very hard to remain as professional as possible in light of being accused of being “fired” for being “untruthful” and statements such as not hiring another designer because she loves her clients too much. I worked very hard for the company. I gave it my all, even putting in 16 hours a day at times. I work through revisions and new ideas, and work on a good schedule. For the month or so I was with the company, I never took a full month to complete anything I was scheduled!

That being said, and to those of you being stuck with the badmouthing behind closed doors… I just hope you realize there is always a second side to the story. The truth may not always come from the person you trust the most in the situation.

I know what happened. I know how hard I worked. I know what the clients have said to me personally regarding their designs. I should have never been put into the position of having to fight for my good name, but when I’m being lied about…. I will.

I hope that the badmouthing will stop, and the assumptions too. Believe me when I say this; I’m not the only person that is in this boat.

Well, I was hoping I would have had my new design site launched by now. I’ve been working on it off and on since last week. So what’s the problem? I’ve been sick. It seems the flu is getting a jump start this year. I’ve had a really bad throat, stuffed up nose, irritated eyes, I’ve been aching all over, sick to my stomach, but thankfully no coughing or high fever yet. I’ve been trying to take it easy.

I want to finish tying up some loose ends for the design company I worked for until last week. I had a few clients I was still working with, one whose design I had just begun when I decided to leave the company. I couldn’t imagine leaving them all high and dry, so I’m trying to get that all squared away. Hopefully that will be all done with before the weekend.

I’ve also been working on redoing a header for a lovely lady (previous client). Nothing huge, but it’s taking me longer than expected because of the whole flu bug thing. That’s also my reason for not having So Chic Design launched yet. Will be busy over the next 24 or so hours for sure! I finished up the design for it, the shop, TOS, free quote form and am now trying to finish up the portfolio, FAQs and testimonials.

I’m going to go relax now, and try to get some sleep. I want to get up a little early tomorrow, so that I can get a head start on my agenda for the day (which is kind of intimidating right now ha, ha). Oh, and I’m so not proofreading this. :p

I would just like to make a note of something, just so there is no confusion, assumptions, implications.. etc.

I have never, ever been fired from any job I have ever held. Offline, or online. I have always worked hard and gone above and beyond what was expected of me. My work has always spoken for itself. There have been times that I have gone out of my way to help the person before me, be it a patient or loved one from the ER’s I have worked in, a member/customer of the financial institution I worked for, or any clients I have worked with throughout my years of design and photography. I don’t simply do what is expected of me, I do what I think would be appreciated and what I would want if the shoe was on the other foot!

I have appreciated every single job I have ever held, as it helped with bills, luxuries and made me feel like I was helping someone else.

I just want everyone that reads my blog to know that for future reference if needed.

I haven’t been using my laptop very much since I got it. That’s mostly due to the fact that Jo has just not gotten it hooked up to the router, and partly due to the fact that I’m not quite used to it yet. I know, I know.. I’ll never get used to it if I don’t actually use it! It’s just a little strange right now, that’s all. I’ve been using regular desktops since like, third grade, which I’ve been out of for 20 years. I’m not really used to where everything is located on this keyboard either. I keep reaching for keys in places they should be, only they shouldn’t be because this isn’t my desktop keyboard. Ha, ha. My delete key is now, my uhm, numlock key I believe. I absolutely love how quite this keyboard is though. Jo’s asleep on the couch and if I were typing, as I normally would, on a desktop keyboard.. I’d be pounding away and he’d surely not be catching Z’s.

When the paint is dry in the dinning room, and we can finally put everything back in there, I’m going to get Jo’s computer hooked back up so that i can finish up some designs I’ve been working on - some requested work, and a free theme. Speaking of themes though, I sold 2 premades over at Chic Blog Design in the first few hours it was opened.

I must get back to work though!

How often do you do backups of your websites? Some say I do it too often, that it’s almost religiously. I guess it’s sort of become routine over the years because of all of the bad experiences I’ve had with web hosts getting hacked, CPUs crashing, an e-friend’s web host closing down without notice, and my own negligence during the first two things. I rarely ever did backups, in fact I think the first backup I ever did was after owning the website for over a year.

For me, I do backups on a daily basis. I have a plug-in installed that allows a daily backup to be created, then sent to my inbox. It’s the Wordpress backup database plug-in, which came in real handy a couple of days ago when I realized my Wordpress had been hacked. Before installing the plug-in, I did daily backups, manually through phpMyAdmin. If it weren’t for me blogging daily, I could probably get away with only doing it once a week. I think, even then, I’d still be too nervous about that though. Ha, ha.

I doubt this, my daily backing up routine, is one I’ll be breaking any time soon.

A couple of weeks ago one of my friends asked if I wanted to work on a side project with her. Part of the project involves printing Custom T Shirts and other apparel, but neither of us were really sure of where we’d even begin with that. My dad has a screen printer but depending on the amount of orders we could possibly see, that could be very time consuming. We think turning to internet for this would be the best possible thing for the printed portion of this project, so that’s where we turned.

In my quest to find the right place to do this apparel, I found myself at Sonic Shack, where you can create your own shop, and of course, create and design your own custom t-shirts and apparel. This happens to be our ultimate goal, problem solved? I think so! I love personalized t-shirts. I know I’m not alone - you just can’t have enough t-shirts, you know? I’ve always toyed with the idea of designing a few of my own and with this project, it’s going to allow me to be creative and do just that.

Other than t-shirts, you can also create other apparel with your designs. For example: sweat shirts, jerseys, posters, and vinyl banners. I think this is a really neat idea for anyone who has a website, especially those of us with blogs or involved in art and design. Add your blog’s logo to apparel and sell it to your readers right on your website. Customers can choose to buy one item or they may want to buy more, to save more. Between now and the end of May you can enjoy a 20% discount by using the coupon code sonic20.

If you’d like to learn more about creating and designing your own custom apparel, or would like to create your own store or shop other stores, visit Sonic Shack.

This was a paid review.

I created a few more banners and would appreciate any votes given. Below you’ll find smaller versions of my banners, and under those will be the links to the voting page.

Vote for this banner

Vote for this banner

Vote for this banner

Vote for this banner

Vote for this banner

If you have a banner of your own that’s been submitted, let me know. I would be happy to return the favor.

Other than that, though it’s becoming normal, I am so stressed here. I don’t feel like going into details but if you’ve been keeping up with my blog for a bit, you should know what’s stressing me. I hate feeling like I’m walking on egg shells and that’s exactly what it’s like around here. I don’t know how my mother in law has managed doing it for so long, I know she must be absolutely exhausted from it all. I can tell you one thing, there are definitely things about this place that I won’t miss when I’m gone.

In other news; my youngest sister, Nikki, was the only person to get me with that whole April Fool’s thing. Other people tried and failed, she, however, succeeded by telling me her husband was going in for back surgery (I absolutely hate such serious joking though). He actually has been having back trouble, which is the only reason why I fell for it. Trent thought it was funny that his “mommy” got me and felt the need to tell me when I spoke to him last night. He also told me that Rachel Ray was his girlfriend - LOL.

That’s all for now. I’m going to go spend some time with the hubby before American Idol. I so want David Cook or Michael Johns to win and hope Kristy Lee Cook will be going home. She did much better last night but I still think she’s not nearly as good as the other contestants (especially David C. and Michael Johns).

I have been telling myself for months now, that I would sit down one day and work on creating an mailing list but had no idea what service I would use for it. I mean, it has seriously been years since I actually had and used a mailing list, but it is something I want (and probably need) to implement since I update so often and do so many different things with my blog these days.

People visit my blog for many different reasons; blog themes, blog banners, my random babbles, however amusing they may or may not be, contests which I hold a couple of times each month and of course, for my photography. I have recently registered with Zookoda, which is a free email marketing tool, and will start using it to send out regular summaries of my latest blog additions. For instance; I update my contests a couple of times a month, as well as my themes section. With Zookoda, I can send out a weekly summary of the updates that I have made to my blog, including the regular content and special features like my contest.

When you register with Zookoda you will be able to create and manage newsletters that can also be designed to to match the current design of your own blog - something I, as a designer, really enjoy. You will also have the ability to schedule a broadcast, review reports of your newsletter and easily create and add the subscription form feature to your own blog so that your visitors can subscribe to your newsletter. You can send your visitors a daily, weekly or even a monthly summary of the latest updates to your blog - and it goes straight to their inbox. I think this is a feature that my own visitors will really enjoy, especially the ones who are not always able to check my blog on a daily basis and hate the idea of trying to get caught up.

My memory may not be the best but I cannot recall ever using a similar service and not only having so many nice options, but also being so user friendly. Being easy to use is a big plus. I can’t wait to get started with my newsletter.

All of this, for free? Oh yeah, and you should have known that I would be game!

You know, when I first started out in this whole “owning a website” thing, I was completely clueless. At the time I didn’t know many people with their own domains and hosting, so I really didn’t have anyone I could turn to for questioning or advice on what I would need to look for in a host. Things have definitely changed since then, and for the better.

I think many of us have been in the position of searching for web hosting but not really having the chance to really review their services in comparison to other providers out there. And let’s face it, researching web hosts is very important and not only for the purpose of saving money but also for the purpose of finding a good web host.

Enter the Web Hosting Bluebook, where you’re able to compare reviews of the top 10, best web hosts. For example, if you wanted to learn more about Host Gator, you could read their Host Gator Review and learn about their main features, package price and view their rating as provided by the consumers / webmasters. I happen to really enjoy that these reviews are provided by consumers and webmasters, which I think are the best people to turn to when you’re shopping around. I also like that other than the actual reviews, you get a nice little run down of their services without having to click all around the individual provider sites. You’ll also notice they’ve provided a forum, where further web hosting talk is provided and where you may be able to get even further advice regarding the different web hosts. As a person who seems to be constantly looking for web hosts for various projects, I can already tell this will save me some time when I need to do this in the future. Anything that can save me time is fantastic, especially if it could potentially save me money too!

Let the Web Hosting Bluebook be your web hosting guide.

It is absolutely ridiculous, the levels that people will stoop to in order to get attention. For people like Krystal, the girl I recently wrote about banning me, she would rather get the worst publicity over the best. IE: she’d rather run around creating drama, ripping off designs, claiming photography as her own that is copyrighted by someone else and calling people the most ridiculous names when they catch onto her (even stoops as low as using racial slurs). At times she’s very entertaining. I think that’s what people enjoy the most about her. The least amount of attention she gets, the worst her lashing outs become.

A few nights ago she sent me an email (all of which now go to my spam box, woohoo) claiming that she went to some Alberta forums and made statements that “I” was a photography thief and that no one should hire me. Of course I laughed my rump off and wasn’t the slightest bit bothered. I have big doubts that she did this and that it was more or less another one of her childish outburst in an effort to get under someone’s skin. I did report the email to her internet provider, just in the event she actually did stoop that low.

Well earlier today I had a few new folks adding me on flickr, so I decided to log in and check them out prior to adding them. Low and behold, I have a comment ( “My Name is Mud. says: pretty bad quality.” which she has just deleted) from “My Name is Mud”, who is Krystal. She is absolutely amusing. I just think it’s very sad that the only reason anyone knows who she is is because of all of the bad things she’s done to so many people.

She recently shut down her blog, (not linking, she doesn’t deserve the hits) but before doing so made several disgusting entries involving the use of racial slurs and one that had a photo from 9/11 saying something along the lines of “this is what the world thinks of your country” (to “America”). Like I said, the girl has no limits to the levels in which she stoops.

Like I mentioned in the comments on another blog regarding this; I would much rather have people remember me for the good things I do in life, verses the bad.

I truly hope, for her own sake, she eventually grows out of this behavior.