How I blog

Disclaimer: This blog is not going to be interesting to my family. There are no cute pictures of Jacob...sorry.

When I took over blogging duties, back in December or so, I did about 2 blogs before I wanted to give up. If you remember, I even complained about it on one of my posts. Blogging through blogspot on internet explorer with lots of pictures is NOT fun. I began to realize why Randy complained about blogging when we nagged him. See, if you have never done it, when you insert a picture, it always puts it at the top. And randomly adds spaces to the text you have typed. Then, pulling the picture down where you want it is not as easy as you would think. And, adding more than one picture becomes a huge hassle and sometimes does not let you put the second picture after the first...argh! So, I wanted to give up and complained.

However, some of my friends have noticed that my blogs do have lots of pictures and have asked me how I do it. No, I don't spend hours doing it...I don't have that kind of patience! So, here are some of the things I have found to make blogging MUCH easier. Granted, we are a gadget family (or, I should say, my husband loves gadgets and I benefit from it) so that makes it easier.

First, I ALWAYS blog from my iPad. But I found a wonderful app that makes it easy to blog. When you input a picture, it puts it right where you want it...no random spaces either. I'm sure there are more out there, but this is the one I use. I think it was $4.99 but am not sure.



And before you say it or think it, yes, typing on an iPad is hard. So, I also bought a wireless keyboard. This also makes it easier to answer emails from the iPad. I bought the "official" one to go with an iPad from Apple, but I have since seen that there are much cheaper ones on the market. Some attach to the iPad and some (like mine) connect through bluetooth. Here is my set up.



And here is the keyboard by itself.



Next, I pretty much take most of my pictures with my phone. When I'm ready to blog, I email them to myself, check it on the iPad and save them to the iPad. This is so easy because you can mail yourself 5 (I think) pictures at a time and save all 5 at once.

For the rare times that I use our "big" camera (any other digital camera besides a phone), you can also save to a computer and email them to yourself. However, Randy bought a handy dandy gadget that does it instantly. You just take the memory card out of the camera, plug it in to this thing and then plug both of those in to the iPad. Pick the ones you want and you import them. Easy peasy. I have no idea how much this costs but I think it was around $20.



And, with this BlogPress app, you can also blog from an iPhone. It is harder to type, but you get to skip the step of emailing yourself pictures. I'm pretty sure the keyboard would work with the phone too, but I've never tried it. If I'm going to do a quick blog, I'll do it from my phone. But, I think I've only done that once or twice.

Last, just like on blogspot, you can start a post and save it but not post it. So, sometimes I blog one day, proof read/try to make it funny the next day and post the 2nd day. Or, I can start the blog on my phone while getting a pedicure, and finish up later. :o)

That's it...those are my blogging secrets. And, if you're wondering, this blog took me exactly 7 minutes to write and post. For those of you that blog, am I missing anything? Do you have a blogging secret?

~ Nancy