I'm almost back from Holiday Mode

Hi all,

I didn't mean to be away from the blog world so long.  It just happened.  There was the mad rush before Christmas.

with lots of eating and drinking.

A week spent in Melbourne and Point Lonsdale for Christmas with my family.  It was 40 degrees the day we arrived in Melbourne. 

Time spent reading my new Christmas books.

Then it was back to Brisbane for the Brisbane International tennis.

Followed by a week at beautiful Rainbow beach. 

with more eating and drinking.

Now there are only 2 weeks of school holidays left.  There are books to cover and shoes to buy, then my husband will be back at work and the kids will be back at school, and the house will seem too quiet again.

I hope you've all had a great Christmas holiday and look forward to catching up on some blog reading over the coming weeks.  I need to hit the gym again.  I am living proof that even if you are on a low saturated fat diet, you can still put weight on when you decide to have happy hour at 5pm every night.  Maybe David Gillespie's sugar theory is right?

Interior Photo Challenge Round Up

Well I made it.  I got through the whole month of July and took a photo everyday for The Interiors Photo Challenge.  Here are some highlights to wrap it up for those of you not on instagram.

Day 24 - Designer - I don't really do designer but this wing back bed was custom made, so maybe it's designer?

Day 16 - Bedside- My favourite bedside drawers from an antique shop in London and a cheap Target lamp (shhh)

Day 14 Vase - bought in a second hand shop in Sydney years ago.

Day 11 Bright- Brightly coloured ribbons on display

Day 12 - Old - An antique French aeroplane clock and compass bought in Paris

Day 27 - Rug - My favourite Laura Ashley Rug 10 years old and still going strong

Day 30 Glass - Pretty glass decanter.  Empty :(

Day 25 - New Purchase - Love Home cushions bought recently

You can see the first 10 days of the challenge here.

I really enjoyed the challenge, and seeing other people's photos.  I'll definitely try another one in the future.

Interiors Photo Challenge - First 10 Days

Cas from Peaches & Maple told us about The Interiors Addict's Instagram Challenge.  It's the same concept as Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge but focuses on interiors.  Being addicted to instagram, I decided to give it a go.  Here are the first 10 days of photos.

Day 1 - Coffee Table - I cleaned it for the photo! 

Day 2 - Vignette  The growing collection of fake birds in my house

Day 3 - Bargain - $5 silver tray from the op shop

Day 4- Nature - Rustic wicker basket and twigs

Day 5 - Couch - My pretty French sofa in the hallway with Cabbages & Roses fabric

Day 5 - Bling - A photo of me and my Mum circa 1970

Day 7 - Candle - Tea lights by the mini-piano

Day 8 - Pattern - Tumbled marble tiles where we took out a wall

Day 9 - Light - Blue & White china lamp on the kitchen bench

and Day 10 - Book - No pretty styling here.  Just keeping it real

That's the first 10 days.  I've never done a photo challenge before and it has been fun thinking what to take a picture of each day, and I've enjoyed seeing other people's photos.  If you're on instagram, come and play.

The reason I am proud of this post is that I managed to take a photo each day, and it was fun.   Also sharing at French Country Cottage

Social Media with Natasha From Oz

The lovely Natasha, from Natasha in Oz blog wants us to share what social media we use.

I love instagram.  It's like Twitter but with pictures which suits me better.  I like that you can easily interact with the people you follow on a personal level.  The photos vary from beautifully styled pictures to simple and funny snap shots.  I have also joined Cas from Peaches & Maple in doing the interiors photo month challenge.  You will find details at The Interiors Addict here.

Theme - Bling

Theme - Light

Calling all Downtown Abbey Fans

Lou Lou from Here I am Lou Lou even challenged a couple of us to make her delicious smoothie.  I quickly responded to the challenge and learnt a whole new way to make smoothies taste great.

My other favourite social media is pinning.  Again because it uses pictures it stimulates my visual senses.  I love collecting pictures of pretty decorating ideas, things to make one day and even hair styles to try.  I have a feed of my pinterest photos down my side bar.  If you want to included one of these in your blog, you'll find the instructions here.  Here are some of my latest pins.

Source: brookegiannetti.typepad.com via Stylish on Pinterest

Source: greigedesign.blogspot.com via Stylish on Pinterest

I have set up a basic facebook page here, but I still have a lot to learn with that.  I need to add a cover picture, change my profile picture, learn how to like other pages and set up apps.  Oh well, at least when you're learning, you're exercising the brain.  While I'm at it, I'll have to figure out what Goggle Plus is all about?

I also have a twitter account which I don't use very much as I prefer instagram.  I don't like the way I have to limit my messages to a certain number of characters, but I do share tweets from time to time.

So that's social media for me.  I'll be sharing this with Natasha's Social Media Link Party on Saturday.  For details of the party visit Natasha here.

Stripping Back My Blog and Showing more of myself

With everything that has been going on in my life lately, I really needed to have a re-think about blogging.  I still enjoy blogging.  It's good therapy for me, but I decided I needed to strip my blog back to just what I needed it to be, so I gave it a little makeover.

I created a new header.  I am no photo editing genius, I just used Picasa and followed the instructions at Blissfully Domestic.

I realise everybody has a different way of following blogs.  Over the past year my reading list in Blogger had become so large that I was missing posts from some of my favourite blogs.  I did a bit of pruning to my reading list (sorry) and made sure I put most of my favourites on the blog roll down the right hand side of my page, so I don't loose them.

I kept different ways for other people to follow this blog if they want to - Google Friend Connect, Blog Lovin', email, and rss feeds.  (I had no idea how many people use email to follow.  I found my email subscribers by going to my feedburner.com account - Hello!  I didn't realise you were there.) 

Following is a funny thing.

I love reading other people's blogs and I hope that people like some of my posts.  If you want to follow - great, if not that's fine too.  I blog because it makes me feel good.  In fact what I wrote in my first post, still stands true.  Whenever I'm feeling a little down about my home, I look back on the blog posts I've written in the past 12 months and I can see how far I've come.  I'm grateful for that and I've made some lovely blog friends along the way.

I got rid of some stuff on my blog.  I don't need to know what my ranking is on Blog Top Sites etc...  I blog for me.  I don't have a shop or etsy store.  I don't have sponsors or advertisers.  I'm not a nuff nang blogger, nor do I run competitions or giveaways.  There is NOTHING wrong with any of this.  Some bloggers work really hard and deserve financial reward, and I LOVE some of the online shops and etsy stores run by bloggers.  It's just that my blog's just for fun so I don't want to look at statistics.

What I do love to do is pin.  It was the perfect distraction for me when I was waiting for my MRI results.  So I added a pinterest rss feed to the right side margin so you can see what my latest pinning phase is. If you hover over the pictures, they get bigger so you can see them properly.  To add a pinterest feed to your blog, follow the instructions at Code It Pretty.  If you scroll down through the comments you'll see I was a bit of a wally and couldn't work out how to do it!

I also added an Instagram feed.  This is part of where the getting naked comes into it.  I am a pretty down to earth kinda girl, but I'm one of those people who likes things to look nice ... a little bit stylish.  My kids always say - 'Mum you're a little bit posh'.  That's where the name Stylish Settings came from.   I guess it might sound a little bit stuck up.  Anyway what I like about instagram is that it's photos of your 'real' life.  I've gotten to know other people better by seeing their instagram photos and I thought if I braved it and shared some of my real world, you might get to know me a little better too.

To add the instagram feed, Beth from A Welsh Girl In Australia wrote a good post and then helped me add the follow me button.  Thanks Beth.

OK - as for these two.  I set them up a while ago, and I'll leave them as they are.  They are synced to my blog so new posts appear.  If you follow blogs by one of these methods you'll see mine right at the bottom of the side bar.  I tried following people on Facebook but when you have a blog facebook account it's hard to 'like' things and comment - or at least blondie here couldn't work it out?  As for twitter - I got so sick of reading tweets for giveaways and promotions that I stopped reading them.  Maybe I'll work out a way around that?

Finally I added a Print It button to the bottom of the page.  You can see how to do that at Print Friendly.  I hate it when you want to print up some step by step instructions or a recipe and you have to print pages of ads and comments.

So that's it.  My longest ever blog post, and a fresh new look.

Now if anybody knows how to turn off the Google Friend Counter so it shows nothing rather than the number of followers, I'd be grateful if you could tell me how to do it.

Finally here I am - not hiding behind sunglasses!