I’m so excited to share some big news with you!  A few days ago I received an email letting me know that Holiday Magazine is now available!  Perhaps you recall that day in July I spent shooting with Matthew at my house. You can see all of our styling and the feature revealed on the pages of the new Holiday.

Holiday Magazine with Matthew Mead will be sold on newsstands later in the season, however there is an expanded keepsake issue ready right now for purchase. The keepsake edition is bigger and contains additional pages of beautiful holiday ideas, recipes, and projects.

The expanded issue can be ordered online to arrive directly in your mailbox before the newsstand edition is available.  Expert stylist Matthew Mead creates a simple yet spectacular holiday for you with creative ideas for handmade crafts, unique gifts, elegant decorations, and scrumptious edibles. This special issue includes so much inspiration from the Christmas cookies to seasonal home makeovers to exquisite paper crafts. Inside you’ll find contributions from bloggers including Stephanie Nielson (The NieNie Dialogues), Tricia Foley, Living Locurto, Savour Fare, Brooklyn Limestone and me! 

I was so honored to be included in this issue and to work side by side with Matthew. For the magazine, I recreated our New Year’s Eve buffet table in a fresh color palette of vivid pinks paired with lime green. You’ll read about our New Year’s Eve traditions and a party that’s incomplete without the three C’s: cheesecake, chocolate, and champagne.   

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Hey all, hope you had a great weekend!  I spend it with my good friend and fellow blogger Rhoda visiting from Atlanta playing tour guide and I gave her the whirlwind tour of our region.  Here’s a peek what we’ve been up to for the last few days. 

Any visit to my place begins with a glass of something special in the backyard, time to shake off all of the discomforts of travel and chill, relax, chillax!  

I took her on my favorite quick tour of the WC which includes Viansa . . .

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Greetings all, welcome to a fun little get together all about the favorite things in your town!  I look forward to reading about where you all live and what you love about it. 

Quickly, I’ll share my three favorite things about where I live.  For those who don’t know, I live in a great little town called Petaluma in Northern California, which had a little feature in Country Living last year.  It’s 45 minutes north of San Francisco, 30 minutes from the coast, and next door to Sonoma in the heart of the Wine Country, which brings me to my first favorite thing about where I live . . .

1) Proximity   I’m a lucky gal, I get to make day trips to San Francisco and some weekends we head out to the coast, but my most favorite thing about my town is being surrounded by vineyards and having quick access to great wines.  

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I was typing up a post last night and all of sudden a few strange things started to happen.  Little red flags started popping up on my desktop.  I had a sneaking suspicion something had slipped through my virus protection, with the little error messages that I started getting.  Then, blackness.  Nothing.   I rebooted, hoping for the best.  This is what I saw. 

Uh oh.  Dun dun dun.

Of all the messages in all the world, this is not the one I needed to see!  I tried every which way to restore the computer but alas, three hours later, I can’t access any information on my hard drive, it appears I lost my data.  Did I panic?  Nope.  This is gonna sound like a commercial, but I don’t care.  It was Carbonite to the rescue. 

Check it.

All of it saved. All of my weblog posts, all of my pictures, all of my documents.  Over 270 GB all automatically backed up.  YES!  The best money I’ve ever spent.  $50 bucks a year, and worth every penny.  Not a tear shed on what might have been a massive loss of data.  Whew!!!!!  Can I get an amen !!!!!

Online backup is the best invention EVER.

I’m off to invest in another computer today, be back soon, promise! 

Have you backed up your data? 

If not, do it today.  You’ll be sooooo thankful you did.

 **** Computer update:  I learned the error message above is a fake computer scanning virus called “System Repair” or “HDD Control” which makes it appear you’ve lost your data, and seeks to collect money to remove it.  Scam!  A kind reader (Lisa) directed me to Bleeping Computer where I followed the instructions for removal.  It took several hours, but I was finally able to remove the malicious malware.  I still plan on getting a new computer for the blog and putting the old dinosaur in the family space for kids’ schoolwork.  Still sooo glad I have Carbonite, gave me such peace of mind.   Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories! 

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I’m such a fan of Pinterest and find myself pinning my favorites quotes from time to time.  I got to thinking how easy it really is to create your own free printable word art with free online editing software.  Not everyone has access to Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, or the skills to use them proficiently like many talented graphic artists. 

I know the basics of Photoshop, and work with it from time to time to make inspiration boards, but most of the time, I turn to the free and very user friendly software programs provided by Picasa (and Picnik) that I’ve mentioned in the past.  Nope, I’m not getting paid to say, it, I just have been using these two for years and love what they can do!  I use them often for my own photo editing and watermarking but they are equally great for creating your own artwork with fun fonts. 

If you want to make your own free printable word art for your home in any color, style and font you love, it’s really easy if you follow a few simple steps.

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