Ever notice how some content on Twitter includes a summary of a shared link, often times including an image or playable media? That's referred to as a Twitter Card, and it's a great way to... | Continue »

Shitting the Bed It’s a good exercise to look back at your life and find anecdotes that define something fundamental about your personality. If you’re a bullshitter, like I am, an anecdote can explain the causes of your bullshitting. One such anecdote comes to mind: I was in my late... | Continue »

The Man Who Sprints to Restaurants Since those days of being the unhinged young man in the rakish pirate shirt, have I transformed, now twenty-five years later at the age of 54 with a wife and twin daughters, to a mature man who is now wise and self-possessed? To answer... | Continue »

The Danger of Bottling-Up Our Bed-Shitting Tendencies What do we do when we know deep down we are something we don’t want to be, a bed-shitter for example, and we want to hide this fact from others and ourselves? Ironically enough, we rely on bullshit. But all the ploys we... | Continue »

These Fabulous Peter Pan Cookies feature Tinker Bell, Peter Pan, Wendy, John, and Michael, the face of Big Ben, and a map of Never Land. These Splendid Disney cookies were made by Arty McGoo. Tinker Bell is on a blue background. She has her wand in her hand. The cooke... | Continue »

In a recent workshop we were exploring the shapes and textures of marshmallows. We dried a thin sheet of marshmallow in the dehydrator of overnight. We broke the crisp marshmallow (is it dried meringue?) into shards. We took the crisp... | Continue »

I have exciting news to share! The beloved Nicey Jane collection has bee re-issued by Free Spirit Fabric in response to your begging and pleading. Good work, everyone! Come have a look. And watch for new Nicey Jane quilt kits, pincushion kits, quilt-alongs and more. | Continue »

We take it for granted that when we open our favorite ebook app it automatically jumps right into the last book we were reading. And while that’s handy, I’d like to see at least one other option when I open the app. How about a reader-customized landing page? This page should be fully configurable, based exclusively on my particular interests. For example, we all have our favorite genres, topics and authors we like to follow. Let’s start off by allowing readers to place a widget on this landing page showing the top five bestsellers in their favorite category. Another widget I’d love to see is a quick-and-easy way to grab samples of newly published (or upcoming) books in my preferred categories. So maybe a top five list again with a one-click-sample download button next to each cover. Then there’s the social opportunity… I recently asked one of my good friends to tell me the best WWII books he’s read over the past few years. That was done through a combination of texting and email. How about adding a capability to this landing page so I can quickly find (or follow) my most trustworthy friends and answer that question right in the reader app? Both of us would have to opt in, of course, but what a great way to share and access highly relevant information, especially when it’s in such close proximity to the one-click sampling/buying process. You’ve undoubtedly seen some of this functionality on your favorite retailer’s website or through their email marketing campaigns. That’s great, but sometimes I go to amazon.com to buy dog food, not books, and my email inbox is already overflowing with other marketing messages. Frankly, I think I’ve become numb to all the sales pitches that hit my inbox every day. Now compare that to the time when I’m opening the Kindle or Google Play Books apps on my iPad; that’s when I’m focused on books, but not just reading…I’m often ready for book discovery when I launch those apps, so why not help me find what I might be interested in? I also realize most of the time we might want to just leave well enough alone and continue jumping right back into that last book we were reading. Great, but how about placing a button in the app’s nav bar to quickly take me to this configurable landing page? Another nice touch would be to let me customize the feeds by day and time. For example, if I’m opening it up during business hours I’m probably looking for work-related content. But let me also configure it to show sports and history lists and samples when it’s after 5PM or on the weekend. You’d think that Amazon would already offer something like this in the Kindle app. All the other reader apps tend to follow their lead and since books now represent such a small slice of Amazon’s overall revenue it would be great to see some other ebook retailer step up and innovate with a service like this. | Continue »

This Fabulous Downton Abbey Cake inspired by Lady Mary at her dressing table was made for the Downton Abbey Themed Cake Collaboration - A Sweet Farewell To Downton. This Terrific cake was made by Natasja Flapper from Flabbergasted Cakes. Here is Natasja’s description of her Terrific cake: When I said... | Continue »

I'm not sure why it took us until today to blend kimchi and mayonnaise. We have made kimchi-blue cheese goodness but that is more complex and less universal than what we made this evening. We roughly chopped a jar of... | Continue »

If you're a Reddit user, you know that some of the best discussions happen in the comments for posts. Reddit allows you to share that content via simple code that you can add to a... | Continue »

Did you know Typepad is on Pinterest? It's true! We love pinning and repinning great content from Typepad blogs in every genre, and we're always looking for great, inspirational content. Are you on Pinterest? Drop... | Continue »

Salem Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett is notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism. He calls people who disagree with him "trolls," while his opponent, Carole Smith, says "Listen to your town nuts." I made a 40 second video that shows how differently Bennett and Smith talked about citizen participation in... | Continue »

Simone Lopez is a cake artist who also makes amazing cake toppers. As soon as the trailers for Captain America: Civil War began being released, Simone made this terrific cake. My favorite part of the cake is the cake topper. Half of the figure is Captain America and the other... | Continue »

Here's the important choice Salem voters will make in the May 17 election for Mayor and four City Council seats. Do we want a Mayor and City Councilors who encourage us to SPEAK UP? These candidates are Carole Smith, Mayor; Cara Kaser, Ward 1; Matt Ausec, Ward 5: Sally Cook,... | Continue »

Lemon Cake Bars by Ticklebelly caught my attention... ...during Whole Foods stop | Continue »

We've talked about how to set up your RSS feed and even how to e-mail your blog posts to readers, but did you know that if you connected your blog to FeedBlitz, you could learn... | Continue »

Adding an image to your blog's sidebar is an easy way to make your blog more engaging. You may want to display an image that is related to your blog's theme, promote a cause or... | Continue »