Itsumo Mawaru

It’s about time for a blog post that has nothing to do with farming! And even then that’s a bit of a lie.

Today I’m going to talk a bit about how I administrate my websites nowadays and how that has changed over the past decade and a half.

This blog, my HPRF site  and my yarn blog all run on a content management system called WordPress. What is a CMS? It’s a tool that lets you manage the content apart from the visual display and functionality of the website. A good analogy would be to think of the way a pressroom works. Each writer works on the content of their story and hands it off to the editor, who wraps it up in the newspaper’s theme and presents it as one whole work.

This simple concept has changed the way I’ve chosen to develop websites.

I was a relatively early adopter of HTML given that I was like 8 at the time. Back in those days content and presentation were one and the same, you had one file with both things and to change one you could potentially mess up the other. Jump forward five years or so and while the adoption of the internet increased you still had one webmaster who was responsible for combining content and presentation. It was taxing work.

Nowadays though, with the adoption of the internet and blogging and social media in general, people are more confident with their abilities to create and manage the content. But it’s still a great idea to keep the presentation separated off in its own area, that way it can be changed independent of the content and vice versa.

Combine this concept with the open-source movement and you get a project like WordPress. Here’s another analogy for you, making a website with WordPress is a bit like going to a Build-a-bear store and making your custom stuffed animal. There are shelves of themes, tweaks, and plugins for you to modify your site with, and in the end you will end up with a website suited to your liking. As a designer I love this because I hate reinventing the wheel. If I want to integrate my Flickr pictures, I can simply install a Flickr plugin, authenticate the plugin with the Flickr site itself, and bam it’s done. Now with one click I can insert a picture from my Flickr account. The ease of plugins like this lets me as an admin improve my site constantly to end up with a great user experience.

This is what the screen looks like for writing a post on my blogs and sites. You can see I have my Flickr pictures loaded in below and clicking on them puts it right into the post!

And thankfully my skills as a coder and designer are not for naught. While there are tons of themes available for free and for money, having HTML and CSS skills lets you create and modify themes on your own. So I can still build you the exact site you want if you started out with a sketch, it will simply be powered by WordPress underneath, which lets you come in and put your content whenever and wherever you want.

Speaking of which, I have some time nowadays so if you’d like to have a website created or know of someone who does, give me a shout! From little personal family blog to serious money-making websites I can do them all for you.

In the coming days I’ll be posting more posts here about my WordPress love, such as listing out some of my most valued plugins and tweaks.

My gosh. Comparing my life half a year ago to the one I live now is like comparing apples to lightbulbs – completely impossible and without any real purpose whatsoever. But very different indeed. Back then I had too much time and little passion. Now I have too much passion and too little time! What’s a girl to do?

I’ve been spending the past weeks doing tons of farming stuff: deworming the sheep, harvesting the garden as it produces stuff, and trying to figure out what the next steps are for my farm’s growth.

This is Lee. He is my new Border Collie. We’ve been together for just under two weeks now and I think we make a great team together, me being an eager-to-train person and him being a dog that needs a bit more of a firm hand. Every time we go out he gets compliments and snuggles. The last time we went out he met a fellow breeder who then wanted his contact information for a breeding in a few months’ time. Just like that he makes friends and clients!

Mom and I picked up two sheep from Bill’s farm: Macaroon, pictured here, and Rolo, not pictured. I am heading back down there on Thursday to pick up another two sheep, one more ewe and a ram. This will bring my numbers to 12 in the first year. Amazingly fast yes but I really do love these gals and guys.

Here is the second set of stamps I carved for the stamp swap I participated in. This person’s theme was tattoo flash. Ideas that went through my mind included a I love Mom tattoo, the traditional anchor tattoo, and even a koi fish. The idea of a pin up girl was right in there of course. I really like how the rose turned out, you can see the closed-up center portion very clearly, though truth be said I am proud of all of these stamps. I think my pin up girl started looking a bit like Counselor Troi from Star Trek TNG but hey that’s life!

Best of all, Canada Post delivered these stamps in under 18 hours, from dropping it off here in Alfred to being signed for in Toronto. That certainly made up for the $8 tracking number I chose to put on it!

Hi readers! I haven’t been posting here too often, have I? Indeed I am posting a lot over at the farm’s blog.

But here is a special post with some pictures of crafts I’ve done recently.

I participated in a stamp swap with two other Canadians. One partner sent me this quartet of stamps. She did a great job on my logo stamp and it’s so hefty that it stamps wonderfully and authoritatively. I will get a lot of use out of it! In fact I used all but the sewing machine stamp when I replied to a friend’s wedding invitation. Yup, I stamped the heck out of the return envelope

This is  a set I made for one of my partners. It’s The Veggie Bunch. They were super fun to carve. I’ll make up a set for myself eventually.

I am waiting for the second partner to post pictures of my stamps before I post the picture here. Her theme was tattoos, so those stamps were things I had never really carved before and were a lot of fun to carve as well.

Oh, and what’s that secret stamp on the letter? It’s a sneak preview of one stamp in my first series of Farm Sketches prints! I’ve been casually sketching and carving stamps based on living here on the farm. In the near future I will be making some prints involving these stamps for people to purchase. Since most of the proceeds go right back into the farm and animals, it’s a great way to support the farm and get something of value in return. These prints will range in size from business card individual prints to 8.5×11 montages, and as with most of my creations, will be available in the best of colors: rainbow!

Attention readers. I have an announcement to make.

I love my little boys! Look at Volcano God! Those tender loving eyes! That pink nose! (Yes, it changed from black to pink, how magical!) That timid but inquisitive attitude! That frosted mouth and white ears! That soft and luxurious fleece! And best of all, he’s now in the mood to come and say hello (if you don’t spook him by moving suddenly) and accept pets and snuggles. I feel confident that I have picked a great herd sire. He’s like a super better nicer version of Frankie.

Who would have ever thought sheep would give me so much pleasure? Look at little Peebs. Well he’s not so little anymore! I can still pick him up, barely, but the next time I do so I’ll probably end up injuring myself. He’s still as full of love as always, and he’ll tell you when you aren’t snuggling him enough. Look at that gorgeous fleece. It’s crimpy and jet black at its base, although I did see one grey hair mixed in so I expect he’s not a pure super black. This is the kind of sheep I want to raise, personable but not aggressive, soft and loving and happy.

And my golden boy, Price. The timidest of them all, he still won’t come up for pets. But since his older brother is, I expect he will soon. His horns are growing faster than Volcano God’s. He also has a chocolate brown nose. How can twins from the same mom and dad be so different! This is part of the wonders of Shetland sheep, their natural color spectrum and varied genetics means your sheep aren’t carbon copies of each other.

I honestly had no clue how happy these guys would make me. No matter how you feel, no matter what the weather is like, these guys are always there ready to distract you from your worries. They have no worries of their own. They live happy fun-filled lives. In fact, I’m pretty sure sheep are happy batteries, they save up their daily happiness and share it with you when you snuggle them. I never knew that my life was incomplete without these sheep. Now that they are with me, I could never think of letting them go.