How to make a post gallery for your sidebar!

Hello readers of Cropped Stories! I'm Alicia and I blog over at A Sweet Fragrance. My family and I are American-born but live as expats over in SE Asia. I blog about our life overseas, recipes I attempt to make while substituting lots of ingredients, projects I do around the house, "tot school" lessons I teach to my toddler, and lessons I learn through parenting and walking with the Lord. I hope you'll stop by my blog for a visit!

Just before the year 2013 came to an end, I decided I wanted to redesign my blog. I had a picture of what I wanted for the new design in my head but getting that design to appear on my blog required turning my thoughts into HTML coding.

Parenting like the Parisians - a contributor post

I've written about French parents before. So it's not too much of a secret when I tell you that I am a Cuban American parent who j'adores French parenting (whew)! That's a whole lot of culture in that one sentence. Maybe that's because in the world of parenting, my style seems to fit in with that of Parisian parents.

 

Let me explain...

 

My ideas of being a mom, when I had my first bébé, didn't seem to fit what I had always seen. It didn’t seem very American. Much of what I knew about parenting in the states included sacrifice and identity loss. Many conversations I heard revolved around how much of yourself you had to give up, when you have kids, in order to be a good parent. I spent all of my 20's being focused on me. When I got pregnant, I believed this changed.  To completely focus on another would happen naturally when I gave birth. Like I would deliver a baby, a placenta, and a complete selfless attitude in one push. That didn't happen. Rats. By these standards, I was not a good parent.

 

Tips for parenting two children under two!

In the last few weeks of my second pregnancy, I remember thinking one constant thought. When this kid comes out, I'm going to have two kids under the age of two running around on this earth. And the idea of that immediately wall-slammed me to this thought: I wonder if there's a way to keep this second one in my belly a bit longer, at least until he's on solids.   Unfortunately, our ObGyn said this was not "advisable."   So, when he came out a week shy of forty, husband and I hit the ground running with our pre-planned ideas of how to parent two children under two while trying not to go Cuckoo Clock bonkers in the process.

Photography Exposure Tips: Understanding Shutter Speed

Hello, again, to the wonderful Cropped Stories readers.  This is Jen from West Street Story, and I am back today with additional photography tips for you.  If you remember my previous post, Photography Exposure Tips, I discussed ISO, one of the three settings you should consider for achieving proper exposure in your photographs, otherwise known as the photographic triangle. 

Today, however, I will be providing you information on shutter speed.

Photography Exposure Tips: Understanding ISO

Hello Cropped Stories readers!  I am so excited to be here as a guest contributor.  Keep an eye out for my posts here on Cropped Stories as I will be providing tips as a non-professional photographer trying to achieve professional looking photographs.

Today’s post is all about ISO.  While I was in Hawaii, one of the tours I did was a photography expedition.  I found a local photographer that offered these personal, one-on-one tours.  I went into it thinking he was just going to take me around the island, and we would capture some pretty pictures.  However, I gained SO MUCH more than just a few tropical photographs.  He taught me things about my camera and photography that brought my picture taking skills to a whole new level.  I will benefit from what I learned for the rest of my life!

And guess what?  I am going to share some of the things that I learned with you!

Pumpkin apple pecan waffles!

 

Living in the Dominican Republic has many summertime perks. We don't do summertime sadness here because, well, it's always summer. You can go to the beach in the middle of January and not freeze your patoots off. It's a nice change for this January baby to be able to plan a birthday that will not be cancelled due to the looming and fast approaching winter snowstorm of the century. Buuuuut, with an eternal summer comes an extinct autumn. I've got that autumn-time sadness. So because the Dominican Republic won't give me fall, I've got to go get her. This past weekend, for our family breakfasts, I decided to make pumpkin apple pecan waffles. We purchased a waffle maker from another abroad teacher moving to Bangladesh, so I was super thrilled to use our new to us waffle maker for my fall recipe.

The Versatile Blogger Award

So guess what?  I was nominated for another award!  How freakin’ excited am I?!  This time, Tarana from Sand in my Toes (don’t you just love her blog name) nominated me and I am beyond honored!  It’s such an amazing feeling to know that someone thought of you, and that little ol’ blog of yours, especially when you least expected it!  And to be nominated for being versatile, is especially wonderful!  Makes me happy, for once, not to have limited myself to blogging about one topic like maybe I made the right decision about branching out!  So thank you Tarana for recognizing me!

Want to contribute to Cropped Stories? (oh, and enter a GIVEAWAY)?

It’s a new day.  It’s an EXCITING day!  Why you ask?  Well because today I’ve decided it would be fun to have interested parties contribute content to Cropped Stories!  Why contribute?  Well let’s see…

In addition to getting to work with me (by the way, I’ve been told I’m extremely fun to work with) and building a new friendship, how about free exposure for your website?  Interested to know how much exposure?  No worries, I would want to know too!  Check out my blog stats currently updated specifically for this post: