Lionmom's Musings

I recently opened a Twitter account at the behest of my son.  I have seen that some of you have “Follow Me On Twitter” postings on your websites and blogs.  I don’t have much experience with it yet and would be interested in finding out what experiences you have had with it and how you are using it. 

For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, it is a free micro-blogging, social networking site that lets you let people know what is going on with you, your niches or anything else in a few short sentences. 

I have only used it a little bit, but will see how it goes.  So Folow Me On Twitter

Well, I am finally back from Israel.  My grandson did wonderfully with his Bar Mitzvah portion–thank you very much!!! (What else would a proud grandma say?!)  I really had a good time, but I am still jet-lagged.  Still, I had to go back to work today — for one day this week.  (At least, I have the weekend to recouperate some more.)  Then it will be back to working on some of my websites in ernest.  I see that some of my domains are now due for renewal. 

Yes, my vacation in Israel is well underway.  I have now been to Jerusalem for the third time since I have been here.  This time to finish my shopping for gifties for friends and family.  This time it took me only about an hour to do it all.  Visited same shop that I have gotten things in before.  I also got to see an old friend I have known for 40 years and find that her daughter will be in a supervisory position where my granddaughter will be doing hospital public service as an alternative to the army next year.  My granddaughter thinks she already met her too.  I told her to mention the connection I have to her mother.

Yesterday, we went to the stagaltite caves near Beit Shemesh (between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem). This is the second time I have been.  They are very pretty!!

Just one day away from the start of the BarMitzvah activities.  We have all of our clothes ready and my grandson has his speech ready.  We are really looking forward to it!! 

Well, I’m in the Middle East….Israel to be exact.  The Sabbath is over and the sun has just come up on Sunday.  I plan on maybe going into Jerusalem to go shopping or to the beach or to the stalagmite caves near my son’s home.  Don’t know yet!  I have my camera…and a new len…telephoto…..Yippee!!  I can get closeups!!

What has any of this got to do with BANS?  Not much…other than I am taking something of a break….but not really, since I am on this blog!!  For anyone interested, one of my stores is for Israeli products….The Dead Sea Products!  Nice stuff!!  You should visit, already.  In case you didn’t know, the Dead Sea Muds have been used for hundreds of years for beauty and health treatments. 

There, this was my one plug for my business.  I probably won’t be doing much of it while I am away!!  I intend to have fun and attend my grandson’s Bar Mitzvah!! 

Hi Folks,

Well I am  on vacation.  I’m mostly visiting family but plan to do some touring.  I hope to be back in about two weeks.  Will post some more a little later on. 

Have my posts been getting a little thin lately? Could it be because I am moving….

Yes, folks, I am getting ready to leave the beautiful State of Washington for one state south – Oregon! And, much to my surprise, my sister has informed me that a mere 25 miles from my new home was the home of Oregon pioneer (circa 1850), William Hatchett (Uncle Billy) Vaughn; who was apparently my great, great, great uncle (or did she say two greats?). Anyway, this is really fascinating. I plan on finding his home, which is in the Oregon historical registry, as soon as I have time.

In the mean time, I am doing moving type things and working on my BANS sites as I am able. I am making some fairly good money right now with BANS, so I am pretty happy.

Yes, I did it!  I love this new theme.  It is clean, crisp, AND it has tags in it. The one thing I lost was a third column and widgets.

See what you think.

Well, Zoe did it after all.  She and two of her friends (Max and Esther) triple teamed the vole who Finally  came out from behind the book case and trapped it underneath the TV stand. 

Hooray for Zoe and friends!

In case, you don’t Squidoo, think about it.  I am still getting quite a bit of traffic to my Niche Stores from Squidoo.  I have gotten a fairly respectible rating there too.  I have found that one of the secrets to keeping it fairly high is to make regular posts every few days…even small changes or additions help.  Of course, more significant changes give a bigger boost. 

So why not check out my Squidoo Lens -ILoveBANS-BuildANicheStore. There is a lot of stuff there about BANS-Build A Niche Store.

Zoe is my little girl kitty that we got last winter from the pound.  I had made the mistake of going into Animal Services “just to look” at the kitties.  I had been looking for a polydactyl (six toed-like Hemingway’s cats) kitty. 

So what do I see, but a little black and white kitty, with the oddest white markings on her front toes and a cute white spot on her chin–and Very, very friendly!  I was won over and  a few days later, I took her home.

And now I have this “crazy” mad cat that is all kitten and tears around the house.  She has won over my boy kitty and my other girl kitty who doesn’t like other cats very much.  She is anything but sedate, however.   For a tiny thing, she eats more than the other two combined and pushes everyone out of their food bowl, which is why our cat sitter calls her “Miss Pig Pig”

More likely – “Miss Huntress”.  She goes after voles, birds, bugs and anything else small that moves.  And she is good at it….too good!  We have found a several birds that she has gotten and she is So Proud, Oye!  The piece de resistance, was today when she gleefully ran into the house…I thought for dinner…but with a live vole that got away and ran behind the book case.  Now I have three cats sitting as sentries by the book case.  I hope this thing comes out soon and we can get it.  It sure won’t have any plant roots to eat in here….To be continued……… 

Well, we are finally getting around to doing garden clean-up.  Last fall was too rainy, last spring was still too rainy.  Late sping we didin’t want to disturb the beautiful flowers blooming in the garden.  So here we are, early summer and the weeds have taken over and we are trying to get the house ready for sale.  I have to say that I have been very good at making some serious headway in a week. 

Today, we had someone over to do some pruning of out of countrol shrubs.  Soon, I will have the hardy geraniums and daiseys cut back, and I can start working on getting some nice annuals in to spiff up the place and lay down some beauty bark to finish it off.  I have even gone against my usual aversion to weed killers and gotten some Round-Up.  (Yes, it does have it’s place, and is less harmful and less long lasting than many other weed killers.) 

Fortunately, we have a small lot and don’t need a power mower and only have a push mower.  So, we will see how it turns out! 

Well I finally decided to figure out how to add Feedburner to my blog.  (Yes, it will be nice if someone likes my blog and wants to subscribe!) 

So, downloaded the plugin and moved it with FTP to my plugin section of WordPress on my server. Then,  I proceeded to install it and activate it in my plugin’s menu within the WordPress Admin Panel.  Then, I set out to configure it.  Not quite so easy!  Google’s directions noted setting it up within the “Options Menu”–I could not find Anything that said “Options”.  I finally found instructions that were a little more clear on another website and proceeded to do the actual setup.

As you can see, it is working.  I set up the feeds for both “Content” and “Comments” and copied the chicklet thingie to my Template.  Wala!  I have links to my feeds!!  Feel free to subscribe to them.  Enjoy!!

Well, after nearly a week, I think my Pepperjam is finally working correctly.  I had only to go to the Admin Page of my site and found that, to my surprise, my Pepperjam ID was there.  It seems that Tech Support had not quit with putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, but had then gone on, a day later, to make the ID work.  I have no idea how this was achieved, because it sure didn’t work for me, but I am glad that it is working now.  The tracking and everything else seem to be fine.  I will try to upgrade another site, but will probably wait until I see how this one is doing.

Like many of you BANS users, I thought I would give Pepperjam a spin.  Most of the posts I have read on the BANS forum indicate that you are interested in doing a test run with a few stores to compare with how your others are performing or how Pepperjam manages the account as opposed to EBay Affiliates.  A few wanted to plunge in with all. 

Like many, I too, want to give it a try with a few stores.  I have signed up – no problem there.  I registered for the EBay affiliate option.  I think I am active, because EBay shows up in my Admin Panel for Pepperjam.  I uploaded the updates to my hosting account.  I changed the ID to the Pepperjam ID.  And here is where the problems began.  Clicking on an item takes me to the main EBay site and no item.  I wrote about it on the BANS forum and had some help, but no resolution.  In fact, I thought my site may be dead; but BANS support fixed the problem, but not the problem with the links to the items.  I have another email out to support, and am just waiting. 

I sure hope to get this resolved soon.  Of course, in the mean time, I converted the site back to EPN so I can get traffic and maybe some sales.  It definitely has potential!

Today my work had their annual rose show.  For the 7th or 8th year I entered.  Until last year, I had never gotten any of the main awards.  Now for the 2nd year in a row, two of my entries won best in category awards.  I am so pleased!

It is really interesting because I do very little with my roses.  I fertilize and prune them, but not much else.  Still, they are fairly healthy and are giving me flowers that I am able to get awards with. 

I really love summer and roses!!