Something SUPER cool!

YEA! NO MORE FLIES!!!!

I have a backyard and my son loves to play out there.  He plays well independently outside for a little bit, but really wants to be able to see me or check on me in the house. So we end up leaving the backdoor open. Since I don't have a screen door - that also means we have flies.  One day last summer, we had 6 - SIX - annoying flies buzzing around this house.  UGH.  I know you can relate!-right?

I've been putting off getting a screen door because I didn't think it would really be the best solution.  Here's what I wanted

NO yelling - close the screen door
NO damages - by running into it
NO slamming/banging - when it closes
No fussing around with the door when my hands are full
NO high costs
NO bugs

Sounds like I need a curtain right? That's what I thought too. Since I know how to sew now, I googled "make screen curtain" to get some patterns.   I didn't find a pattern, but I found a solution!!!

It's a screen curtain! Yep, someone already thought of the idea.  It's better than I could make it for sure.  The screen is a nice mesh, there are two panels that close together with magnets to enable hands-free use and then will close behind you. There are weights in the bottom to prevent it from blowing all around. It comes with the rod to hang. Seriously, this is exactly, exactly what I wanted.  The price - terrific!  I immediately purchased mine (I bought off amazon), received it quickly and put it up in 3 minutes!

from bugoffscreen.com

If you need a quality, inexpensive and easy screen for your door - (tall, short, sliding, french) - take a look at BugOff Instant Screen.  I'm seriously in love with ours.  My house is full of fresh air, we're playing out back and there are no flies in my house! WOO HOO! Just wanted to share this amazing product.

Back it up! Let's talk strategy.

During the 6 weeks I've been blogging, one great blog was accidentally deleted and another wonderful blogger lost a lot of information on her computer hard drive.  We all know we're supposed to back up, but so often we don't know HOW.  I did some research this week and decided on a backup strategy for my blog.

I wanted to share 4 ways to back up your blog here at Blogger, the plan for my blog and a couple extra tips.

# 1 - Have Blogger email you every time you post or receive a comment. You can set this up in the Settings tab on your Dashboard.   This is the easiest way to have all your content (posts, pictures and comments) without having to remember to do anything. Restoring from these emails is NOT easy and will be very time consuming.  However, it can be done.

Auto Email Posts:

 Auto Email comments:

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#2 - Subscribe to your blog in your reader. Then you'll have the text portions of your blog (no comments or pictures) should something happen. (although you could subscribe to your blog posts comments too)

#3 -  Export your blog. From your Blogger Dashboard, you can export your blog to a file on your harddrive. Should you need to restore it you can import it right back into Blogger.  This is done from the Settings Tab.  (blog tools, Export Blog).  This does not save your template or customizations, so make sure you copy that HTML in a separate file and save to your harddrive - every time you make changes to the layout.   You'll want to read up about exporting here and here

#4 - Use a 3rd party backup tool. I came across this back up tool for Blogger blogs. I like this one because it's FREE and not Google affiliated. With my blog, my reader and my email being with Google, that's a lot of eggs in one basket.  I tried the backup and restore functions with my test blog and am happy to report, it restored all the posts I deleted!!  It was fairly simple too. 

The software is open source located at CodePlex.com  Go to http://bloggerbackup.codeplex.com/

 MY PLAN:
I have Blogger Email my posts and I subscribe in Google reader. Those are two automatic ways I have a back up if I need it.  I don't have to remember to do anything!  This is great because I will only do the other back up tools - once a month.  I plan to do both a export from Blogger and the BloggerBackup Program. They offer different features and are both easy to use. I can spent two minutes a month backing up my blogs - that's all it will take.

I will also back up my Layout every time I make a significant change.  Do this by copying the HTML code into a text document on my harddrive. 

TIPS:
* Create a test blog! These are useful for so many things - from testing format changes to testing your backup and recovery.
* After you back up for the first time, practice a restore on a test blog!  You want to ensure you know the steps to restore and it will work properly.
* Pick a date to backup every month. Mine will be the 1st since there's other monthly triggers for that date, it will be easier for me to remember.

I'd love to hear what you're doing to back up your blog!  Got questions? Ask away!