How to Add Social Media Buttons in Blogger // Getting Technical

If you've been around here, you've probably witnessed at least one reference to my complete lack of technological know-how.  (Most recently here.  I don't know much, but I can shamelessly link back to my own posts with the best of them.)  I would love to have the kind of brain that can read HTML like it was English and care about details enough to have everything just how it's supposed to be, but I have the opposite of that brain.  The result is that, in order to keep my blog in one piece of something that kind of resembles a blog, I've spent lots of time Youtubing different Blogger formatting techniques and Googling "How to easily blahblahblahblahah on blogger" or "shortcut for a asfkjas;lkjf widget."  Pro tip:  throwing an "easy" in front of just about any blog thing that you Google (or Bing, if you're into that) saves lots of time.  

If you're as averse to computery stuff as me, you'll appreciate this method of doing things.  It involves no know-how in regards to HTML code whatsoever and doesn't take too long - for me, the hardest part was finding social media buttons that I liked!  You can watch the video that I learned this stuff from here , or if you prefer words I've got the steps written out for you!  Happy blog layouting!

Step 1 | Download social media buttons that you like. 
Surf Pinterest and all the internet places for social media icons.  I prefer the free kind; here are some of my personal favorites:  these, these, these, and these.  You can make your own, too, if you can't find anything to fit your blog or are feeling adventurous.  That's what I did, using Picmonkey.   Once you've picked out the perfect style for your blog, download the icons and save them so that you can easily find them again. 

Step 2 | Insert the icons as picture in a blog post. 
In Blogger, start a new blog post.  In the top left corner of the new post window, just below the title of your blog, there are two buttons:  Compose and HTML.  The default setting for creating a blog post is the compose option, so click the HTML button to switch to HTML mode.  (This keeps the icons aligned correctly and eliminates unneeded space between the images.)  Insert all of the social media buttons that you're going to use in our blog layout.  

Step 3 | Link images to your social media pages. 
Switch back to compose mode by clicking the button in the top lefthand corner of the window.  You should now be able to see the images that you have inserted into your blog post.  Now, link each icon to its appropriate social media page.  (For example, navigate to your Twitter profile page on your computer.  Copy the text that appears in the search bar when you are on your profile page.  In the blog post with the social media icons, click on the Twitter icon.  Then, click the Link button in the toolbar.  In the window that appears, paste the URL to your Twitter profile in the box labeled, "To what URL should this link go?" and click OK.)  Do this for all of the social media icons that you will be using.  

Step 4 | Insert icons into blog layout. 
Keep your new blog post open.  Open up Blogger again in a separate window.  From the Blogger home page, click the drop down arrow for the blog that you are inserting your social media icons into and select layout.  In the layout editing page, click a box that says "Add a Gadget" in the area of your blog that you want your social media icons to appear.  Choose the "HTML/Java script" option from the list of gadgets (it's the 11th one down.)  Click back to your new blog post and switch to HTML mode.  Copy the entire HTML code and paste it into the "Content" box of the HTML/Java script gadget window and click save.  Your social media buttons should now appear on your blog and will navigate to your social media accounts when you click on them! 

Step 5 | Not publishing or deleting your new blog post.
Save your new blog post as a draft so that the code for your icons is available in case of emergency.  I named my post "Social Media Icons - Do Not Publish Or Delete!!!" and that's working pretty well so far.  

I hope this was helpful to you!  If you have any questions or if I've left anything out, please let me know so that I can fix it. 

Allie

The Most Important Thing // On Brokenness and Hope

You know when you're talking to someone about something and you can tell that they really are just not interested in what you have to say?  Like Kelly from The Office? I'll tell you now that this post might involve a lot of The Office references, because I've watched a record number of episodes this weekend thanks to Netflix on my phone.  For those of you who haven't ever watched The Office, 1. Get Netflix on your phone or anywhere you can get it right now. 2. Kelly sometimes goes on these long, really girly monologues and whoever she's talking to usually really doesn't care.  So now you're all caught up until I reference something else.  I'll try to keep it to a minimum. 

  .            (That's Kelly up there ^^^^^^^^)
When it comes to certain topics, I can sometimes feel like I'm Kelly and God is Ryan.  And Jim.  And Michael.  And everyone else who doesn't really care that much about what Kelly has to say.  I know that God cares about me, but there are some aspects of my life that I just don't think are a big deal to him.  I think we all have them, whether it's how our sports team does or what we eat or what kinds of grades we get.  Somehow, the things that constitute a big part of our lives seem much too small to even register on the radar of our all-powerful God. 

For the longest time, I was convinced that my relationships were one of those things.  I don't know when the idea entered my mind, but I assumed that friend drama, family disagreements, and boy trouble didn't matter that much to God.  I thought that since He knows so much, my little human conflicts wouldn't matter to him similarly to the way that a child's struggles can seem minute to an adult.  Through some circumstances in my life, I got to know God better.  I got to know that not only does God care about my relationships, but they are of utmost importance to him. 

You see, God works in relationships.  That's how He gets into the hearts of His people and it's how He shows up in amazing ways.  I mean, He created us to relationship (that's a verb now) with Himself and the people around us, after all.  One of his first projects after man was made was to establish the companionship between husband an wife.  His entire plan for salvation was based on reconstructing a relationship that the people He loved had dashed to pieces.  So, um, I think that He most certainly cares, very deeply, about the way I connect with other people.  

That knowledge is so comforting in a world that brings heartache in waves and where relationships stand gingerly on a basis of fragile human merit.  To know that God is the creator of relationships and kind of an expert at fixing them, along with the now undeniable fact that He always desires for bonds to be forged instead of broken, has allowed me to walk on rocky seas of angry words and miscommunications and hurt hearts over and over again.  When I'm running out of my own reserves of hope for a situation, all I have to do is go to God's heart for that hope to be renewed again, because I know that, above all, God is a God of wholeness and love and community, and that He is always working to that end. 

I was reminded of that truth again yesterday morning over coffee at our weekly Sunday morning family Bible study.  We were working through 2 Samuel 14 on a whim of my little sister.  I don't know if you know it?  It's one of many parts of the Bible that deals with the ungodly actions of King David's kids; it starts out with a rape and a murder and ends with a beautiful reunion.  David's son, Absalom, has just killed his brother (after that brother had raped his own sister, mind you) and run away from his father and his kingdom.  One of David's higher-ups, Joab, in an effort to reunite father and son, sends a woman to talk some sense into David, who isn't acting to bring his son back.  (There's a lot more to it than that, but we won't go into it right now.)  The woman speaks to David of God's heart, saying, 

"But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast."                                                                                               

   -2 Samuel 14:14b

It takes a lot of encouragement from Joab and more than two years of waiting, but eventually what the woman says proves true:  God orchestrates a plan that brings David and his son back together into the closeness that God intended originally, because that is what's at God's heart.  That is what He cares about. 

As usual, God's timing is perfect and this reminder came just as I am struggling through a hurting friendship of my own.  In the face of what seems like overwhelming damage, it's really, really hard not to simply give up in favor of an easier path.  With God, though, hope enters the picture.  I know that He is big enough to overcome any obstacle; He knows the words that need to be said and He, the potter, can soften hearts of clay.  I know that with Him, things are possible that never would be otherwise.  That's probably the most important, amazing, counter intuitive thing about God and relationships:  only when they're broken beyond repair can God truly show his full capacity to restore and bring us to experience Him to the fullest.  

Love, 

Allie

Pictures of Elephants and Cookies for Days // The Sunday Paper

Sundays are for church, long walks, big dinners, last-minute homework, and clicking all the links.  I can provide for one of the four (and, no, I will not be making my specialty (that'd be these brownies) for dinner tonight.)

Isn't this beautiful?  And the story behind it makes things even better.

 Tiffany Han is doing one of the coolest things I think I've ever heard of, ever.  As in, she's making me actually want to get rejected 100 times.

 "I would like to look at this from a perspective of not being idle or a gossip/ busybody at any stage of our lives as women who have surrendered to Christ. Because really, we have so much more to aspire to. ...There is a major difference between investing in friendships and inquiring (or stalking), thinking ' "what's her deal?" '." She's so right.

True confessions.  One brave blogger stops lying to herself ... and then shares it with the world.

What do you think? This is a tough one.

Taylor Swift has me singing nonstop and making plans to book a plane or a train or walk or whatever it takes to see her in person.  Multiple times, if possible.  And I'm completely justified - here's why!

I made the chocolate chip version of these this week and was told that they had "the perfect texture and THE ABSOLUTE  most proportional cookie to chocolate chip ratio, EVER!" (At which point I humbly accepted praise for the recipe that I obviously invented myself.)  So, her you go: all the pudding cookie recipes.

Have the best Sunday ever!

Allie