*giggles!* :star:

So… is it a bit more cheerful than the dreary gray rainbow that was up for the past two years?

I still have lots of tweaking to do, but couldn’t resist putting it up now!! I haven’t checked it in any browsers or resolutions other than my own. I know it’s a bit “off” in some places. I’ll work on that in a few days (after my anniversary/ trip to Holiday World!).

Update: Still working on tweaking things and trying to fix the issues with Google Chrome!

Thanks to Tracy for letting me the comments were messed up. I think they work now, but I will have to change the styling later.

And Bah Humbug – my Twitter clouds at the top are messed up on my laptop but not on the other two computers in my house.

Edit – I HAD a new layout, but since upgrading to the newest version of WP I am having issues with plugins and all sorts of madness I need to sort out. So, if you got to see it for the hour or two it was up, lucky you! I’ll have to fix it all now….sometime….

At the beginning of the summer, I honestly had plans to work a lot more on Rainbow Stuff. I was working on a new layout and came up with a cool logo. I had planned to catch up on some of my favorite blogs that I have fallen behind in reading. I was also going to try to blog more often. What happened? Well, life happened I guess. When it became official that I would be teaching first grade this upcoming school year, I spent like two straight weeks at the school every day, all day working on my classroom. When not at school, I’m usually shopping for things for my classroom or working on stuff for school. If I’m not doing anything school related, I’m either playing Wii (especially Mario Kart. I so need to unlock Dry Browser!), doing Quilting Bee things, or… just doing nothing and trying to chill! School starts in a little over two weeks, and I feel like I haven’t even had a break. People who think teachers have it easy by having the summers off are sadly mistaken.

I do want to include a little eye candy for everyone out there who is kind enough to stumble upon my website and read this commemorative 200th blog post. The below picture is the picture of the calendar image I created for our school calendar page in the district calendar. It’s pretty much the same idea as the one I did last year. Instead of a corkboard feel I went with a chalkboard feel. It’s pretty good I think. (Apparently I don’t have a copy of the final calendar image on my computer at home. I’ll have to get it from school on Monday.)

The second first picture is of my classroom door at school without the fabulous curtains I made with my mom’s help. I did post some pictures on Flickr of my classroom. A LOT has been done in my classroom since I took those pictures, so on Monday I plan to take some new ones. And the third second picture is of Pouncy just because. She had her 18th birthday at the beginning of July (the 5th).

So, as I have mentioned twice now, I will be going to the school on Monday. Why? I have an interview at 10:30 on Monday. Not an interview for me though. I will actually get to be on the other side of the interviewing table for a change. Our first grade special education teacher got a job closer to where she lives (gas prices are a killer), so we need a new special ed. teacher. Since I am going to be working with this person, I was invited to come and take part in the interview. I think only one person is being interviewed, so it must be someone good or someone that someone else knows or something. I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m sort of excited that I get to take part in interviewing someone else for a change.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Well, tonight my dad is racing. It’ll be his second time racing this season and my first time getting to see him this season. Hopefully I can get those pictures I mentioned on Monday and post again then. I’m not making any promises, but I will certainly try. I hope everyone has a great rest of their weekend!

I’ve learned a lot in the past year. It was almost a year ago (it will be a year March 21st!) that I switched from CuteNews to WordPress. Boy, was it scary at first! I went from messy code, iframes, and tables to this complex database driven content management system. Whoa. With the help of my friends at The Quilting Bee and a lot of trial and error, my website has now evolved into something I hope is more organized, uniform, and enjoyable for visitors.

Real quick, here are some things new with this theme: With this particular theme I have worked a lot more with different classes and ids. I’ve done a lot of work with the CSS file and tried to rely on CSS more than just sticking things into the actual page itself. (Did that make sense? I hope I said that right.) I’ve also installed a lot of really nifty plugins (including a cool 404 page!). I spent way more time on creating the graphics for the layout. Things are better organized I think. I added a lot more “me” I think as far as content goes and a lot more “stuff” in general (with more to come!). I also made some cool icons and smilies.

I’ve spent a great deal of time checking my site in various browsers (Firefox, IE 6 and 7, Opera, and Safari). I’ve got a few little things to tweak in IE, Opera, and Safari but for the most part, my site is looking okay in various browsers. I’ve also spent a lot of time going through and re-validating all of the pages. I think I’ve caught all the errors now. A lot of the errors I had were silly things that creeped into my code because I was exhausted while working on my site for hours at a time.

One of the things I am most proud of (and probably no one will care as much about) is my registration page. If you click to login to my site or register, you will see a lovely login box that matches my site. I absolutely hated that generic WordPress blue one that’s the default. It wasn’t anything major to change that, but I just felt so excited when I got that all sorted out. :star:

The next thing on my list (apart from finishing up the “Hobbies” pages and tweaking things) is to blog more often!! I have tons of ideas of things to blog about. Hopefully I can some up with some things to make you think or entertain you.

I’m so tired!! It’s about time for me to go to sleep now. Please, please please give me some feedback on my new theme! I’d really like to know what you honestly think. I know some people are going to hate the rainbows, and that’s fine, but I’d like as much feedback as possible. And if you see something that doesn’t look right to you – let me know! (I think my Gravatar plgin may not be working?) I may have missed something. :wacko: Staring at code can make you crazy. I am not a php ninja like some. :ninja:

Edit: If you’re still seeing the old layout, hit refresh.

If you noticed things being weird for a few minutes today, this is why. If you notice any weird things going on with my links or anything, please do let me know.

EDIT: Okay, I signed up with Site5 about half an hour ago. They seemed to be the place that would offer me everything I want/need at a good price. This will actually cost me less than half of what Yahoo is charging me now.

EDIT 2: Okay, so… Site5 has FrontPage extensions you can install to ftp that way, but…. there are no extensions that are supported for FrontPage 2003. Soooo…. *cries!* I can’t use FrontPage anymore! Well, I take that back. I can still use it. I just can’t upload files as easily as before. Now I have to use FileZilia to actually upload files. That is an extra step for me now. The one good thing about all of this is that I will now have a copy of my website saved on my hard drive because right now… I don’t. :stunned:

Why? Because I wanted to try something a little “calmer.” I recently won a contest on Rachael’s website. One of my prizes was a free, coded layout designed by Rachael herself. She made me a very nice layout for my collective. Check it out. It’s awesome.

Anyway, so the new collective layout made me want a change. I decided to tone the brightness down a bit and go for something simple, yet cute. Here’s what I have come up with. I call my theme “Calm Rainbow” because the colors of the layout Rachael made me think of the color scheme, and her site is called Calm Banana.

So, what do you think? I know the screenshot is a little scrunched, so it looks kind of distorted and it’s hard to read what it all says. I used white for the navigation at the top on a very light blue background. I can read it fine, but I’m predicting that others may not be able to read it as well as I can. Any other suggestions for a color other than white? I tried some shades or gray. Didn’t look right. Using black just made it all pop. :stunned: (Yeah, I really need some color suggestions on this.)

The coolest part of the layout is the navigation at the top. When you hover over the words, little clouds pop up that tell you what is contained under the page you click on. Also, hovering over the Rainbow Stuff clouds/rainbow does something cute too. The footer is also cloudy cuteness.

Anyway, opinions and comments would be appreciated. Got any suggestions? After reading Jessica’s recent post about her website, I decided to get crackin’ on my new theme. Seems Jem is also working on a new design.

This layout was totally inspired by Rose’s website Impish.ca Visit her site. It’s so colorful and cute!

I now have to go through and validate my pages. In case things look a little wacky, this is why. If you find something terribly wrong, please do let me know.

I am constantly online, tweaking and fiddling around with Rainbow Stuff. Whether it’s WordPress plugins, playing with the CSS, or generally just trying to make improvements, I am always doing something around here.

I also stalk people and their wesbsites. Well, not stalk in a creepy sort of way. Admire is a better word maybe? Look to for inspiration? The most recent of the websites I am in love with is Rose’s site, Impish.ca. Her site is so rainbowy beautiful! I’m in awe of it. I also frequent Perfection to see what others deem as “website perfection.”

I also flock to the credits page on most sites I visit. Anyone else do that? If I like someone’s smilies or see an interesting plugin installed, I immediately flee to their credits page. Lately, I have visited several sites and just stared at their site: their use of colors and CSS, their organization and layout design, everything.

I dream about websites.

With all of this said, I’m working on a summer layout. I’d like to consider the current layout my “spring” layout since it is so pastely, flowery, etc. My summer layout is going to be like electric-bold-summer-shock. I hope anyway. I actually got Colin to make my simple header for me since my graphics program is stupid when it comes to text sometimes. Here’s the general colors I’m using for my new theme:

I’m also going to be re-organizing everything and getting rid of a lot of unnecessary junk. I think I have a lot of stuff that can go and a lot of stuff I can add. Improvements. If there’s something you think I should eliminate or something I should add, let me know. I love suggestions/advice.

On a side note, yesterday was my last day of work! Summer vacation is officially here! I’m paranoid that I’m going to get a phone call at any moment saying the new computers have arrived and I need to come help with setting them up because my inventory is not right. I went over my inventory so many times. I’m sure it’ll all be fine. *crosses fingers* The computers were supposed to arrive today or tomorrow. I hope all goes well with the installation.

Another note- American Idol is on tonight. Vote Blake!

Friday was insanely busy. I didn’t go into work Friday morning. Friday was Katee‘s 8th grade promotion. I can’t believe she is going to be in high school next year. It’s crazy. She got her perfect attendance award. I could have NEVER in my life gotten one of those. One kid has had perfect attendance for 8 straight years! :O

After the promotion, Colin and Katee dropped me off at work. Mrs. Carol (one of the custodians) and I set right to work to finish moving all the old Compaq computers to the blue pod hallway. I got so many questions throughout last week about those computers. People still can’t get over the fact that we are crushing them all. Anyway, unhooking computers, moving them all around the school, and stacking them up in piles is hard work. I actually have some bruises on my arm from carrying monitors (I assume). We got most of the computers moved.

When school let out, Colin came and helped me move the computers and tables in the lab. The way the lab was set up was annoying because there was no room on the floor in front of the SmartBoard. This was annoying because I couldn’t get kids seated back there very well (especially the big kids). I had like no floor space in there either. There were rows all over the place. We moved the computers so that, for the most part, they are against the wall. This totally opens up the middle of the floor. The room looks so much bigger and open. We set up some of the tables back to back so it made a little “station.” Colin also fixed all the wiring so that I don’t have to use the annoying plugs in the floor. He used the network hubs that I had in various places. Now kids won’t be as likely to trip over cords because there aren’t any cords plugged into the floor. Mrs. Carol and I moved a few more computers too. I’ll have to finish a few things on Monday.

Colin and I went out to eat that night at O’Charley’s in Hopkinsville. Yum yum. Our waitress was silly, of course. We came home and watched one of our Netflix movies. A Japanese movie about these two little boys who wanted a tv, and their parents wouldn’t buy one. So…the boys decided not to talk anymore. The youngest boy was retty cute.

I never have heard anything else about my “illegal job.” I guess no news is good news. I’m sure the district made up some B.S. about what CIA’s in the computer lab do. Lies. Oh well, not my problem anymore (I hope).

I have to go through all my forms so I will be ready to place them on computers and tables tomorrow. I hope I get all of that sorted out. I also have to figure out where these three Compaqs are going that we have to keep. I’m sure I have that in my inventory somewhere…

My smilies aren’t validating. I installed the Custom Smilies plugin, and liked it until I found out it doesn’t give a alt attribute to the smilies. I tried to go and edit that bit of code myself, but it didn’t work. I’ll have to find another smiliey plugin soon. Any recommendations? I’m also working on some modifcations to my layout or possibly a new layout.

Okay, enough. I am hungry. My stomach is saying so. Literally.

Colin’s parents got in last night. They came by to see us for a little bit. I know they’re glad to be here and see us (especially Colin) since they haven’t seen us since our wedding last June. They’ll be here all through Spring Break and are leaving on the 15th. We’re probably going to go to Bowling Green and go to the Lost River Cave (I think it’s called). The cave tour with the boat ride. We’ve been to Mammoth Cave several times, and I’ve never been to the Lost River cave. I love caves!

I went shopping for awhile today with my mom. Colin went with his parents down to Pennyrile where they are staying at. Tomorrow is Easter! Excitement! Lots of relatives! Organized chaos!

I added something new to my site- Movie Ratings/Reviews! I’m not a very detailed reviewer or anything. Mostly I just want to make lists of movies with little stars. I’m going to add all the movies I watch on there (especially the ones from Netflix!)

I’m hungry. I wish that husband of mine would get home soon so we could make some plans!

Now I’ve got some strange dude’s pictures showing up in my sidebar. What gives?? I even used that idGettr to make sure I had the correct ID. My user name is squigglybee but when I enter that into the idGettr, it says “Uh oh. There was a problem.”

What did I do?!

Oh…..maybe it’s because I just joined Flickr and my account hasn’t been reviewed yet? So….I guess…I need to remove the code from my sidebar so I don’t have a strange dude showing up….

So as the world knows, Sanjaya didn’t get voted out last night. He didn’t even fall into the bottom three. I am disturbed. I don’t know what is wrong with America. Chris Sligh should have made it way beyond Sanjaya and Haley both. At least Blake is still there, safe and sound for now.

I’m going to watch Survivor in about 15 minutes. Survivor is getting pretty boring these days. Same old, same old. I still think they need to have a special Survivor where game show hosts compete. Like, Ryan Seacrest, Jeff Probst, Phil from The Amazing Race, and Julie Chen from Big Brother could all be on there. I think it would be funny.

The weather has been so nice lately! It’s 72 right now. I’ve been wearing skirts all this week. It’s felt great. It did pour down rain yesterday and the other night, but at least we didn’t get the bad severe weather that some places did.

I’m working on a header image, and I added a little “Random Comments” section over in the sidebar. I’ll probably make some pretty random comments there. Should be fun.

Tomorrow is Friday! Hooooo-ray!!