About Blogging

About Blogging

My Motivation

I am an ex-academic now elderly grandmother I enjoy gardening, house decorating, fashion, entertaining, history and a lot of other things. 

One of my pleasures is writing but writing can be a lonely occupation, especially if you do not get published. My writing audience since retirement has tended to be limited to the readers of my occasional articles in newspapers and garden magazines. However through blogging I’ve been able to share ideas and recent experiences with others. These others are all over the world and this has been a great thrill for me.

Yet being a private person there is much I choose not to reveal on my blog, and on the whole I’ve tried to limit the pictures to just those of Takis and me. I’ve no wish to be a celebrity with hundreds of followers and what I have found is that blogging on a single subject has enabled me to reveal as much of myself as I wish.

I am married and live in two countries, and this is a blog about the experiences of my husband and I in Greece with a few references to Australia. However, while it has this limit, within this framework I’ve enlarged the topic to cover many interests.

The Main Subject Matter

The main subject matter is the renovation of a house we own in Greece. But as we have spent six months a year for over ten years in Greece we have been able to get involved in much more than just renovation such as, gardening, cooking, getting to know Takis’ Greek family and learning about our new local neighbourhood – its history and mythology.

Renovation

One of my passions has always been gardening

And Takis has always loved carpentry

Now we found ourselves still doing that but also  renovating

From Woe to Go!
But an exciting project all the way.

Lemnos is off the Tourist Route

Lemnos

Lemnos is not Santorini!

But while not Well-Known it is an island that has kept its Greek heritage

Setting Up the Blog











When I started I found myself completely bamboozled by computer terminology and Google-speak, so I turned to an expert.

Takis has a daughter who has had a very successful blog. I loved the look of Lisa’s blog and wanted to do something like that. She offered to help and in the first months I often had to turned to her for help.

The Heading

Choosing the title and setting it up was my first difficult. I wanted it so say so much about our Greek Adventure but also be explicit. And I wanted the heading to be as attractive as Lisa’s in her blog, ‘Greek Vegetarian’.

So I chose the words, ‘Returning Home to Greece’ and I asked her how I could set up a heading with picture, a coloured background, and a highlighted name on the top of the picture.

Lisa’s step by step advice:

* Sign in to Blogger (www.blogger.com)
* The "Julia's blogs" page should come up. Click on the black title, "Travelling Home to Greece".
* You should now be on the "Travelling Home to Greece Overview" page.
* On the left-hand side is a menu: Overview, Posts, Pages etc. Click on "Template".
* You should now be on the "Travelling Home to Greece Template" page.
* Click on the orange button "Customise" under the small preview of your blog page.
* This should take you to the "Blogger Template Designer" page.
* On the left-hand side is a menu: Templates, Background etc. Click on "Advanced".
* In the second column from the left is a list: Body Text, Background, Links etc. Click on "Blog Title".
* You can change the Font and the Text Colour of the title using the options that come up.
*Once you've made your changes, click the "Apply to Blog" orange button at the top right-hand corner of the page.
*Then click "Back to Blogger" which is also at the top of the page, in blue and underlined.
*Then click the Orange button at the top left-hand corner of the page, with the white "B" logo. This will take you back to your "Julia's blogs" page.

Then she added, ‘Hope that helps!!’ and it did, eventually!

Composing
I started out composing and then pasting the composition in the blog. Strange things happened! The text would float around the page or change font.
Again I wrote to Lisa.

More Advice from Lisa:
Turn your work into TextEdit format. 

Now my process is that I compose in Times New Roman 14, then I ‘Select All’ and past into TextEdit before selecting ‘Select All’ again and copying and pasting into the blog.

Once in the blog I highlight headings and subheadings.

Pictures
This was another problem. Now however I usually put all my pictures for one blog in a file down load them together. This has to be done by uploading the images via Blogger using the little icon that looks like a picture. When they are in the blog I make them all small before placing them in the text. Only when they are in place do I choose what size I want them.

Google Readers
One day someone popped up as a follower, and another day a ‘circle’ suddenly appeared on my blog. I wrote to Lisa and she replied.

Regarding your blog, I think I might have mentioned to you I don't really know much about Google circles so I just ignore them.

Seven moths on and so far…

* I have logged 55 blogs

* The blog has had readers over that time from

USA, Australia, Greece, UK, Germany, France, Ukraine, China, Canada, Brazil and other several other countries

* As of April 2014 all time page-views number 3,820

* ‘Dreaming of a Homeland’ and ‘Fruit Trees’ have been two of the most popular posts.

I would like to continue on for a while longer, though blogs on a certain topic probably have a limit. I expect I’ll know when that limit is reached. Meanwhile we both are enjoying our Greek lifestyle and I'm enjoying sharing it with you!