I missed one day, which is amazing for me – woo hoo! So here is our January

Late last week Google announced the closure of the fabulous photo editing Picnik site, in order to roll out some of it’s functions into Google+ photos.  But that also means from what I’ve read that all your photos edited on it are then also made public via your Google+ account – I could be wrong so don’t hold me to that!   But this move by Google (motto: ‘Don’t be Evil’) pretty much stuffs up loads of Bloggers and small Etsy business people who don’t have access to photo editing software and used Picnik on a daily basis.

So what can you replace it with?  Well frankly none of them out there are as good as Picnik was.  I tried lots of them over the weekend and I could weep for the lack of  decent competition.  So what is there?

Web

Photobucket – http://photobucket.com/ the adverts on it will drive you mad, flashing intrusive and bloody annoying BUT the photo editing on there is pretty good and you can store images on there. Lots of image editing available change colours, crop, add text and other shinies to it.

Big Huge Labs - http://www.bighugelabs.com/  I love this site, it’s not fancy but there are some great utilities and you can make collages really easily on there.

Avaiary - http://advanced.aviary.com/  this is ok, I found it a little clunky to use but I think this is a service that will rapidly get better now Picnik has gone.

and a few I’ve not tried http://fotoflexer.com/   http://www.phixr.com/  http://www.photoshop.com/  http://pixlr.com/express/

Software – If you want to invest some money have a look at Photoshop Elements. It’s a cut down version of Photoshop, it does a lot but is depending in where you buy it between £60 and £100 but you can get this for Mac or Windows

Also there is Gimp which is free for both Mac and Windows, I’ve personally not used it but I know a lot of people rave about it.

For the Mac 

There are now some cool apps you can by in the Mac App Store for editing photos.  I’ve not used any of these as I’m a Photoshop girl but my husband who hates Photoshop swears by this:

Pixelmator - http://www.pixelmator.com/ It’s £20.99

For Windows

I’ve not been on a Windows machine for years, but I’m assured by people in the know that the new version of Paint is ok and if you are lucky enough to have Office, have a look at Publisher and Powerpoint – you can edit photos on either of those.  Off the top of my head I can’t remember if you can add text to photos on Windows Photo Editor? But that comes with basic Windows, so have a look it’s possible you can.

I’m sure I’ve missed some, so if you know of any that are brilliant let us know all about it.

I’ve just been to Primark for the first time! Yeah I know I’m so 5 years ago, but we didn’t have one in Cambridge for ages and then they put it in the part of town that I never go to.  So I’d missed the whole Primark experience. But today I was in the right part of town on my own, so I could shop in peace and quiet without anyone nagging me about some toy spotted 5 shops back – heaven!

So I had a wander round and none of the clothes really grabbed me, but there were plenty of nice woolly hats and scarves. And then I came to the homeware department on the top floor and there was a sale on….oh my!

Flowery bedding, single bedsheets, flowery union jack pillows, all sorts of goodness. For boys there was some really cool red bedding with white stars – just gorgeous!

So I went a little bit mad with bedding for Miss L’s room but in my defence it was too cheap and pretty to resist

The white embroidered duvet cover & pillowcase was £12, the flowery duvet & pillowcase was £9, bottom sheets fitted £3.50 and the Union Jack Cushion £7, so I spent £35 which isn’t terrible for a kids room. All of these also come in Double and King Size if you’d like to spoil yourself or pretty up a guest room….they have matching flowery towels…I can never go back!

I’ve joined in with the ‘Photo a Day’ project – I’m trying to beat last year’s record when I managed to do it for about a month and then forgot. It’s surprisingly hard to come up with a photo every day that’s not of the dog!

Yesterday I was travelling to the farm shop in Norfolk when I thought I’d pull over and take some photos of the river. It was a really cold, crisp day but utterly beautiful.

Are any of you working on the project? I’d love to see your photos. Mine are over on Flickr here

**Don’t read ahead if your squeamish**

I’m so mortified by this, but I had to share it as a public service announcement for birds.

So as you know Miss L *loves* to feed the birds in the garden, we’ve got feeders all over the place, all types seed, nuts and fat ball ones – you name it we have it. Last week we stocked up with bird food and filled all the feeders up. One of the fat ball feeders, I moved closer to the house onto our rose bush so we could see the birds feeding from the kitchen window.

All good…or so I thought!

Tuesday morning, I’m standing in the kitchen filling the dishwasher and I look out and see a sparrow with his back to me on the feeder. I think ‘Aww look he’s enjoying those fatballs’. Think nothing more of it…..

Fast forward an hour later I go to make a cup of coffee…the sparrow is still on the feeder in the same place he was an hour before…..at this point something doesn’t seem to be right with this picture.

So I go outside and the sparrow doesn’t fly off or well even move.

I realise something really horrible has happened….in a Final Destination way the sparrow has put his head through the bars of the feeder and the fat ball had falled on his head, trapped him and he’s gotten stuck and died. OMG! I was in tears, I felt so awful that this had happened, our kindness had killed a poor innocent bird.

Thankfully it was before Miss L came home from school, so I disposed of the body, took the feeder down and put the food on the floor to feed the birds.

Here’s a picture of the feeder, before I throw it away.

It was the type that had large gaps,  in future I’ll only buy the ones that have tiny squares in them so that way they can’t get their heads in. I don’t know if this was a common accident or if this was some weird freakish one off? But I’m never buying on of these again!

I love this, it made me laugh so much and one to share with your daughters. A very good example of how nothing they see in the media is real.

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you’ve all had good ones?

Betty’s face says it all really, this is how we’ve spent the holidays – snuggled up and vegging out.

Sadly tomorrow is decorations down and clean up day, but I have some 2012 new decorating ideas in the pipeline. I can’t wait to share them with you!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas! x

Google in their infinite wisdom are getting rid of Google Friend Connect for non blogger blogs (if your blog is hosted on Blogger you’re ok!), as of March 1, 2012.  This means if your blog is on WordPress, Typepad or something else readers will no longer be able to read your blog through Friend Connect.  So how to replace it?

I’ve created a few ways for Friend Connect people to carry on reading Violet Posy should they want to read my ramblings

RSS

There’s the RSS Feed - If they click on that and add that to their feed reader it will replace the feed that currently comes through ‘Friend Connect’ – really handy for those already reading through GReader.

Email

Look over in the sidebar in the tabbed area – it’s under ‘Subscribe’.  I’ve found this to be increasingly popular, you don’t need an RSS Reader, you just get new posts straight to your inbox.

I personally use Feedburner to send out the emails, but I noticed that on the new WordPress Jetpack there is an email subscribe widget that you just drag into the sidebar and you are good to go- dead simple!

Facebook

My Facebook page is great (sorry that sounds a bit wrong!) but it’s easy to just pop a post over there (either manually or via automation via Networked Blogs below), have a chat with readers, - I put all my posts over there too.  Loads of people now read blogs through Facebook – why not have everything in one place? I’ve been using to read posts and share with my friends.  There’s a handy ‘How to create a Fan Page‘ here at Mashable.  The only thing I’d say is if you are trying to remain anonymous, create a ‘blog’ facebook account to link it too or it will link into your profile and it’s really hard to keep them separate.

Networked Blogs

Networked Blogs - I’ve just added that one if you use it. It’s a bit like GReader in that you have an account and you subscribe to blogs through it. But it also does some nifty things with Facebook automation – have a play!.

BlogLovin

BlogLovin - This is a new one to me, but also a newsfeeder service, but seems to be popping up all over the place so I’ve added it as people are obviously using it.

Google+

I’ve created a page for VioletPosy and I’ve yet to remember to actually update it – I think I need to find something that automatically does it for me. Someone must have written a plugin for it, so I need to hunt about for one. If I find one I’ll let you all know.

That’s all I’ve found at the moment, have any of you found anything interesting to replace Friend Connect?  I’ll be interested to hear about it if you have.

You know how I couldn’t make Yorkshire Puddings well it seems I can’t make Mulled Wine either. Normally I just buy a bottle of it from the supermarket, but this year I thought I’d make some for when guests come and to warm us up (any excuse!).  I had this really happy memory from years ago, a friend had made some from scratch and it was gorgeous. I’d been promising Paul that it was utterly fantastic and he should try it, as he’d never really had it.

Last Friday night, I grabbed a bottle of red wine, some mulled wine sachets, sugar and followed the instructions….and it was HORRIBLE!! I ruined a lovely bottle of innocent wine and made the worst drink ever!. So lovely readers, do you have a fool proof mulled wine recipe?  I want to wow my poor husband into forgiving me for ruining a bottle of red, not to mention actually have some nice mulled wine.  Thank you!!