I’ve always envied the bookmark symbols that appear on other blogs. I have tried to install several social bookmarking plugins before, but they always break my blog. Yes, that’s the technical term for what happened. Instead of my blog being visible, I would get an error message such as:

Error on line 48: because you tried to install a plugin that is smarter than you just so give up & delete the plugin. You broke your blog so forget to breathe for a few minutes & give up on all your hopes & dreams you blogging idiot.

The only way I could fix this was to delete the plugin through ftp because I couldn’t even get to my admin page. Today I woke up & thought, today is the day that I will finally get fancy blogging buttons my site.

I installed the sociable plugin & held my breath. I was fully expecting to see the error screen of death. Instead, it worked, it had a cool option screen. Only one problem, the stumbleupon link didn’t work.

I’m rapidly become a fan of stumbleupon, so I thought ha I just installed a bookmarking plugin, I can fix this, I’m princess of the entire blogging world. So I did a few searches & found that other people were having this problem & a way to fix the code. So I “fixed” the code & then I had the familiar error screen of blogging death looking at me. Finally I found a nice blogger who had integrated the new code for Sociable so that I wouldn’t have to “fix” anything. I have triumphed.

Technorati : bookmarking, plugins, social+networking, stumbleupon, wordpress

I’ll admit it, I have blog envy. I know how I want my blog to look in my head, but it’s difficult to make that a reality, especially since I don’t have any graphic design experience. I just like things to look pretty, is that so wrong? So I was excited today to visit a blog of a graphic artist named Aaron who lives in the Philippines. He even has free brushes to use in photoshop & they are pretty cool looking. I am so behind that I had no idea this stuff even existed, I always wondered how people made those cool squiggly things, surely not everyone was drawing them out. Now I know.

Another way to easily change the look of your blog for the holidays is just to change the entire theme.  This can be a lot of work, but it saves you time messing around with graphics.  Here are some wordpress holiday themes I found.  Some will work even longer than the holidays.  If anyone knows of any places to get holiday blogger templates please leave a comment.

Christmas Themes

One of my favorite Christmas themes, reminiscent of Superman.
Cute Santa Theme.
Christmas Tree Template.
Adorable Puppy Dog Christmas.
Pink Christmas.
Pretty Holly Theme.
Alpine.
Angel.

Winter Themes

Makes me glad I don’t live in Iowa.
Nice blue theme with a tree.
Winter Lodge.
Pretty Snowflake Theme & what I would change my theme too if I wasn’t so lazy. Great tell your readers that you are lazy…niiicce.
Looks like winter.

Some (but not all) Christmas Colors

Red & White theme that will last all year.
Cool red.
Red theme with patterned background.
Simple Green Theme.