Adding Social Media Buttons To Your Blog

Using social media is an an excellent way to build up your blog community, engage with like minded people or just talk rubbish with random people.

Whatever you use it for, it’s a good idea to have it linked to your blog.

This quick “how to” shows you how to do that.

First of all you need to either find, design or buy your social media icons.

A search of Google will present you with a whole bunch of options, once you have chosen those you like, you need to up load them your Photobucket account.

You then need this bit of html to connect your social media account, icon and blog.

<a href="SOCIAL MEDIA LINK" title="NAME OF SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT">
<img src="DIRECT LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA ICON" width="52" height="52" alt="NAME OF SOCIAL MEDIA ICON" /></a>

What you need to replace ~

SOCIAL MEDIA LINK replace with the url of your social media account i.e https://twitter.com/girlgonecoastal

NAME OF SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT replace with the name of the social media you are linking to i.e Twitter

DIRECT LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA ICON replace with the direct link for the image you want to link to, you will find this in your Photobucket account

You can adjust the height and width of your icons by amending these figures.

NAME OF SOCIAL MEDIA ICON replace with the name of the social media account icon i.e Twitter icon

It will end up looking something like this, but with your info, not mine!

You will want to repeat this process for each social media account you wish to add to your blog.

Once you have them all you need to add the html to your blog.

From your dashboard, use the drop down menu to enter the Layout screen, chose an Add Gadget tab.

Copy the entire code you created in Notepad, and paste it in to the pop up box provided. You can play around with the arrangement of the icons, once you are happy with it, hit Save.

It’s perfectly fine to have all the icons in one Gadget tab.

If you followed all the steps correctly you should now have your social media accounts linked to your blog, if you have any problems let me know and I will help where I can!

An Inexpensive Day Out At Ashdown Forest With Winnie the Pooh & Friends

We’ve been wanting to take the boys out for a while, but thing or another has got in the way and it wasn’t until last weekend that things came together and we managed a day out.

I’d been looking at various attractions, and wowzer was I in for a surprise, between tickets, travel, food and the odd treat we were looking at way over £200 for a day out.

A day!

Maybe I’m being cheap, but man alive that seems like a lot for dragging kids around somewhere they may or may not like,

where the kids will no doubt be too short for the rides they really want to go on,

to wait in line for over an hour only to have a kid decide they don’t actually want to go on / see it anymore!

I can think of better ways to spend my money.

But we wanted / needed a day out.

So, the in laws came for a visit and we bundled in the car and headed to Ashdown Forest, the home of Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh and friends.

There was no need to book tickets, no worries about wait times or height / age restrictions, just parked up the car and we were there.

Straight away the boys were off and just wondering around the woods.

We literately just followed the kids, and let them decide where we would go. They are ridiculously friendly and tried to wander off with some ladies and their dog!

There was lots of running, I was never sure if they were running to or from something, not sure they know either!

Being coastal kids, they were pretty amazed at just how….green the woods were!

We soon found Pooh Bridge, amongst some rather beautiful scenery, so many blue bells it was amazing.

It wasn’t long before a few friends came to say hello to the boys!

There were cuddles all round!

Obviously as we were at Pooh Bridge, they had to play Pooh Sticks, a surprising lack of sticks anywhere close to Pooh Bridge!

Both Ahren and Ethan fell over multiple times, neither got hurt, but it was rather comical!

They found this awesome looking camp, which now belongs to them apparently!

They got up close to few horses for the first time.

And got to appreciate a bit of nature, with wild flowers, stick swords and crazy large bumble bees.

All in all, we had an awesome day out.

The boys had so much fun just being typical boys, running like loons, play fighting with twig swords, chasing bees, playing Pooh sticks, finding forts, climbing logs and splashing in mud puddles and enjoying a picnic.

It was nice to have a day out, knowing it didn’t break the bank, the boys had an amazing time and for us grown ups, it was just nice to spend a day away from busy crowds and the usual pressures of everyday.

Have you got any tips / ideas for other inexpensive days out with the kids, please share!?