DIY

What I’m doing for my summer vacation

beccakinla kids, los angeles, summer, tafkid, vacations Tags: Leave a comment

You might have noticed that I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve got all my kids home with me this summer, and instead of writing blog posts, I’ve been busy staycation-ing with the Kooky Klempners.

I’ve squeezed in a quite bit of writing this summer, but not on this blog.

To help other family camping/mommy camping/staycationing families in the L.A. area, I created a website last summer. This year, I made a lot of improvements over there, as well as posting regularly about various adventures I’ve had with my family. You can check the site out here. I’m quite proud of this project: I’ve helped lots of families, and I think it came out pretty spiffy for a website done on the cheap.

You can expect fewer posts until the kids return to school in the fall. Try to contain your disappointment. 😉

Pesach Limericks for Maggid (because I need a break from my kitchen right now)

beccakinla challenge, children, funny, Jewish, Jewish writing, Judaism, kids, parenting, parents, passover, pesach, preparing, seder Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
pyramid of giza, exodus

On the way outta there!

Many of us have memories of childhood seders. Even when the memories are fond ones (like these shared recently by Jessica Soffer on the Prosen People blog), we were often confused by the Maggid section of the Haggadah. I’ve pried myself from the kitchen to share some wacky Passover poetry to read a the seder during Maggid, hoping it’ll help.

Chag kasher v’sameach, chaverim! (“Have a kosher and joyous holiday, friends!”) Continue reading →

Try this wacky avatar hack!

beccakinla advice, art, art project, authors, blogger, blogging, blogs Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

As part of a course I’m taking through Carol Tice’s amazing website Make a Living Writing, I received the following homework assignment: put an avatar up on Gravatar to pop up whenever I comment on blogs, etc. Now, I could use a photo, but that would just be no fun, so I decided to create my own Gravatar.

avatar

Me, in black and white and nothing on my head to cover my hair. For shame!

I started off by googling “free avatar tools” and discovered a lot of nifty links to different programs to help you make your avatar. The best site I found was Digibody. The results of a picture created with their Avatar-Maker tools look much nicer and more professional than those created with other programs, I found.

However, that left me with a small problem. Or rather three:

  1. The pic was black and white. I thought color might be more eye-catching and engaging.
  2. I don’t leave my house without a hat or headscarf on my head. There was no way to put a hat or headscarf on the picture using Digibody’s tools.
  3. I don’t leave my bed without my glasses. (2 a.m. trips to the bathroom don’t count.) No one would recognize me without some glasses on my face.

Here’s what I did:

becca avatar with color

Thanks to Microsoft Paint, I added my headscarf, glasses, and a touch of color.

  1. I saved the image to as a jpeg onto my computer.
  2. Then I pulled it up in Microsoft Paint (how I wish I had Adobe InDesign or something fancier, but alas, no) and started sprucing up my avatar.

This is my DIY avatar. It’s recognizably me.

What do you think of the end product? I’d love some reviews in the comments.