Windows Live Writer

 

If you're looking for my Slow Cooking Thursday post it's just below this one....go on, go see what great recipes the ladies are sharing today.  I have to say that I'm so thankful for the small group of ladies that come back each week with their wonderful recipes, they're just amazing women and I'm blessed to have met every single one through my blogging.

Now onto the reason why I'm doing a second post today, because you know I usually only do one, but this is just such a neat little helper for us bloggers that I had to share.

How many times do we find that we want to blog about something but don't necessarily want to get online and onto Blogger etc?!?!?!  Raise your hand up, yeah I see you in the back there trying to hide.  I'm shoving my arm up in the air, see it goes like this for me.........

I'm sitting around doing something and an idea strikes me for a blog post so I run online and sign into blogger and start typing but then get distracted by something and usually end up surfing the net or blog hopping or something else.........or I only have about a minute or two to jot down some ideas for a post.

This is where Windows Live Writer comes in, it's a free and easy program to download and you can write your posts OFFLINE, save and edit and add pictures or whatever you're going to do, all without having to be signed in.  You can edit the date and time, you can resize and edit your photos, you can change the font look or size etc.  But here's the neat part that I really enjoy.......you can do it all as if you were typing on your blog. 

No I'm not kidding.....here's a screenshot to show you.

See, it let's me view what my post will look like on my blog and if you change your header or background etc, just click on View/Update Blog Style and it shows you the new one.  I've been messing around with it and I know there's still tons of nifty tricks to find but this is just wonderful.  Best part is that I can play around with my posts and when I'm happy then I click Publish and there ya go.

Another thing, you can add more than one blog to your Windows Live Writer and then switch between them as you do your posts.

Oh I almost forgot, when you click  on the image, you can edit it, you can add a shadow or a Photopaper like I did above, you can even add a Watermark, see the Diary of a SAHM on the top right corner.  Yep, all in one single little click, it's great!

You can insert tags, videos, maps, tables, links, plug ins, you name it, you can add it.  Just make sure that you sign up for Picasa Web Album which is free so that you can publish your photos to the web.  TADA, simple and so helpful!

Now go, go download it here and install it, oh and here's the Picasa link too in case you need it.  I'm having so much fun with this I think I'll update my poor neglected  forgotten blogs, Family Gone Pug and Reading Nook.  Well maybe just the reading one, I really don't have anything to add to the Pug one, poor things.

Happy Blogging!