Banyan Tree – Oahu, HI
Have you been to Hawaii? Would you like to go? Speak up in the comments! :)
NaBloPoMo
Secret Snoskred
Share a secret not shared on your blog before
I am a huge Sons of Anarchy fan.
I found the series late – only last year – but I devoured the 6 seasons that existed in a very short space of time, and have been eagerly awaiting season seven which started in September.
The show is dark, which you would probably expect, being about a motorcycle club.
But it is also, in its purest form, a soap opera about a motorcycle club.
Some of the storylines are so soapy, they would not look out of place on The Bold and The Beautiful. But that is part of what makes the show so brilliant.
My favourite character is Tig, played by Kim Coates.
Though of course Jax, played by Charlie Hunnam, is fascinating eye candy to watch.
Do you have a secret to share?
Do you love a TV show that I should add to my must watch list, or do you have a secret to share? Let me know in the comments!
A Cup Of Tea
Do you like a cup of tea?
Snoskred loves a cup of tea. Bizarrely, her favourite brew was invented by Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister and foreign minister of Australia. Dude can’t delegate work to others or run a country without getting backstabbed by his own political party, but boy can KRudd blend a tea. He won a competition back in 2011 for his tea blend..
Originally meant to be a limited edition for just 12 months, the Australian Afternoon Tea proved so popular that it is now a permanent member of the Twinings range.
I am not a fan of KRudd at all, but I love this tea blend, and I recently picked up 100 bags for an insanely low price which will last me quite some time.
When and why?
I do not drink tea daily. On a day that I drink it, I will usually brew a cup mid to late afternoon. Rainy or cold days are more likely to result in a cup of tea.
What else do you put in it?
I like honey in my tea as the sweetener. Something magical happens when you combine honey and tea.
For some teas like the Australian Afternoon Tea and various forms of black tea I will use a dash of cream if I have some, milk if not.
For teas that are more herbal in nature like the Madame Flavour range, Cinnamon and Orange, Lemon Ginger, green tea or fruit flavoured teas I will only add a touch of honey and no form of milk or cream.
Here are some of the teas in my tea cupboard –
Overseas readers – want to try the Australian Afternoon Tea?
Shoot me an email to snoskred {at} gmail {dot} com or contact me via the Contact Form with a postal address – don’t leave it in the comments for safety reasons – and I will send you a sealed Australian Afternoon Tea Twinings tea packet, from their range where you buy 10 foil sealed teabags in a box! Make sure to include your blog address if I don’t already read your blog, so I can add you to my feedreader.
Do you like a cup of tea?
Leave a comment to let me know -or write a post on your blog and link to this post. :)
Shoe Cleaning Station
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my very first Shoe Sunday post – I showed you where my shoes live.
I do own a lot of shoes, and every single pair gets a regular clean. What I usually do is wait until a rainy afternoon, when I can’t be doing anything useful outside, and all my other chores are done for a bit, so I do not feel even a tiny bit guilty about spending a good couple of hours with my much loved shoes..
First up, I cover the work space with a floor mat – the kind you might use in a bathroom. It is good to use something with a bit of thickness to protect the work space, as there will be times when I am removing stones from the shoes with a metal nail file. I always make sure to have a pair of nail scissors and a metal nail file handy at my shoe cleaning station, because your shoes may have some surprises for you.. like this –
I recently sat down with a couple of freshly arrived TV episodes – Homeland and Downton Abbey, my anti-bacterial wipes because there is a lot of flotsam and poopsam on the soles of shoes. The outside of the shoe get a decent wipe down, the place where my foot sits also gets a decent clean, plus the soles get a really thorough scrub. Here is a pair mid scrub, you can see the suds. I’m using the Kirkland Antibacterial Wipes from Costco.
Below you can see one clean sole, and one ready to be cleaned sole.
I cleaned 13 pairs in the space of a pleasant couple of hours, while watching teevee. Once the shoes are clean, they are placed on a clean towel so they can dry off. These shoes all went off for a photo shoot right after being cleaned, for future Shoe Sundays here on the blog.
Tell a story about your shoes on your blog, and link up below!
NABLOPOMO – Day 1
Zazzy from Zazamataz mentioned here back in September that she might be doing NABLOPOMO this year, and I figured I would give it a go as well.
The official website for NaBloPoMo is here.. Everyone has till November 5 to add their blog to the official blogroll via a link in this post.
I gave Zazzy 7 writing prompts which I am going to use myself this month, though I might not get to all of them, and not necessarily in the below order. If you are also posting every day in November and you get stuck, feel free to use these writing prompts.
The prompts are –
1. 1 movie you loved & why
2. 1 TV show you disliked & why
3. Share a “secret” you have never before shared on your blog.
4. Tell us about a quirk or odd habit that you have.
5. Do you like a cup of tea? When and why? What else do you put in it?
6. What are some of your favourite things?
7. What is your favourite treat of all time?
Some of these prompts may springboard into more than one post. If you are looking for more prompts, head on over to the blog of Mark Bialczak – So you asked for prompts, Team Pepper? Nano Poblano – there’s 39 writing prompts there so you’ll be sure to find one that works for you.
I’ll tell you a little secret. I’ve actually written more than 30 posts, and scheduled them. I’m actually scheduled out to mid-December. Some of these posts may get bumped for timely happenings here in Snoskredland.
I wrote and pre-scheduled the posts because.. and I say this with a sense of dread and fear.. I thought I might give NaNoWriMo a go. I’m still not sure but I do have two story ideas and it would be interesting to spend two hours a day just focusing in on telling these stories in my head.
NaBloPoMo Commenting Challenge
So how exactly does one comment on *and* add hundreds upon hundreds of blogs to ones feed reader?
With a lot of patience, dear readers. The official blogroll after just 24 hours lists 292 blogs, after 48 hours there are 411 blogs and there are still a few days to go.
Plus, some bright spark over at Blogher thought it would be awesome to have all the blogs open in a frame and I would have to close the frame in every window to get the blog URL. That really slowed me down for the first 40 or so blogs.
Never fear, I haz technical GURU. The Other Half got technical and made me a links page – You can use it too, if you like. It is here – NaBloPoMo Links – and I will update it once the complete list has been posted, so all the blogs are on there.
If I have not left you a comment yet, never fear
– it is likely that when I dropped by there was not a post I felt like my comment would be appropriate for, but I will be back.
Are you participating in NaBloPoMo?
Leave a link to your blog below so other participants can find your blog easily. :)
Unlike a regular link up – Please link to your BLOG URL, not to a post. :)
NaBloPoMo Reminder
When I set up my linky thing, I did it wrong. Thanks to Claire from I will eventually do or say something interesting for giving me a heads up – I have fixed it. You can now add a link to your blog instead of a permalink to a post. :)
I am having a super hard time finding people who are going to take part this year, and the official site still has not posted anything for November yet EDIT – It is finally up here. Everyone has till November 5 to add their blog to the blogroll here. One of the best things for me about NaBloPoMo in past years has always been finding new blogs to read.
I will be trying to comment on as many NaBloPoMo blogs as possible. I’ve set up a google alert for NaBloPoMo to help me find participating blogs. Each day I’ll drop by as many NaBloPoMo blogs as I can to leave a comment. I’ll be adding participating blogs to my feed reader.
So if you are going to take part, or you know someone else who is, or you have a blog yourself, can you let people know about this link up? ;)
Unlike a regular link up – Please link to your BLOG URL, not to a post. :)
November is National Blog Posting Month. To participate, you write a blog post each day for the month of November. The home of NaBloPoMo can be found here. Though, it does not seem to be run by the same people it once was, and they are doing monthly NaBloPoMos there, and there is still no November post! :(
Here are some other NaBloPoMo posts I have found thus far –
The NaMos are Coming! The NaMos are Coming!
How about 30 days of blog writing in November?
NaBloPoMo/Nano Poblano: Important Info! – which led me to –
NaBloPoMo 2014
November is National Blog Posting Month. To participate, you write a blog post each day for the month of November. The home of NaBloPoMo can be found here. Though, it does not seem to be run by the same people it once was, and they are doing monthly NaBloPoMos there.
Snoskred will be participating this November – so now is your chance to suggest topics or ask questions you might want answers to, and Snoskred will work them into a blog post in November!
Also, Snoskred will be trying to comment on as many NaBloPoMo blogs as possible. I’ve set up a google alert for NaBloPoMo to help me find bloggers taking part as I am not so sure the “home” site will help me do that. Each day I’ll drop by as many NaBloPoMo blogs as I can to leave a comment..
This is a great way to find awesome new bloggers and new readers, so if you have a blog and you want to take part, get on board the train! ;)
You can link up via this link up tool if you plan to participate, so that other bloggers can easily find your blog – Snoskred will be inviting bloggers participating in NaBloPoMo to join this link up when leaving her comments, and will post the link up at the start of November, midway through, and at the end..
Unlike a regular link up – Please link to your BLOG URL, not to a post. :)
NaBloPoMo Time Again..
It is that time of year again – November 1. I’ve just started my NaBloPoMo commenting challenge and I’ve found quite a few blogs I commented on during last year’s commenting challenge already, how cool is that? I like to do things backwards so I began at the letter Z.
Are You Missing Out On The Fun?
If you have not already signed up for NaBloPoMo but you want to take part you might want to wander over and sign up now.
I can’t believe an entire year has gone by since I found so many wonderful bloggers during the last NaBloPoMo. It’s wonderful to be getting out there and looking at blogs which are completely new to me again.
However there is one downside – Blogger and the Word Verification thing again.
A tip to bloggers who are using blogger –
You’re not going to get spam if you turn word verification off, however you are probably getting a lot less comments with it turned on because often it makes me retype in the words 3 or 4 times – I *almost* give up. The spammers are far too busy targeting WordPress blogs. This blog is less than a month old and already TanTan Noodles has blocked 1278 spam comments. Akismet has blocked 202. I never saw any spam like this when I was on Blogger.
Captcha Word Verification
Blogger users will be familiar with Captcha word verification, it looks like this –
The reason it is exists is to stop spam bots posting comments on your blog. However it could be stopping regular human people from posting on your blog. You only need to turn word verification on when you’re being targeted by a spam bot which is extremely rare on Blogger – as in you’ll be getting a boatload of comments in a very short amount of time – and this will stop the spam bot from posting more comments. May I recommend you turn it off in the meantime? Especially if you moderate your comments before they are posted – no spam comments will be posted because you won’t allow them through, right?
Julie Pippert recently posted about having trouble with Captcha and if you read her post you will see you might be missing out on comments if you’re using it.
NaBloPoMo Is Back!
Excellent news many of us have been waiting for – you can sign up for NaBloPoMo 2007 now. What is NaBloPoMo? It’s National Blog Posting Month – in November, many people will participate, posting once a day every day on their blogs. Join in and be a part of the fun! ;)
I didn’t get to participate last year, I found out about it on November the 3rd. Make sure you don’t miss out like I did last time!
Is anyone up for a NaBloPoMo commenting challenge? Let me know in the comments.
NaBloPoMo is over..
But the commenting challenge is not. I’m going to continue to comment on at least 20 blogs per day until I finish the list. I’m up to S now. This could take me months but I do not care, it is worth it. I have found some amazing new blogs and enjoyed almost every minute of reading.
Jihanna’s post here reminded me.. I have taken the commenting to a new level this week.
I sent an email off to a website that had pop-up advertising, letting them know it was highly annoying and I would not be returning to their site anymore. This is something I would not have done before the commenting challenge, but now because I’m not afraid to speak up, I did it! And they got back to me –
Thank you for reporting the problem.
Spyware and popups are absolutely not allowed on the site. I will investigate where it came from and shut it down if possible. Ads are served by various third-parties, as we do not handle most of the advertising in-house.
Do you remember and more details of what it looked like or are you able to reproduce a screenshot of a page with the ad in question?
And yes, I had taken a screenshot, so I got back to them and let them know. And I went and installed adblock for firefox, too, and the other half bumped my user setting down so nothing can be installed while I am on the computer (this is a wise move when you’re a scambaiter and visiting sites which might be slightly dodgy from time to time).
Then, I love this salad dressing and I ran out. I wanted to buy more but I was having a lot of trouble finding it. So instead of just keep going to every store, I thought, why not find an email address for them and ask them where I can go to buy it? And I did, I sent them a nice little email. I got an email back telling me they no longer make it (BOO!) but inviting me to be a part of their customer club. I know the other half is going to be annoyed that I said yes, but I said yes. And I’ll stop crying about the salad dressing not being available anymore sometime, probably in 2007. ;)
It’s ok though, he thinks I’m crying because he won’t let me buy more sparkly shoes and handbags, or a gold glitter lamp.