Buttons and a Barque

Buttons

I'm rather relieved to find out that I am not the only person who was struggling with this. I somehow found a link to this tutorial for a different swap. I would make the following additions to the excellent instructions found there: You don't need to copy the html stuff from the tutorial because photobucket (the image hosting site I ended up using) creates the tag for you, all you have to do is cut and past into the template part of your blog. (In blogger, you have to scroll down to the bottom of the template and fit the buttons somewhere in the "sidebar" part. It's easy to find because it's between Begin #sidebar and End #sidebar. Go figure). Then, once you've got that in, you have to change the stuff between a href and target by substituting the web address (the http:// etc. stuff) of the page the button belongs to (ex. http://www.google.com) for the photobucket link. But don't change the punctuation or the symbols! Just the link part. And then SAVE and then voila! Buttons!
The part that really got me was "where do I store the picture of the button?" Once I realized I needed photobucket (or flickr or whatever) the lightbulb went on.

Barque

Picton Castle in Lunenburg.

Yesterday, the most beautiful Sunday that Nova Scotia has seen since 2005, Richard and I went to Lunenberg to the cargo sale of the Picton Castle, a square-sailed boat that sails around the world doing sailor-type things. If you look at the website, you'll notice that you're being given the opportunity to apply to do a training cruise with the ship - summer camp for sailors, if you will. Sounds fun.

There were some absolutely gorgeous things for sale: musical instruments, baskets, dishes, trunks, kites, jewelry, carvings, furniture and textiles, from around the world. Richard and I really loved some of the teak furniture they had, but since we don't have a couple hundred dollars sitting around, we went with some more affordable (and portable) souvenirs.Wire lizard and chopsticks.

After we left Lunenburg, we somehow ended up at a flea market in Mahone Bay, where I found a book about "The Great American Medicine Show" about all the weird and wonderful health and medicine products for sale (think Lydia Pinkham and Dr. Kellogg), and some other treasures I got a kick out of:

ceramic trivet with repro Electric Belts for health advertisement, and old OXO tin

We stopped in Hubbard on the way home at Sheila Too's, a little fish-and-chips truck and I had the most wonderful scallops and chips. Richard had the 3-piece fish and chips and mmmm... If we're down that way again, we'll definitely go back.