Homesteading Carnival

Mrs. Dixon is hosting the Homesteading Carnival full of wonderful home making articles that you're sure to enjoy! If you'd like to participate in future Homesteading Carnivals you can read more about it here.

Some of our very own articles were featured as well. We hope you enjoy it!

Time to Nominate!

Many of you may have heard of The Homeschool Blog Awards. Their awards site has a new name and new design as The Homeschool Post. They are currently accepting nominations for your favorite blogs for a chance to win. Even a nomination is an honor to receive and we'd like to ask you to swing over and put in your nominations.

Should you feel that Growing in Grace has been a blessing to you perhaps you can nominate us. ;O) Here is the list of categories you can choose to submit for. My eye was drawn into these categories:
3. Best Blog Design
Here’s your chance to nominate your favorite blog design and give your favorite blogger a pat on the back for her talent (or give her web designer some credit!).
6. Best Family or Group Blog
Nominate your favorite Homeschool Family blog or your favorite group blog that is either run by Homeschoolers or discusses homeschool issues. [Blog doesn’t have to be exclusively about homeschooling.]
7. Best Encourager
It is time to say thanks to those bloggers out there who lift you up out of the homeschool “blahs” and help you get back on track. The winner of this category doesn’t have to be perfect or always in a good mood… just someone who makes you feel as if someone else cares and has a positive attitude overall.
13, 14, 15. Best Teen Girl Blog, Teen Guy Blog, Teen Group Blog
Let’s encourage those young bloggers to speak up and be a good example for their peers. I have seen so many wonderful teen blogs out there that deserve recognition. Let us know what some of your favorites are! Teen blogs can be any blogs run by teens who are at least 12 years of age. The winners will have to submit permission slips signed by their parents - see legal page at HSBA for more details. [This blog does not have to be exclusively about homeschooling, but homeschooling should be mentioned often or it should be obvious from the template that the teen is a homeschooler.]

A blog must be nominated three times by different people to qualify for a category. If you believe GGM is up for nominations perhaps you and some friends would be willing to communicate which category would best fit this blog. ;O)

If you are a vendor and would like to donate a prize, they are still accepting donations. The information is also listed on this page.

I hope that you all will gt over there ASAP and submit your recommendations for nominations! The deadline is October 24th!

Sites Crashing: Fact or Fiction?

Many bloggers are buzzing about with news about sites crashing from the use of Sitemeter. This occurrence of non viewable sites came to my attention yesterday from my friend Wendy. Her and I have worked on sites for a number of years and she could not view AGM in her IE7, however I could view it in Mozilla Firefox.

This morning I awoke to an urgent message about IE7 and Sitemeter 'crashing sites'. Millions of bloggers were removing their Sitemeters frantically fearing loss of information on their sites.

Upon further investigation I found that this information didn't add up. Sitemeter had no messages in their news or support rooms, yet why are so many bloggers spreading this news like wild fire?

I went to AGM and tried to view it in IE7 and it was fine this morning. For cautionary reasons of this rumor we removed the Sitemeter from AGM and GGM just in case. Then I continued to search the net for more info.

At Techie-Buzz they said that,

"we suspect the “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” error being to one of the add-ons he is using. You can try to load Internet Explorer without any add-ons and then try to perform the same action, if everything goes fine you will have to enable each add-on one by one to find the faulty add-in that is causing the issue."

They linked us to Microsoft's page about this mysterious message and found that it may be remedied by following their troubleshooting instructions. There is a thought about this all being due to the JavaScript and you can read more about that in these links I am providing.

So before we continue to spread news of sites actually 'crashing' we need to first check out all other possibilities. It's been known that IE7 has had several issues over the last year, which is why I prefer Mozilla Firefox.

Again, my site at AGM did not crash, although one of our readers could not view our sites yesterday in IE7. If you are concerned about your site not being viewable and you feel it's due to Sitemeter, you can use their HTML code to track your hits until more information is available. You won't be able to track where your hits are coming from, but at least your hit count service won't be interrupted.

I sent in a request to Snopes about this rumor and am awaiting further information. I have no doubt millions of people are doing all they can to find out the truth of this and we should know more shortly.

So if you could not view AGM or GGM we apologize for the inconvenience. I admonish you to use Mozilla Firefox, it works far better than IE. ;O)

Now please do take some time to enjoy our August Issue of GGM.

Mother's Memo

Thank you all so much for your continuing support of Growing in Grace Magazine. Lady Jess posted the PDF version and is now available, but for a limited time only. We are beginning a series of articles on safety and Miss Alyssa gave us the kick off with her Water Safety article. You'll want to be sure and read all about that topic as you head out for your summer fun.




Apples of Gold Ministries has begun a marriage series for wives that is sure to inspire. We have a book giveaway going on as well. Be sure to come by and get entered! We'll be having in depth Bible studies, interviews, and more! Be sure to subscribe to Apples of Gold so you don't miss anything.