Jenny Evans's Blog
Posted by Jenny Evans
My mother made my wedding dress. I'm so glad she could sew something so beautiful in just the style I wanted. Because below is the scene that occurred when I walked into David's Bridal, newly engaged:
Sales associate: "Welcome to David's Bridal! What can I help you find?"
Me: "I'm looking for something with sleeves."
Sales Associate: "Ummm..." [starting to sweat and fidget as she senses her commission slipping away.]
She showed me to the dressing room, went to look frantically through the inventory, and returned with a grand total of two dresses – neither of which actually had sleeves, even by a long stretch of the imagination. One dress' "sleeves" fell short of even reaching my shoulders; the other had spaghetti straps that were about an inch and a half wide.
Modest clothing is quickly falling by the wayside. In a regular department store, the formalwear section gives a Latter-day Saint slim to no chance of finding anything appropriate to wear. Finding modest prom dresses and bridal gowns can be done, but it usually takes a little creative alteration.
Other articles on modesty include:
Mormon Modest Clothing – four easy ways to wear stylish and modest clothes for any occasion.
No-Sew Alterations for Modesty – ideas and suggestions for altering your less-than-modest formal wear and casual clothes without ever sewing a stitch.
Latter-day Saint Standards of Modesty – an explanation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' position on appropriate clothing for men, women, boys, and girls.
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Posted by Jenny Evans
I am not crazy. For the past few years I had this funny feeling that the calendar was playing dirty tricks on me. What happened with daylight savings time? I could swear that something was different but couldn't put my finger on it.
It turns out that I am not losing it. In 2005 President Bush signed into law, effective in 2007, a bill that changed daylight saving time from March to November, instead of April to October like it used to be.
Current Daylight Saving Time Information
And for your information, here is some interesting history and geography on DST plus a list of U.S. daylight savings time dates for 2010 to 2015.
I guess something that only happens twice a year like the DST time change doesn't leave enough of an impression on my fickle mind to be able to identify changes. So everyone make a note: if you want to get something by me, follow the government's example and just do it biannually. I probably won't even notice.
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Posted by Jenny Evans
In my house, everything right now is about Rachel Walker, Kirsty Tate, and the Rainbow Magic fairies.
You know the fairy books I'm talking about. The books in the Daisy Meadows series are all titled "Someone the Something Fairy" (for example, Sienna the Saturday Fairy or Trixie the Halloween Fairy) and they all follow the same basic format: evil Jack Frost steals the fairy's magic doo-dad and two human girls named Rachel and Kirsty have to help her get it back. Not too exciting for a 27-year-old mother and college graduate, but utterly fascinating to my 5-year-old daughter.
My daughter isn't allowed to play on the computer too much, but the one thing I simply can't deny her is Rainbow Magic Online. She loves the "Create a Fairy" game more than anything. I sometimes wonder how long she would play it if I didn't put a time limit on computer usage...
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Posted by Jenny Evans
Traditionally, the only "real" kind of freelance writing has been regarded as print writing - I've encountered that attitude a lot, even with my own family - but as the technological landscape continues to change that's becoming less true. Subscriptions to actual print newspapers and magazines are declining and will probably force many publishers out of business as more readers get their information from the Internet.
Many professional freelance writers are turning to the Internet to supplement or replace their income from print writing. But finding the best places to work online is sometimes difficult. A large percentage of advertised writing jobs on the Internet are either scams or "jobs" with payout approaching sweatshop wages. Try some of the ideas in Best Places to Write Online and Make Money to get started.
Posted by Jenny Evans
Writing SEO can be a maddening exercise. Those who write for print publications simply need to pitch an idea to an interested editor and write an interesting piece; those who write for Internet search engines must not only be good writers, but excellent keyword researchers and trackers of their content's vital statistics.
One of these critical measures is Google PageRank, the importance to which Google assigns every individual page on the Internet. Some bloggers and site owners check their page ranking religiously, while others dismiss its importance. What kind of attention does page ranking deserve? How much does it matter to SEO success?
Readers interested in this topic should read:
- Improving Google PageRank - a guide for SEO writers and bloggers to get the best possible page rank
- Why PageRank Isn't Everything - which two SEO indicators are much more important than page rank
