First things first… I just have to post a picture of my holly bush. This thing has been in my backyard for at least 3 or 4 years and not once has produced berries.  Well, looky here… I have berries!! No idea why I have them, but I do. I hope they last until the holiday season. Every choice of what to plant in the backyard has been driven by it’s potential to become holiday decor at some point.  Woo hoo… bring on the fall weather and let’s get decorating!

Some other little things to pass along today.  I don’t know how many of you know about Alltop.com?It’s a news aggregator of sorts. It has a whole bunch of feeds that it groups together from different sources on any topic you can think of. What I love about using it vs. using just a regular google search, is that I can type in a topic and then it will list the top news sources on the web covering your topic and that source’s last 5 headlines that source has for a particular topic. So for instance, tonight I typed in “Antiques” and it brought up 20-30 sources of info on Antiques and the top 5 headlines for each source. It’s all arranged on a page or two for you to quickly peruse what they are writing about to see if you are interested in going to that source. They cover websites and blogs and have a good mix of sources. I always find a new favorite blog or website that I have never seen before. The other great thing about Alltop is that you can then also add that feed to your own Alltop page so when you log in, you can go to your page and have all the sources you want to follow in one place and can quickly scan them all at once to see where you want to go to read something. You don’t have to go to each page separately to view it. It’s similar to other blog compilations sites out there, but I think it is better orgainzed and easier to use. If you have a blog of your own or one that you follow and is not listed on Alltop, you can make suggestions to the team to have it added. They are continually updating their sources. I have found it very useful and really fun to find new sources for information out there.

A few quick notes about my new website. I have comments on moderation as I get this going and see how it all works. It’s set up so that I moderate your first comment and then, once approved, you won’t have your comments moderated any more. Just know you won’t see your first comment appear automatically.  The “Asides” category are just little notes, not regular blog posts. The “Survey Says” section shows recent comments and discussions. The section on the left that says “Breaking News” isn’t really news to anyone… it’s just my social profiles updating how I’m wasting my time. It shows my Tweets on Twitter, what I watch on Hulu, what I listen to on Blip Fm.  I find some cool music though on Blip FM. You might want to pay attention to that.?.

Tonight, with my Alltop search for antiques, I found a really cute blog called Fresh Vintage that looks like a great resource. Lots of good ideas, pretty pictures and lots of tutorials on different things to make or do with your vintage finds. Check it out…