August 9, 2016

Back to School at Our House: Printable and Starting a Family Blog Tutorial

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BTSwithHP #CollectiveBias

It’s back to school time at our house! We’re less than a week from the ringing of the first school bell of the year here in Northwest Arkansas and it is unreal to think that the young schoolgirls I met years ago are now a junior in college, a junior in high school and a middle schooler. The years and the summers sure fly by, don’t they? When we moved to Arkansas, the highlight was to be able to spend time together. Now, let’s all be honest – when it comes to kids for most of us that sometimes involves having our noses buried in technology more than we may care to admit. I was sooo one of those people who swore it wouldn’t be that way in my house (it’s okay, you can roll your eyes). Ha! What did I know?!

For me, this is because I work remotely and run my blog. I’m attached to my laptop at the hip. It’s a bit difficult to ask kids to stay off of technology when that’s how you pay the bills, right? The girls need a computer for schoolwork and often times K has asked to borrow mine. She LOVES creating PowerPoint presentations, editing photos (I should employ her LOL) and to help with decorating. You should have seen her go to town for the hubs’ birthday party last month! She’s also a whiz when it comes to brainstorming for the monthly themes in the house and our Back to School Theme this year was no different.

The hubs and I had been talking about getting a family computer and the wheels got to turning. How could we foster her creativity, keep her involved, embrace technology as a family and keep it reasonable as far as cost goes? The redesigned HP All in One 20-c0-23w. That’s how!

Back to School with the redesigned HP All in One 20-c0-23w

I was perusing at Walmart and ever since I had my first HP Laptop years ago – a 17″ one – I have been a fan. That thing went around the world with me and talk about a workhorse! So I laid eyes on the redesigned HP All in One 20-c0-23w and at its extremely affordable price. I had to chuckle that they even have it in Dreamy Teal – almost spot on for K’s favorite color (it’s turquoise). Meant to be! Of course we want reliable and to be able to surf, stream and tackle assignments – big and small.

Staying connected

With school starting everyone is about to get even busier, but we want to make sure to stay connected. Light bulb! Since the girls often ask about the blog, we decided that in addition to creating monthly printables, we’d start our own personal family blog project to document our adventures. There have been many of them and that means a lot of pictures. With the latest processors and plenty of storage power we don’t have to worry. Sky’s the limit with our content! The HP All in One 20-c0-23w is also backed by over 100 tests, too – so it’s quality we can ALL count on, especially when it counts (no missed deadlines)! It took less than five minutes to set up. The pop of color and ripple pattern give it that little bit of funk that fits in perfectly around here and the stand is totally stylin’. Like us. 😉

Starting a Family Blog – An EASY tutorial

Decide on the purpose of your blog project: will this be published for others to read or is it just for the family only? Create privacy settings and set-up passwords accordingly
Will you use free or paid hosting? Decide what will work best and be sure to research the differences between the two (there is a lot of information out there for which you can do internet searches)
Decide on the title of your site – family brainstorming session!
Get organized ahead of time! Set up folders according to year and month and label them based on theme. Don’t forget subfolders, too! Example:
- July 2013
  - Dad & Heather’s wedding
  - Disneyland
  - Maui Familymoon
- December 2013
  - Christmas In Arkansas
- July 2014- 2014 EPIC Family Road-Trip California Adventure
  - La Costa
  - Los Angeles-Hollywood
  - Pismo Beach
  - San Francisco-Santa Cruz
  - Ft Bragg-Glass Beach
  - Redwoods
Designate a typist (rotate if it works for your family)
Make it a tradition. Schedule a time to get together to write! You don’t have to be Cyranos. Just sit and write. You’ll have fun reminiscing
Tip: Type into a text or Word document regularly saving as you go so you don’t risk losing your work
Share funny and special memories, upload your organized photos and be descriptive with your captions. How often do you look back and ask, “What in the world was I saying?”
Create. Don’t limit yourselves to photos either. Our first project was the printable below. For us it was important to remember to embrace those things you can’t buy at the store. We welcome you to grab it to celebrate the start to the school year at your own house

You’re bloggers now! We all get into slumps, but keep at it. Before you know it, you’ll have a treasured family memoir you can look back on for years to come. Imagine that as a printable for a future gift!

What’s so cool for us? Thanks to HP, embracing technology we can remember the story we have created and we are doing it TOGETHER.

How do you focus on family time during the school year at your house?