some yummy mediterranean food

a local mediterranean restaurant recently moved into a new location, so we tried it out with my parents a few weeks ago before baby noah arrived.  we got the sampler platter to split since we wanted to try a little bit of everything.  it was really good and so much food that we ended up taking half of it home for lunch the next day!

love, laurie

dear tech gods, send help!

yesterday morning, i connected my iphone 7 to my imac to sync it in order to load a playlist of music onto my phone for my dance studio's christmas show.  after syncing my phone, itunes told me that there was a software update available for the phone (iso 11.1.2) so i clicked on it to do the update.  however, something must have gone wrong because the update never finished successfully and my phone has been stuck on a white progress screen for 24 hours now.

i have googled everything i can think of and have tried all of the "tricks" in the book.  i've held down the power button and the volume down button simultaneously until the phone shut off and then kept holding until the apple logo appeared . . . multiple times!  i've unplugged it from the computer, re-plugged it, plugged it into the charger, unplugged it . . . it died, it came back to life.  all of this and 24 hours later and i still cannot use my damn phone!

every time the phone turns back on, it goes to the white downloading progress screen and looks like it's nearly done (it's like hanging out around 99% completion) however it never finalizes.  i do not want to force a factory reset because i do not want to loose everything on my phone that is not backed up!  i have some important stuff on there from over the weekend from work which didn't get backed up yet.

i'm praying to the apple tech gods for help because i'm ready to throw this thing out the window and seriously need to be able to have access to my phone because of work!  it was a nightmare yesterday trying to figure out my sunday work schedule details with no phone (and nerve wracking driving in a snow storm knowing that i had no connection to the outside world).

. . . needless to say, if you need to get a hold of me you can't.  send an email or send up smoke signals.  in the meantime, i'll be over in a corner weeping and cursing technology.

oh it's definitely monday.
love, laurie

canadian fishing village wallpaper {free download}

last october, i shared a few free downloads of one of my favorite photos of a sunflower that i took while visiting a local cider mill last fall.  the vibrant colors in that photo made for the perfect desktop wallpaper for my computer and the perfect wallpaper for my ipad and iphone too.

when we were in canada last month, i took a photo of the canadian fishing village of peggy's cove in halifax, nova scotia.  the colors of that photo were so bright and gorgeous.  i printed out an 8x10 copy of that photo and framed it in a simple white frame.  i got to thinking that it would make a nice desktop wallpaper too.  so, i wanted to share three free downloads of this photo to decorate your electronic devices.  i hope you enjoy this wallpaper as much as i do!  to download, click on your device: desktop / iPad / iPhone 6

enjoy!

love, laurie

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*please do not embed or upload these images to your website or social media accounts without crediting love, laurie and linking back to this blog post.  images copyright 2016 love, laurie.

sunflower wallpaper {free download}

i have always loved sunflowers.  my mom's kitchen is sunflower themed and my bedroom at my parents' house growing up was sunflower themed too.  there is just something so happy and cheerful about sunflowers, especially when they are set against a beautiful bright blue sky.

we found a gorgeous crop of sunflowers when we were at ritter's cider mill last weekend.  i took a few pictures, which i shared on the blog, and i used one of them as my desktop wallpaper on my computer at work.  since then, so many people at work have been commenting on my sunflower desktop wallpaper, so i wanted to share a few free downloads to decorate your electronic devices.

i hope you enjoy this wallpaper as much as i do!  to download, click on your device below:

desktop / iPad / iPhone 4 / iPhone 5 / iPhone 6

enjoy!

love, laurie

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*please do not embed or upload these images to your website or social media accounts without crediting love, laurie and linking back to this blog post.  images copyright 2015 love, laurie.

how to: iphone ringtone

ryan and i like to make custom ringtones for our iphones and change them depending on the season.  here is an easy tutorial that we put together for how to make a ringtone for your iphone using any song that you like!

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step 1: open itunes and choose the song that you want to make into a ringtone.  decide which section of the song you want to use for your ringtone.  (it should be approximately 30 seconds long.)

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step 2: right click on the song that you chose and select "copy."  go to the top left-hand corner of the screen and click "file" and then select "new playlist."  a new playlist will appear in your playlist area.  (you can name the playlist anything you want, such as "ringtones.")

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step 3: open your new playlist.  go to the top-left hand corner of the screen and click "edit" and select "paste."  a copy of your selected song will appear in your new playlist.  right click on the song and select "get info."  click the "options" tab and click the boxes in front of "start time" and "stop time."  enter the start time and the stop time that you chose for your ringtone.  then, click "okay."  right click on the song and select "create acc version."

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step 4: go back to your itunes music library and locate the new 30 second version of the song.  right click on the new 30 second version of the song and select "delete."  click "delete song" and then click "keep file."

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step 5: find where the song saved to your computer.  if you are using a computer with windows, the saved song is usually located in "my music" under "itunes" then "itunes media" then "music."  when you find the song, right click on the song and select "rename."  change the ".m4a" ending to ".m4r"  right click on the song and select "open with" then click "itunes."   

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step 6: go back to itunes and open your itunes ringtones library (called "tones").  your new ringtone will appear there.  when you sync your phone with your computer, the song will appear as a ringtone on your phone!

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enjoy your new ringtones!

iUpdated

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on wednesday, ryan was like a kid at christmas time waiting for apple to allow customers to download the new iOS 5 operating system and iCloud.  i couldn't help but laugh a little when he said that he was sitting at the computer on apple's website and hitting the refresh button until the update was available for download.  as it turns out, there were so many people trying to do the same thing at once that it caused all sorts of back up on apple's website (oh sure, didn't see that one coming . . .) so, ryan waited for a day and did his update yesterday.  it took him 40 minutes in total and worked like a breeze.  he had no problems what-so-ever.

yesterday afternoon, i did it too.  of course, mine took forever and when it was done it magically deleted all of my apps!  (oh yes, you can bet your bottom dollar that this sister was not too happy.)  luckily, i thought ahead and i backed up my phone and made a list of all of my apps before i did the download.  it took a little while, but now i have all of my apps back and everything is back to normal.

apparently there are supposed to be over 200 new features to the new operating system.  so far, it seems okay to me.  we'll see . . .