Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

Facebook cover photo for a page

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I needed a new Facebook cover photo, so I followed the Facebook tutorial How to make a Facebook page cover photo. Worked like a charm! I wonder who wrote such great step-by- step directions for the cover photo, complete with a free template the correct size? 🙂

It had been over a year since I’d made one; I’m so glad I took that time to write that tutorial for me  to help others. I used free-online photo editing software, pixlr.com, to make it.

Here it is!

Facebook page cover photo

You can see how it looks with the profile picture overlay and everything else on my ES Ivy Facebook page.

ZZZzzz…

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successbannercolor 800x340I’m still not up to speed after breaking my wrist so this blog will be silent for awhile yet. But I have started posting over at one of my other blogs, High School, College, Success! so it seems like a good time to remind you about it. If you have a kid in high school, or if you’ve got a younger kid who’s getting buried under homework, you’ll find some information that will interest you. My most recent posts look at the outlying successes profiled in the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. There’s also PSAT, National Merit, and college information with more to be posted soon.

Welcome to High School, College, Success!

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ES Ivy, blog authorOn this website, I explore the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Do you know how much sleep your teen is getting? Does your child have lots of homework? Are you worried about how busy your kids are, how little free time they have, but afraid your kids won’t get into college if their “resume” isn’t packed? Have you heard about the rising rates of teen anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicide? This website is a resource for you.

Until I get an “About” page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.

Also popular, are my posts about the SAT, PSAT, and National Merit Scholars program.

If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.

Dreading getting back to your school year schedule?

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Are you dreading betting back into the school year routine? Consider why you, or your child, has packed the schedule so full. I take a look at the realities of the benefits of busy school schedules, AP and IB classes, and activities on college admissions, sports scholarships, and academic scholarships on my post today over on the blog, High School, College, Success. Read more at highschoolcollegesuccess.com.

The new 2015 PSAT

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HCS Logo 512x512For those of you with teens, I have a post on my other site, High School, College, Success!, about the new format of the 2015 PSAT. If you haven’t heard, the SAT is changing in 2016, and the 2015 PSAT will reflect the changes this October. You can read more over at highschoolcollegesuccess.com.

Welcome! To the Mom Behind the Curtain

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… because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard.

Wizard of Oz Collection

Don’t we?

We want to create magic for our children with wonderful birthday parties and trips. And we want to be in control of everything. Be honest now!

But really we have no idea what we’re doing.

Here at the Mom Behind the Curtain, I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain and share a little of my magic. Otherwise known as hard work and research, for everything from trip planning to web page development, with a little bit of creativity thrown in. We’re a family of big readers, so I’ll also share my best book lists for kids and how to encourage your kids to read, read, read.

But why should you listen to me?

Proof that I know what I’m doing:

– My kids refused to eat chocolate cake for breakfast. No, really! I tried this the morning after a big birthday party when they were younger. They were appalled!*

– My teens don’t approve of the music I listened to when I was a teen. Listening to a country music station in the car has been met with, “Um, Mom. I don’t think this song is very appropriate,” and Bon Jovi got, “That’s not singing! That’s just yelling.” (Ah, yes. I give away my age with that; I know.)

So let’s get started!

BUT

Don’t forget…

Pay no attention to the Mom Behind the Curtain.

(Wizard of Oz reference. If you don’t recognize it, then you clearly didn’t watch the Wizard of Oz enough as a child. Didn’t you know it came on every year? Oh, and there is also a book. A series in fact and I’ve read all of them.)

P.S. You might have noticed that I mentioned web page development. When you are learning your own web page development, things can go a little slow. I’ve been in the process of moving things from esivy.com to this site and highschoolcollegesuccess.com for a long time, and I really wanted to get back to writing posts. So when this site goes live, there will still be a lot of work left. Please be patient.

* The irony is, that as wrote this post, I had to tell my teen daughter that she couldn’t eat cheesecake for breakfast. <sigh> They still need me. Ha! Like I said, “Pay no attention to the mom behind the curtain.”

 

High School, College, Success! – Sistersite

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high school college success logoMy posts on high school, college and success – challenging the way schools teach success – are now officially up at my new sight at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com. Come on over and say hello!

WordPress tutorials for beginners

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Blogging basics - WordPress tutorial, WordPress Security TipsI have been working on getting this new site up and running for, um. Quite some time. 🙂 When you do your own development, things can take awhile. It can take even longer if you’re trying to do thing “right.” For example, Austin has a very active WordPress community, so attending WordPress MeetUps about web site security. For example, I wrote a post, WordPress Security Tips for Beginners.

Even so, most likely this site will end up going live before it’s completely styled, so a few things might look out of place. For example, that image right there to the left? Says esivy.com.

There is a point to telling you about all the pain I’m going through! If you happened to design your own website – which is known as being your own website developer – or want to, I’m working on either and ebooks, and or an extensive post series of WordPress tutorials. For beginners to the more advanced, on everything from buying your domain, setting up local test sites on your own computer, migrating a designed site to another location and styling Foodie Pro for Genesis into a Lifestyle blog. So be sure to keep up with the changes or sign up to follow my blog in email! (Note: it will look like you’re signing up for my old blog. Yep, on the list to change that!)

Blog Signup – get all posts in email


Welcome to High School, College, Success!

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ES Ivy, blog author

And we are live!

Well, kinda-sorta. Since I’m doing all my own web development, it will take awhile to get this site structured. But the posts are at least up at this new domain.

This site, High school, College, Success!, here at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com, will be the new home for the educational and life success posts from my ES Ivy website at esivy.com. This is where I plan on exploring the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Until I get an About page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.

If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. (That site might still be in the process of migrating.) If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.