Chocolate and Purple

Hello Stamplings!

My heart goes out to those of you suffering from record-breaking cold temps with a topping of snow and ice. Please stay in and stay well! And Happy Valentine's Day! I'm sure some of you are finding ways to keep warm!💋

If you're reading this, you are prolly into cards and very thankful to have this craft to immerse yourself into. That is, if you can ignore screaming kids and husbands on the other side of the craft room door. I have a friend who used to make loud sobbing noises when that happened and suddenly everyone left her alone!😂

Warning: Look away if you are on a diet, this card is gonna make you want to be bad!

As many of you know, the Less is More challenge is one of the first challenges I entered when I first started blogging and I learned so much over the years from them. This month they are celebrating their TENTH blogabirthary!! Congratulations, LIM, and thank you for all the years of creating stimulating, inspiring, and fun challenges for us. To celebrate, they have chosen the awesome prompt of chocolate, perfect for February!

For my card, I created a QACAS and amusing design. I used an old NBUS stamp set from Lawn Fawn called "Treat Yourself." The sediment is from River City Rubberstamps. Of course, I matted the panel to a matching milk chocolate card base.

Twofer

Another QACAS design. This Valentine's Day card is for YOU. I had a leftover snippet of alcoholic glossy paper in my stash inked in purples and blues, so I cut the lil' inker loopy love word die from that. It's all shiny irl. The solid and pp hearts are also cut from snippets and arranged by Hammy.

I used an MFT rectangle stitch for the front panel and then I used a NBUS MFT die called "Stitched Strips" to make the diagonal stitches running across the middle. By that I mean that each line is not cut individually, but the die consists of all those lines together as one. I really didn't know what to do with this die after I bought it (cough) years ago, but I finally saw Jules use it on a card and the light bulb went off in my head! It only took me another year to use it, but thank you, Jules, for managing to light up my dim bulb!

Challenges

• HLS February CAS: Love is in the air.
• Shopping Our Stash: Love is in the air.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday Challenge: Tristan's prompt, "All About Occasions."

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A Little Help Here

Dreamstime

So ... this happened.

Last week I got an email from the owner of a challenge congratulating me on receiving recognition for a card I had entered. As I always do, I left a thank you on the challenge blog, and then I went to a tab on my side bar called "Recognition," which is a page that lists every recognition I have ever won in nine years of blogging and entering challenges. I entered the date and link to the challenge blog, along with a small photo of the card and a small photo of the badge. Please forgive me tooting my own horn, but there were lots of listings on the page over nine years.

Minutes later I received an email from Blogger saying that my "page entitled 'Recognition' was flagged for malware or virus and as a result the page has been deleted."

Period. Kaput. Gone.

No information was given as to what prompted the flag, or how I could remove whatever prompted the flag, or how to file an appeal. I know it is a free service to us, but where's the service part?

After the blood came back to my head, I starting trying to figure it out. I assumed the offender was the challenge badge or link I had just added ... or maybe that was just a coincidence? How was I to know? But, wait, that particular challenge is also a Blogger blog, so if the challenge is still there and the winner's badge is still up on their side bar, then they must not be the cause of the flag. After all, it wouldn't be fair to only take down my page when all I did was a copy and paste.

I went to Blogger Forum and spent two hours trying to find any information on this subject. I finally started my own question to ask if there was anything I could do to get my page back, but all I've heard so far has been crickets.

All the discussion on the Forum about deletions is about people having their blogs suddenly deleted, which is, of course, much, much worse, but I still feel very sad that I lost my entire page of every recognition. (And don't you find it ironic that Google's blogger help forum is stunningly unhelpful and nearly impossible to maneuver in terms of subject matter?)

So what do I do? Stop playing in challenges because of the links? Stop adding badges and hope the challenges understand, even though I'm not sure that is the problem? 

I'm not worried about my computer because we have virus and malware protection. Wouldn't you think Blogger, which is run by Google, would have the same level of software, if not way better, to protect them from any viruses or malware that this old grandmother blogger might innocently download??

If you have any ideas as to why this happened or how any of us might protect ourselves from this happening in the future, I'd love to hear from you. 

And if you suddenly stop seeing my blog ... .😖😢

Actually, unless Blogger can override it, I could always bring the blog back via a backup, if I were backing it up, which I haven't been. So all this has reminded me how important backing up your blog is. I've now backed mine up! To make a backup, go to your dashboard and click on settings. Scroll down and you will find "manage blog" and you will see "backup content." 

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!💕

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)