Christmas Tour How To

Next Monday, December 14 is the much anticipated, highly regarded, horribly too soon Christmas Tour of Homes! Many thanks to BooMama for entrusting me with this huge responsibility!

Who can join in?

ANYONE! As long as you have a blog or flickr acct that you can link to--everyone is invited!

What Do I do?

Simply share some of your holiday decor by writing a post and showing photos. You can show one photo or 28--it's totally up to you. You can write a big bunch of stuff or keep quiet, the point of the tour is to encourage and inspire each other with our decorating. I love pretty decorations but this is not a contest. Everyone is invited to join in, from the simplest decor to the most elaborate. I'd love for you to grab the button right below by copying and pasting the code in that little box into the HTML section of your blog or sidebar. Or you can grab it however you know how. Also, feel free to link to thenester.com it will take you to the tour on Monday.

<center><a href="http://thenester.com/"><img alt="Christmas Tour of Homes with The Nester" src="http://graphicallydesigning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ontour.png" title="Christmas Tour of Homes with The Nester" /></a></center>

How's it work?

Some of you are totally down with understanding all the lingo and the link up method. It's basically going to be just like Emily's Tuesday's Unwrapped or Melissa's Friday Holiday Linky posts and Kimba's DIY Day .{scroll down on those posts to see all the links}.

When you see these words on Monday at the end of the post, obey--click there to enter your PERMALINK--not today, Monday.

By 8am {EST} Monday morning I'll have my tour up at the top of the blog {remember, if for some reason you don't see Nesting Place in your reader or Blogger Dashboard, just type in thenester.com} and there will be an obvious place for you to enter your blog PERMALINK in at the bottom of the post. If for some reason you see an error page that means I've wrecked up the whole internet. Just be patient, eat a candy cane and check back soon.

What's a permalink?

{copied straight from my sister's explanation}

A permalink is the URL to a specific blog post. In other words, each blog post has an address and the permalink is the street number and the avenue. For example, my blog address is www.nestingplacenc.blogspot.com. But the permalink to this post is http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmast-tour-how-to.html

To get the permalink, I simply clicked on the post title and it popped up in the address bar.

Why was my link deleted?

{also copied straight from my sister's blog because I am 8 years old and lazy and she explains stuff much better}

Probably because you linked to your blog rather than the permalink of your post. Sometimes people like to browse through your Tour of Home posts from my site days or weeks after you’ve posted them. If you simply link to your blog front page, they will not be able to find your Tour post. Unless you use the permalink, your link will be deleted out of courtesy to the reader.

I hope that covers everything~enjoy your holiday decorating and don't forget to take pictures this weekend!