Last weekend was the first weekend: the weekend after the first week of classes. And rather than relax and unwind whilst simultaneously winding (up for the new semester), I sacrificed my weekend for a retreat.

This retreat was different because I wasn’t a standard participant. It’s a First Year retreat, for freshmen to develop their roots as college Catholics. My First Year retreat was a vivid and transforming experience for me, so I felt the need to give back. That need called me to organize the food for the first years. Of course, I also signed up two months before the retreat’s scheduled date, believing it would be a piece of cake when the time finally came.

Only as I was making my Costco list did I realize what I was in for. I had to plan and purchase food (reimbursed of course) for 20 people?! For a weekend?!

Estimating quantities was so stressful that I wanted to give up, to throw my list at anyone else and say, “You do this. I want my first weekend to myself, not around stupid freshmen.”

My wonderful friends came with me to Costco, and the five of us dominated the self-checkout like pros, scanning and stacking and boxing. And my miracle station wagon managed to hold all the food along with a full load of passengers. Even though Brad now cringes at the word Costco, we made it out alive.

And I made it out to a wonderful world of snow, light, and space.

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, yes, but I also spent a lot of time retreating. Bonding with the freshmen over our shared faith, sharing stories and experiences and beliefs. I cooked and served them lovingly, and they all helped me and nobody complained when food was a few minutes late.

What struck me was that, even with a 3-year age gap, our retreat conversations were so relevant. When we were all speaking from our hearts, the feelings were universal.

Then breaktime would ensue, and the bond was broken as talk turned to dining hall food and freshmen classes. But I still remember those magical moments.

So maybe I did need a retreat. Mine was a retreat of service and reflection, and so much gratitude. Grateful that I had gone on the retreat as a freshman; grateful that I had signed up for kitchen duty on a whim. I lost a weekend, but I gained perspective: that’s enough.

(and i served my “secret recipe”, ultimate overnight french toast, so everyone was happy.)

a weekend filled with gratitude is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

It was a mess, but I’ve finally eradicated it from my system and Fluffyland is clean. So we can all (especially me!!) breathe easy. But I still wanted to post a clarification, as well as some tips, for all of you: bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

How it Happened
Many people have said, “why would someone attack Fluffyland?” and I agree: why go after an innocent website? But my site was not independently targeted, or even purposely attacked. Some mean computer geek out there programmed a computer to search through the web, find sites with small security vulnerabilities, and input little bits of code in unexpected places. Those little bits of code can hurt the computers that visit my site, and they are very hard to find. After more than a week, I’ve finally found them all, and upped my security so it won’t happen again.

Blog Readers
If you have visited my site in the past two weeks (between 1/13 and 1/28), whether or not a red screen has come up, you should do a full virus scan on your PC to make sure it didn’t get you. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-virus program for Windows machines, and it has this particular exploit in its list of definitions. If you download that and scan, it will find this virus if you’ve got it.

I am very sorry for any things that the bad guys made my website do to your computer’s health. All I can say is that I tried my hardest and lost a lot of sleep until it was finally gone.

Bloggers
If you have a blog, this could happen to you. I really, really hope it doesn’t… but in case your blog ends up distributing malware (and making you very sad), I thought I’d post a list of helpful links so you don’t have to read as many articles as I did.

1. First and foremost, make regular backups of your site so you will have something to fall back on. I don’t do this enough, and I sure regretted it.
2. Scan your site regularly with the Free Sucuri Site Scanner. Unlike Google scans, this does a fresh scan of your site as soon as you click the button, so you can see if your site (or any site you might worry about!) is clean right now. I am now in the habit of doing daily scans.
3. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, because they will email you if your site comes under alert. It’s good for catching malware, as well as numerous other SEO-related issues. But the Google scan only takes place every few days, since it has the whole web to deal with, so your results aren’t up to the minute like Securi.
4. Use WordPress plugins to scan through your blog files. Scanning manually is a pain, but I used the WordPress Exploit Scanner Plugin to find the malicious code so I could go in and remove it. Note: read the instructions for this plugin, because it finds lots of files marked “could be suspicious”. Most of them aren’t, so don’t get paranoid. But it’s incredibly helpful when you know something is wrong.
5. The basics: change your passwords for your CPanel login, your WordPress login, and change your WordPress secret key. The articles below give more details. Make sure none of your plugins or scripts are out of date, and know how to take your site down quickly if you need to.
6. Read up. Here are some articles I found helpful for both removal and future prevention:
   • Hacked Site Prevention and Repair Guide
   • WordPress Guide to Repairing a Hacked Blog
   • WordPress Guide to Increasing Blog Security

I’m now armed and ready for the next little robot who tries to take down my site… we’ll just wait and see what happens to him!

what to do when your blog has been hacked. is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

Classes ended a week later than usual this year, so I didn’t end up back home until late on the 18th. Cleveland gave me a gorgeous snowy send-off, but Virginia’s warm and flipping between bright sun and heavy rain, like Christmas in April.

I’ve sewn a handful of cool things lately, and I can’t wait to show them to you! I had a great custom request this year, so once Christmas is over I will put up the pictures. Nothing’s better for my creative spirit than someone showing a ridiculous picture and asking, “can you make this?”

I hope you are all having a cozy and wonderful Christmas Eve! It’s the best night of the year. Merry Christmas!

for old time’s sake is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

I’ve had this tape since just after last Christmas, and I finally get to use it. Hurray!

guten morgen, dezember! is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

I hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving filled with food, family, and blessings! I’ve got lots to be thankful for, especially my family, friends, and the wonderful chance to forget about classes for two whole days!

And just a heads-up: to save myself some sewing stress, I’m encouraging early Narwhal orders with a sale! All narwhals ordered before December 1 are $3 off!

happy thanksgiving! is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

We Clevelanders were spoiled at the beginning of the month with a blissfully sunny and almost-warm November. We had seven sunny days in a row… seven! Hear that, Los Angeles? We’re catching up!

I readily soaked it up, propelled by the voice in the back of my head whispering, it won’t last. My camera and I saved it all, especially my favorite part: the orange leaves against the brilliant blue sky. I could spend all day staring up at those trees, their leaves artistically splayed against the perfect backdrop. I willingly accepted the stares from passersby as I stopped to look at the trees in their splendor, because they were worth it. Those trees.

Walking early to class with my camera makes everything better. Even with mountains of classwork to move, and no bulldozer, just a small shovel to pick at it scoop by scoop… the sky, and my camera, and the trees, save me.

Fall is my favorite season for a multitude of reasons. Not only do the leaves change, providing a beautiful (and delightfully crunchy) walk to class, but I get to wear flannel, and scarves, and my glittens (as i’ve recently heard these called). I’ve also finally found the perfect hot chocolate: Stephen’s Dark Hot Chocolate, available in super-bulk at Amazon. It sounds like a lot, really. But for a college student walking back and forth to class in Cleveland… those six canisters might not even last me through the winter. It’s amazing stuff.

Another plus? Pie. Pretty soon I’ll be feverishly baking pies on a daily basis, and my suitemates won’t be able to stop me.

Fall has so many positive attributes that, when combined, just barely overcome the major downside: winter’s next.

Thank goodness I’ve still got five canisters of hot chocolate left.

One last joyful thing: I have received one of the ultimate honors of the internet, in my opinion: the chance to serve as someone else’s inspiration. Joshua, a 12-year-old boy with a really great blog, carved a narwhal jack-o-lantern after being inspired by my narwhal plush. My week has been made. You should definitely stop by his blog – it’s got wonderful posts about his pets and his sisters, with better writing than a good handful of my engineering classmates.

I hope you’re all having a chilly but cheery November, with even more hot chocolate and pie than me – and lots fewer lab reports and quizzes on complex math! Procrastination time is now over.

enter the chill is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

For my last Halloween weekend as a college student, I couldn’t resist the chance to dress up! I wore my new winter hat as part of my Amelia Earhart costume, and Brad dressed as the 11th (and most recent) Doctor in Doctor Who, complete with bright red fez created by yours truly. In case you haven’t seen the show, here’s a really short clip: “fezzes are cool“. I also learned to tie a bow-tie this weekend, what a useful skill! Brad got lots of compliments, since his outfit was spot-on, and awesome, and we go to a rather nerdy school.

Brad and I carved pumpkins, as you can see below: I picked a warty pumpkin, but I think that meant it was harder in general, because it took some hefty sawing to carve! But it was worth it, because I now have the world’s happiest pumpkin. I wish I could’ve found some vampire fangs; I love what Alice did to make adorable fanged gourds (and the post is a must-read… she’s just so excited!).

Brad and Hannah had a contest to see who could most quickly eat a donut off a string… and I’m going to be in trouble for putting that picture online ;) The three of us then painted baby gourds, and got overly excited about their googley eyes.

It was a low-key, little-kid-ish Halloween – just the way it should be, and just the way I like it. A nice transition out of birthday week… and into November? When did this happen?

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween!

happy halloween! is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

I always love taking pictures. But there are some days where I can see things better with my camera than with my eyes.

Lines, shapes, textures, colors.

And then the produce salesman shouts, “take a picture!” and points to his papayas. I comply.

Another friendly merchant leaps into my picture as I click the shutter. I am entertained.

A camera full of pictures and a sack full of fruits and vegetables: that’s a productive day in my book.

cleveland’s west side market: exploring with a camera is a post from: Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog