Hi all! Just a little housekeeping post this morning. I recently found out that with some recent blog changes, I accidentally messed up my RSS subscriber feed and unintentionally dropped most of my subscribers. This means, if you subscribe to Dine & Dish via RSS feed like Google Reader, it’s possible you haven’t been getting my updates.

I’d love it if you’d re-subscribe to Dine & Dish via RSS. You can do so by clicking here… I promise not to tinker around with anything else without a professional at my side!

While we’re at it, did you know that you can subscribe to Dine & Dish updates via email? These include a weekend recap as well as post updates during the week. It’s my favorite way to stay in touch, simply because I love the beautiful email template Alison with Polish Your Blog created for me. Subscribe HERE to email updates and check it out. Allison is super talented, so if you are looking for someone experienced in email template design, I highly recommend her!

Of course, I’m also on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Let’s connect there as well if we haven’t already!

Oh! If you are a brand or business interested in partnering or advertising, I have a new media page (also designed by Alison) I’d love to share with you. Email me at kristen <at> dineanddish.net or contact me through the form above.

As always, I truly appreciate your support of Dine & Dish. I hope some day, we can connect in real life… wouldn’t that be fun?
Thanks again!

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Picture the scene… it is late in the night on May 1st, 2011. You and a group of friends are sitting around, watching groundbreaking news unfold. Osama Bin Laden has been killed. It is a historic moment, most likely not to be forgotten during your lifetime.

Deep in conversation, you are all expressing your gratitude for our US Soldiers. Some are expressing concerns over the safety of our troops and the retaliation that is certain to come from Bin Laden’s death. Additionally, many are aghast at the celebrations taking place in the streets, remembering back to 9/11 when “they” were celebrating in the face of our tragedy. The conversations are deep, meaningful, thought provoking. Then, all of a sudden, one of the friends present says “Hey… look at these cookies I made for Mother’s Day. Pretty awesome aren’t they?”

Everyone looks at the person like they are insane. Did they just talk about Mother’s Day cookies in a time like this? Do they not know what just happened?

This is basically the scene last night. Twitter and Facebook were a buzz with the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Among the news, tweets that were previously scheduled (or at least I hope they were pre-scheduled tweets) were interrupting this historic moment in awkward abundance. Scheduled tweets, my friends, were seen as irreverent and completely out of place and frankly, a bit ridiculous. As Stefania tweeted “Beyond strange, it’s a social media fail.”

I know this type of event doesn’t happen everyday… it is a brief moment in history, but consider the moments your scheduled tweets might be interrupting and decide for yourself if it is truly worth that extra few seconds you gain by scheduling your blog post tweets.

Just something to think about… do you want to be talking about your latest unrelated blog post when groundbreaking history is made?

The post Why You Shouldn’t Schedule Your Blog Post Tweets appeared first on Dine and Dish.

Love is in the air…haven’t you noticed? All it takes is a simple browse through blog world and you’ll see heart shaped this, pink colored that… everything is taking on a beautiful romantic hue!

Speaking of that special four letter word, I am assuming one reason you are here is because you kind of love food. Am I right? Well, if you love food, there is a special new site I want to tell you about! Foodily. Foodily stands for Food I Love you and it is the hottest thing to hit the food world in awhile. If you love recipes, love sharing great things with your friends on Facebook and love beautiful photos, Foodily is for you. It’s like Facebook but for food. Foodily is integrated with Facebook, so you can easily share the recipes you find great with your friends, and vice versa.

In my kind of language, Foodily is a unique recipe search engine that features recipes from a broad spectrum of chefs and bloggers (like me!) from across the internet and then gives those searching the recipes the opportunity to share what they find and love with others. Go ahead and try it out for yourself! In fact, since we are in the mood for love, why don’t you take a minute and share your Valentine’s Day menu and you could have a chance to be featured on the Foodily site!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Foodily.com and login with Facebook Connect (or create a login).
2. Play around with recipes and find your favorites to create a perfectly delish Valentine’s Day meal!
3. Once you’ve selected a recipe save it to a menu. From the recipe, select the “save” button, save it as an appetizer, main, etc., and then it’ll ask you to name your menu. Create your special Valentine’s menu title. Continue adding recipes and saving to that menu
4. View your menu (either from tab at top or from your profile) and grab the URL (you can also share your menu on Facebook and grab the URL there). Note: the URL will look similar to this: http://foodily.com/m/1234
5. Tweet the following and be sure to include the #foodilyvdaymenu hashtag at the end:  Check out my @foodily Valentine’s Day menu! Create one of your own! http//(your menu URL here) #foodilyvdaymenu
6. Foodily will be watching and selecting menu winners daily to be featured on the Foodily site!
7. Note: You can also enter by sharing your menu on Foodily’s Facebook wall.

For example, my ideal valentine’s day menu would look something like this…

A Queen of Hearts Cocktail followed by this Herbed Garden Salad with Goat Cheese. We’d have a nice Peppered Fillet with a Grainy Mustard Cream Sauce, Roasted Garlic Fingerling Potatoes in Thyme and Butter and Orange Scented Green Beans. For dessert, it is all about the chocolate and nothing says love more to me than a Chocolate Lava Cake. I kind of doubt that my Valentine’s Dinner will realistically look anything like this, but a girl can dream, right?

Take a few minutes to check out the Foodily site. It takes some getting used to, but once you figure out the ins and outs, I’m  pretty sure you’ll be shouting from the rooftops… Food I Love You! Have fun and happy exploring.

I am part of a team of paid Foodily ambassadors. The opinions within this post are my own.

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