OK - so yesterday our Canadian blogging buddy Franke James called me and convinced me to try some widgets!  They took a little more than 5 minutes, (it took about 7 minutes...)but now that I have the hang of it, I think I could whip these babies out and I plan to experiment with some more in the coming weeks!

                            And I made 2 widgets in order to cross promote the 2 blogs, hopefully to drive a little traffic back and fourth. The widget will display a sampling of what the blog offers, and hopefully bring in some new traffic. And yes, they were easy to make! - If you look over at the sidebar, you'll see the one for LIFE BY DESIGN, that is actually live. Below are 2 screen captures, so they are not actually live.

                            

If you use Feedburner, simply open up your account, select the blog you want to use, select PUBLICIZE at the top, then select SPRING WIDGETS SKIN on the left. At this point, you can uplaod a small logo to appear in the widget. I simply sized my title / header to about 180 pixels wide. (The widgets above are 180 x 300).

You then ACTIVATE & SAVE it - and GET YOUR WIDGET, and at that point, you can change up the size and the colors. And then  SHARE / GET CODE, and utilize the HTML code where ever you want it. 
                             
The possibilities are endless - and fun - you can even put widgets on your PC desktop!
You can do a countdown to something significant for your readers, you could put up a widget showing the current news from CNN or Reuters.


GO HAVE FUN NOW!

Thanks  Franke!