The Day We Met "Freedom"

The Day We Met "Freedom"...

We had dreamed of owning a motorhome for a while, but had accepted that it would not be possible until retirement.  Due to the high cost of new and used RVs, and despite all of our effort to make it happen, it just wasn't feasible to purchase a motorhome at this time.  We believed we would need to continue to be satisfied with our towable "Lily" (shown below) until such time as the stars aligned and made it a possibility.

But....  that didn't stop us from dreaming and looking.

And then, out of nowhere, opportunity presented itself!  In May of 2022, while browsing Marketplace, we ran across an ad for a 2015 Thor Miramar 34.2 Class A.  It only had 23,000 miles and seemed to be in great condition mechanically.  It was beautiful on the exterior, with only a small dent in one of the storage compartment doors.  

But then we saw the inside!  It was evident that she was going to need some work.  All of the upholstery, including captains chairs, dinette seats and sofa, were in rough shape.  

However, the floorplan was accommodating, and we knew we could transform her into our dream home away from home.  She was priced right and affordable for us, even after considering we would have to invest some money to get her back to her previous glory.  So, after a (very) brief discussion, we decided to make it happen!

We made the 400+ mile journey to pick her up, and Mark drove back home in the biggest vehicle he had ever driven.  Needless to say, it was a little stressful at first, but by the time we pulled into the driveway back home, he was feeling very comfortable and looking forward to our first trip!

The next step was to start the process of transforming her into the dream we would later dub "Freedom"...

Below is a pic of our previous towable "Lily".  

Creating a Static Home Page for your Blog on Blogger

Creating a Static Home Page for your Blog on Blogger

We wanted to have a static home page to use as a landing for our Blog.  This is fairly simple using the redirect setting in Blogger.  Below are some instructions for making the change.

1. Create your new home page by creating a page in Blogger and adding your content, then publish the page.  For this example, we will use a page named "Welcome".
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Add redirect settings to use your newly created homepage by going to Settings > Custom Redirects.
   
   
   

   
   
   From:  /
   To:      /p/welcome.html
   
   Turn on the Permanent switch and press OK then SAVE.
   
   
3. At this point, the static home page is ready to go!  But, you still need to set up a way for users to navigate to your blog posts.  To do this, we'll add an item to the Pages menu. 
   
   First, if you're not already using the Pages menu, add it to your Blog.  This can be done by adding the Pages gadget to the Cross Column area under Layout.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Next, we need to add a tab to the Pages gadget to allow users to navigate to your blog posts.  Select the "Edit" button on the Pages gadget and then select "Add a New Item".  Enter the text you want to display on the tab in the Page Name field (for this example we'll use "Blog Posts".  Then, add the following in the Page URL field (replace "yourblogname" with the name of your blog):
   
   https://yourblogname.blogspot.com/index.html
   
   
   
   
   
5. You should now see the new Blog Posts menu item and be able to navigate to your normal blog posts.

Removing the Title from Blogger Pages

Removing the Title from Blogger Pages

After adding a few pages to our blog, I realized that the Page Title was showing at the top of each page when viewed.  For some pages, this was OK, but for others, I preferred it not to show.  For example, I had created a home page that we wanted to use as a landing page for everyone to see first, but I didn't like the idea of it having the word "Home" in big, bold letters at the top.

So, after a little research on google, I discovered the below solution to remove the title from your pages in Blogger.  

Please note that this does remove the title from all pages, so if you prefer to have a title on some pages, you will need to manually add it back in the body of your page.

1. Go to your Blogger dashboard
2. Select Template
3. Select the Customize button
4. Select Advanced
5. Add the following to the CSS area:

            .post-title.entry-title{
            display: none;    

            }.

Screen Capture Below