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Styling input placeholder text seems like something that should be pretty simple and straightforward, but there are a couple of gotchas to be aware of. To style placeholder text for different browsers, you'll need to use different pseudo classes.

Today I worked on improving the accessibility of the travel budget planning React app I have been building. There are two main pages in the app that I am using to demonstrate the issues and changes. This is not a comprehensive list of issues you may run into, but if any of these apply to your current or future project, I hope this post will be helpful.

This past weekend I spent hours building a travel budget planner app in React and Node and deploying to Heroku, and learned a lot in the process. These are some of the lessons I learned that may be helpful to my future selft or to others undertaking such an end-to-end task for the first time.

A career in this field is made up of many days like this -- where finding a bug is where the challenge lies, not the fix itself. The fix was simple but the real work was in finding it.

It always seems to me that there is this antagonistic relationship between employers and employees: employers want to deliver less and get more out of their workers, and well, employees want more than they are getting, especially when they have other options. If there are so many advantages to employee retention, why do companies skimp on fixing the issues on their end instead of blaming the workforce?

There are a lot of thoughts out there on how data tables should, or could, be handled to work responsively across mobile devices. I needed something simple that could be applied to most tables throughout the site and be done with it. No new development should have to be done after the initial development, making it easy for authors to make their tables responsive in the CMS.

I knit for the joy of it: the meditative, repetitive counting, the beauty of a pattern emerging slowly, stitch after stitch, the excitement of casting on and the high of binding off, donning a new piece for the first time that I created over hours of work... But deeper than that, I believe I gravitated toward knitting above other crafts specifically because it is a lot like coding.

I am dedicating 2019 to my body. My resolution this year is to get the best body I've ever had.

I made myself this chai tea latte with almond milk instead of whole milk, and honey instead of sugar. It's also not as sweet as the Starbuck's chai tea latte, but I find that the spices add enough extra flavor that loading up on sugar is not necessary. The entire treat came out to 94 calories.

The winter holiday season comes with lots of delicious, fattening food. Keeping up with your fitness goals can be quite the challenge during this time. Here are some tips to help stay on track during this season, and not miss out on too much of the merriment!

My #100DaysOfCode Log - Days 1-7. Follow my ReactJS learning journey. I have been focused on learning React the past couple of months, taking a Udemy React course to learn the concepts and start writing code. Now that I have finished the course, I am committing to 100 Days of Code to get practice in React and build my React portfolio.

As I was readying for my trip to Italy with my husband this September, I decided to start a knitting project for any downtime since I would not have my computer. I had previously purchased Wonderland Yarn's Queen of Hearts sock weight yarn in the Off with Her Red colorway back in May when I visited the Yarn Store on Nob Hill in Albuquerque, New Mexico on a work trip. It is 80% superwash fine merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon. The color is the perfect red for me. I used one skein to knit the Ghost Gardens Shawlette.

My goal for my week vacation to Italy with my husband was to travel with just a carry on and a purse. I usually overpack when it comes to vacation, as I keep grabbing stuff I think I might need, would be fun to have, or just in case. Packing for this trip meant being very disciplined and asking myself what I really need and what is just my overpacking tendency telling me I needed.

I traveled to Italy September 14-22, 2018 with my husband. Today was our second day in Rome. We visited the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill, as well as the Alter of the Fatherland and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

For me, spices have always been something I pick up at a store when trying a new recipe, and don't use much outside of the basics: salt, pepper, garlic, and the occasional herb like oregano or dried basil. For our wedding we received a gift card to a spice shop, Penzeys. Until then I didn't know there was such a thing as a spice shop.

Let me start off by saying that I am a Virgo, and true to my sign, I worry about every little detail. I obsess over all the what-ifs, all the worst case scenarios. Planning for the first trip across the ocean that I would be taking as a grown up where it was all on me, the planning as well as the consequences of anything that may go wrong, was enough to trigger some pretty intense anxiety for me.

There are countless articles and books written about setting goals, timelines, and tasks. Something I have found to be effective for large goals that span weeks, months, or years, is to focus on setting "process goals", or goals that are more focused on getting something done, and moving forward, rather than on the end result.

In this post, I wanted to go through getting started with snapshot testing using Jest in a simple GatsbyJS blog. There is a lot more to learn than in these simple examples, but this should be helpful in getting your feet wet with a real-world example instead of the simplistic examples found in the docs.

I have an old Samsonite two-wheeled carry on that has been my trusty companion in my domestic and international travels for over ten years. It's a heavy, sturdy thing that can take any abuse and keep going strong. But with increasingly tightening restrictions on size and weight, especially on budget airlines, it's time for me to shop around for another bag for my upcoming trip to Europe.

Here I have gathered my favorite healthy recipes for cooking fish. I focus on avoiding butter or breading the fish to keep an already healthy meat good for you. I also favor short ingredient lists for both health benefits and time savings, and provide some of my time- and money-saving ingredient substitutes.

These two are such a huge help around the house...they let me spend more time on the important stuff 😍

Friday evening I decided to jump into GatsbyJS, using Contentful as a headless CMS. After spending more of my Friday night than I was planning to from excitement, here are my thoughts.

Planning a week long vacation to Italy on a budget started with the budget I had in mind, and the locations I wanted to visit. I wanted to visit Rome, Florence, and Venice, since I had never been to Italy before and those are the big three. I would be flying into Rome and leaving from Venice.