Blogging into the great unknown by Bangers & Mash

When people ask me why I write a food blog, I never really know what to say. It’s a strange hobby really. It takes up an increasingly large chunk of my spare time and I make no money from it - yet. Although I do sometimes receive products to review, which is always rather nice.

I’m not what you’d describe as a natural cook. I only really started cooking properly when we had children and I was forced to pull my act together. Yet these days I frequently find myself obsessing about what new meals I can try out to feature on the blog, while it’s commonplace for my family to be waiting at the table while I snap “just one more!” photograph of a dish.

I’m always amazed whenever people ‘out there’ actually read my posts, cook my food and write such lovely comments. But they do. And I love it. That is, I suppose, why I keep doing it.

Just a couple of years ago, I’d have thought you were bonkers if you told me that, in the not-too-distant future, I’d be a fully signed up member of the blogging fraternity.

It all started when I realised I had to get my head around social media. I work as a freelance PR consultant and it dawned on me I was becoming a bit a dinosaur when it came to online communications. As I saw more and more of my PR peers throwing themselves headlong into social media, I decided I must do the same or get left behind.

Initially blogging provided me with content to experiment with. Blogging wasn’t the end in itself. You can’t tweet or post to Facebook without content. But what could I blog about?

One weekend I was telling a good friend how I’d started a weekly meal plan to keep our costs down. She was intrigued by the fact we were eating a much more varied, healthy and tasty diet as a result and I realised that here was the perfect material for a blog.

Normally when I start something new I prepare. I plan. I research. But not with the Bangers & Mash blog. Publishing my first post was like stepping out into a great, unknown blogosphere.

Unlike starting a new PR campaign, I really had no notion of my ‘target’ audience or my competitors. I simply knew what I wanted to write about and that I’d write in my own voice. If people liked it they could read it and follow me, and if they didn’t, well they could go elsewhere.

But I seem to have found an audience for Bangers & Mash. It’s not a big audience but it’s growing steadily. They’re people who, like me, want to cook simple family food which is still a little bit adventurous; want meals that don’t cost a fortune but still rely on good quality, seasonal ingredients.

Perhaps I was a little naive at first but it seems to have worked for me. I didn’t read a single food blog before I started out. Looking back, I remember being surprised to discover there were so many out there. Maybe if I’d known beforehand, I wouldn’t have started. However, I quickly discovered these other bloggers aren’t competitors. Instead I find myself part of an incredibly supportive community.

Vanesther lives in Somerset with her husband and two young daughters, where she tries to live the good life but yearns occasionally for the mayhem and bright lights of the city. You can find Vanesther’s blog Bangers & Mash at bangermashchat.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter at @BangerMashChat.

Samantha Blears from The Love Bakery: It all began in 2007 in a wintry New York..

It all began in 2007 in a wintry New York when I was visiting for a very glamorous 40th birthday celebration at Soho House. I found myself outside Magnolia Bakery, peering through their window, fascinated by the rows of beautifully decorated cupcakes.  I thought,  I could do that - I could bake cupcakes, and once back home that is exactly what I did!

Beginning from home, and starting with school fairs, local delis and private parties, I slowly built up a business, Love Bakery. Cupcakes were my passion and I loved every single minute of it -  I loved the hours spent in the kitchen, even the all-nighters – the business just got under my skin.

Fast-forward a couple of years and my kitchen could no longer take the burden of the huge orders I was now baking on a regular basis.  It was time to broaden our horizons.  A shop on the Kings Road was the natural choice, as Chelsea had been my stomping ground since my late teens – so when a teeny tiny store came up for grabs opposite the Bluebird Restaurant I just knew it was the right place for Love Bakery.

And so the transformation of 319 Kings Road began.  I chose the colours that I liked – candy pink and citrus green. Against all advice I chose pale French grey paint for the walls. After all, if I was going to be at work all hours, I wanted the bakery to look just how I wanted it. I found a beautiful crystal chandelier and ornate French mirrors which I just had to have.  My budget was well and truly stretched! So instead of professional machinery I decided to start with KitchenAids, domestic ovens and fridges. This turned out to be part of our story – cupcakes made by hand using domestic mixers and ovens. Cakes were baked in small batches and the flavours were gradually developed - enabling everything to be seasonal and taste delicious.  It was just like baking at home.

I started tweeting as soon as our doors opened at Love Bakery. I remember being thrilled when I had my first follower. Twitter helped me build the business, as potential clients could both read about and see images of the shop and the cupcakes. Our followers were not just in the UK but around the world. I am still amazed at how many followers we have. Love Bakery was also followed by other small businesses and we looked to each other for support and encouragement. It certainly helped me. Running a business can be a very lonely place. Friends and family no longer really figure in your day-to-day life and people soon drift away without friendships being nurtured.  This to me was the hardest part of running Love Bakery, but here is where Twitter helped. It made me feel less alone and I received truly generous moral support.

Within a year of opening Love Bakery, I was approached by a publisher, Ivy Press, to write a recipe book.  I could not believe it and even now find it hard to believe that I am a published author. I wanted the book to truly reflect Love Bakery, hence the gorgeous candy pink cover decorated with glittery butterflies, fabulously styled photography and detailed recipes – all of which were tested again and again in our domestic ovens. I wanted to make sure that anyone could buy this book and bake from it - I was self-taught and others could be too.

The penning of my book led me to begin writing blogs. This was a natural extension to my tweeting and I was able to write about the things that made me happy. Blogging really helped to flesh out my online personality and reach out to an even larger global audience. I figured that if I liked something then someone out there would too.

Now that I have closed Love Bakery my blogging has led me onto a new project. I am now teaching myself to cook from home. I blog about the recipes I try and the results – good or bad (always eaten though).  It does help that I have an addiction to buying cookery books but really I feel that is just the symptom.  The real problem is my need and love to cook and feed the people I love. So nothing has really changed then!

Samantha Blears from The Love Bakery can be found blogging at lovebakerylondon.blogspot.co.uk. Her book, Love Bakery – Cupcakes from the Heart, published by Ivy Press is available from Amazon.

The Joy and the Agony of Making Lists by Ashley Lennon of Skintinthecity

Are you a list maker? Isn’t it agony? Yes, we all know that copious listmaking is meant to make our lives easier, but recently I’ve been wondering if that’s actually true, or just propaganda put out by notebook manufacturers. You see, during a clearout the other day, I came across an old diary, full of lists – and it made for painful reading.

I’m a real list addict. Whether it’s lists of pros and cons for major decisions; lists of  ingoings and outgoings; or plain old to-do lists I make them from the moment I get up. What struck me though, looking at the seven-year-old lists in this diary, was just how much my lists - and by extension my life – had changed. Reading these lists made it plainer than looking in the mirror.

See, seven years ago was pre-children. The to-do lists in the old diary had items on them like, ‘buy flights’ and ‘get cholera jab.' Just to torture myself I looked at my list from yesterday. It said, in order: ‘kiwis, nappies, ice-cube trays, paprika, phone school.’ The ice-cube trays aren’t for hosting a cocktail party, but rather to keep my earrings together in pairs, and stop them getting lost. Anything to make the morning rush a bit less fraught. Glamorous stuff, eh?

Let me share what I’ve learned from re-reading old lists this week: you really shouldn’t do it. It is one of the most depressing things in the world. You may be vaguely aware that you are carrying unaccomplished items forward, but it is only when you start to leaf through old lists and count just how often an item has reoccurred without being crossed off that you realise how hopelessly inept you really are. If you tend, like me, to date your lists, there is no hiding how much of your life you are wasting on transferring unaccomplished items to the new list.

‘Buy paprika’, for example, has been on my list since February. A rough calculation tells me that if I start a new shopping list every couple of days I must have written the words ‘buy paprika’ approximately forty times.

Starry Stuff

Something I did seven years ago and still do today is star each item on to-do lists so I know how urgent they are – one, two or three stars, depending on the level of importance.

I don’t know why I waste time writing ‘buy nappies’ when it’s a three-star situation: I should already be in the car and speeding to the supermarket before my baby starts dripping on the living room. Actually, I do know why I list nappies: so I can cross them off again later.

Crossing things off lists is a compulsion of mine. Sometimes I even add things I’ve already done, but forgot to write down in advance, just so I can cross them off and see my achievement in black and white with a tidy line through it and a nice big tick. Can I really be the only one who does this? Back-filling is an essential skill for any listkeeper, I think.

There was just one ray of light in the list-reading exercise. One of the items from all those years ago was ‘start blog.’ I have to tell you that I didn’t start it in 2006, nor the next year, nor the one after that. Indeed it took four years of mulling it over and writing it down before I eventually started skintinthecity. Just goes to show that if an item sticks around on my list long enough it does, eventually, get done. So, there’s hope for the paprika yet, folks. Perhaps in 2017 I’ll even make a chilli that will really pack a punch.

When not making lists, Ashley Lennon blogs at skintinthecity.com, which give lots of tips on how to live the luxe life on a shoestring budget. Follow Ashley on Twitter @SkintintheCity. Skintinthecity has been named one of the UK's top 25 personal finance sites by Cision.

Thinking has become fashionable by Victoria Keon-Cohen

Thinking has become fashionable - yes, that’s the look for 2014! Models' rights and model driven projects are what it’s now all about. Gone are the days of glamour devoid of substance and now are the days of models substantiating their own careers and drivng their own decisions.

When I began working as a model ten years ago, you never heard of models being involved in anything else. This was because of an expected conformity and financial security in the workplace. With my work for the Equity Models’ Union I couldn’t tell anyone for a very real fear of losing my agency and clients. However, that was more because of the threat of being black listed. However, Equity was received as a positive influence in the industry. Now its 2013 and the fashion industry is flourishing with services for models' health and organisations striving for workplace improvement. Starting with our Equity, soon to follow was Stand Up For Fashion (STUFF), the Model Alliance, the Models Sanctuary and British Vogue, jumping on the band wagon with the recent agreement with Equity's Code of Conduct. Even TED has had Cameron Russell talking and the Guardian newspaper is publishing opinion pieces about it. Models defending their rights and applying an intelligent perspective on the industry has aided a growth in substance where models are acknowledged to be able to think and have applicable skill sets, consisting of more than a talent for pouting.

This all started back in the 90s when scouts started traversing the globe for the next ‘supermodel’. This resulted in a huge influx of labour, still continuing today. A huge market influx combined with the economic crash caused fees to automatically diminish worldwide and rippled throughout the whole industry. The big girls now take the high street commercial and catalogue money jobs. These high street commercial brands and e-commerce clients used to be frowned upon like TV was by film actors. I used to be up for Italian jobs, once booked for Euro 30,000 but these are now snatched up for as little as Euro 5,000.

In Los Angeles, models used to strive to become SAG members. They'd pay thousands of dollars in dues each year for the opportunity to be casted in TV commercials with Union status. Productions that are classified as Non-Union, however don’t have to pay the excess fees charged by SAG. My agent in LA is pushing me not to join because the majority of clients cannot afford these rates and therefore the pool of work has diminished on the Union side.

Agencies have adapted to these decreased rates by taking on more models to compensate thus spreading the individual’s earnings thinner. These circumstances of the economy, mass supply of labour and the revolution of models' rights has seen a change where models have opened up to utilising their talents and skills developed through their experiences and to keep up with basic living necessities.

Ingrid Bredholt's Mardou & Dean

Their new grounding is branching out and utilising their unrecognised valuable understanding of the fashion industry to becoming producers, journalists, nutritionists, starting clothing lines and becoming more than just a face of something but a face for something. Yomi Abiola founded STUFF  working for equality and diversity, a model and friend I met in Milan, Ingrid Bredholt is going from strength to strength with her brand Mardou & Dean, Smilte Bagdziune has launched her lollipop company TuTu, and Julian Okines published his own book, The Models Handbook and through his networking and hard work as a presenter/content producer, whilst modelling is now a producer at Fashot.

The Models’ Union at Equity is approaching its sixth birthday and the models’ committee is another example of where models put their thoughtful energy. The recent historical move from British Vogue signing up to the first documented photographic regulations for models has set a new bar of professionalism for our industry never before realised. We are still a long way off a completely regulated industry but some day (not far off from now) incidences of degradation and humiliation will be just stories and no longer experiences. Models, together may be driving the industry through applying their own talent as individuals, no longer being dolls for manipulation.

Smilte Bagdziune's lollipop company TuTu

With confidence, we can put the bitchy/competitive attitude of models down as a myth. The models mentioned above and Equity Models’ Committee are examples of the hard work resulting through mutual support. The commitment and each individual applying his or her knowledge and experiences has been the foundation for Equity to implement social and political change. From my beginning days as a new face and journey as the founding chair of the Equity Models’ Committee, working in film and furthering my work in business the support and generosity of my peers has been invaluable.

There are still many issues to be resolved such as the financial difficulties facing models (many of whom are still getting paid in trade), child labour laws not being applied in the US and the introduction of a filtering system for predators seeking work in the industry. However, models being recognised for their skills and applying themselves to contribute and work together is a congratulatory step for today’s modelling community and exciting for the future of the industry.

Victoria Keon-Cohen works with Wilhelmina in the US and has modelled for clients such as Reply, Versace, Levis and Vogue. She approached Equity with Dunja Knezevic to start the first trade union for models in 2007 and stood as Founding Chair of the Equity Models' Committee from 2007 - 2012. Having studied Performance Design at Central Saint Martin's her first job in film was Costumer to Robert De Niro on Killer Elite (2011). She is currently still working with the Models' Committee and is also making films in both the fashion and film industries. Equity Models’ Committee.

Top Tips for Building a Successful Blog from a Blogger of Two... By Dioni Zhong of Wandering Mee and Meexia.com...

I've been blogging for years, and before that I was working on a number of personal websites for more years. Today I have a mature book blog (5+ years) and a travel blog (1 year), both of which have given me many perks, from getting tons of free books, invited to stage plays/shows/exhibition, to generating revenue, so I like to think that I know a thing or two about building a successful blog and here are my top tips:

1. Pick a topic you can talk about forever. Many people are not too sure what blog they should be writing about. Though you can have personal blog for just family and friends, to have a specific topic that you have most interest in, the one you can talk about all day long, all year long and more, would bring your blog to another level and a much wider audience - readers with common interest. Also that way you will never run out of ideas!

2. Be consistent. Another pitfall that new bloggers often fall into is getting really excited at the beginning but declining very rapidly in the few weeks or months that follow. I assure you there would be a period of time when you feel like nobody is reading and what is the point of it all, but if you push through you will finally start to build your audience. Consistency is key.

3. Join the Community. No man is an island, and it also applies to blogging. It is important to build relationship with fellow bloggers in your area. Start by visiting other websites and dropping by comments. Respond to comments on your own blog. Use social media channels to help you advertise yourself/your blog/your brand (twitter is probably the most useful at the beginning, but there's no harm at having a Facebook page too).

4 Concentrate on providing quality content that you love. There are many things that can distract you from doing your own blog, from the hustle and bustle of social media to the pressure of building stats to thinking too much about what other people want you to write. Having your readers in mind is good to a point, but thinking too much about it could be too tiring. Instead of always following what the other people are writing/doing, it pays to be original and different. There's often strong tendency to follow what the more successful bloggers are doing, which could be useful at times as you know they do something right, but if you do something that nobody else does it stands you out from the pack, and there's always reason for readers to go back.

5. Be reasonable on how much you can commit to the blog. This would always be my main struggle. How much time can I commit to my blogs and what would be the impact of that? There are many more bloggers out there that have more time to work on their blogs and it is impossible for me to compete in that aspect. Back to the consistency point, how much can you churn out a post? Once a day, three times a week, once a week? Whatever you decide, set reasonable goals for yourself and don't stress out. Your blog could grow to be something more in the future, but you can never get there if you run out of steam. Treat it as a marathon not a sprint. You have to do it for you - to love and to enjoy first and foremost.

So those are my top tips for building if not a successful, a satisfying blog. There are of course tons of other things to learn, like which blogging platform to use, whether to have your own domain/host or not, how to structure your posts, etc. (Short answer to the first two: use wordpress, and own domain if you intend to go far). There are also specific styles for different type of blog, which you have to learn as you go. For example for my book blog I almost use no social media channels, but use them more for my travel blog. I almost never got advertisement offer for my book blog, but I do quite a bit for my travel blog. All these take time to navigate, but the good thing about blogging is that you can set your own pace and do what suits you best. When you genuinely love what you do it shows and naturally attracts people, so keep at it and good things will come!

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Find Dioni's incredible blogs (meexia is one of the best literary blogs we've found) at:

http://www.wanderingmee.com 

http://www.meexia.com/bookie

http://www.facebook.com/wanderingmee.

Find your joy, peace and confidence in one little circle Stephanie Bavaro, GREATful coach, author and speaker...

As I sit here on this lovely morning pondering what to write for a very special group of readers, I just keep hearing “Go back to the beginning”, so that is exactly what I am going to do.

When I start any GREATful coaching, group coaching, or even my webinar series, we start with your “Circle of Power” as honestly that is as far as we ever need to go to find everything we need and desire. Before I dive into this, may I tell you a little about me?

I'm Stephanie Bavaro, CEO (Chief Empress Officer) of GREATful WOMAN - empowering you to live your dream life by unlocking your sexual self-esteem and leaning into your feminine strengths to find joy, peace and success. Today, I am a GREATful WOMAN, but it wasn't always that way. Eleven years ago, I was depressed, morbidly obese (327 pounds at my heaviest! – for my dear friends in the UK, that’s over 23-stone & 148kg), hated my job and in a long-term relationship that really was just a friendship. I started on a journey, initially just to lose weight and found the keys to joy, as I learned to embrace every aspect of being a woman -- from body to bedroom to babies to boardroom. Today, I am blessed to write, speak, coach and empower women to be the GREATful WOMAN they desire. 

So let’s get the party started.

If you have ever met or worked with me, you know that I love action. Transformation won’t come only in reading or listening to even the most powerful and inspirational people. It is about action – little and often – towards anything you desire. I coach woman and just that idea – anything YOU desire – can be difficult. We live our lives as partners, mothers, sisters, daughters, volunteers, taxi service (all of my yummy mummies are nodding), employee, lover, friend, event planner, etc.

Can any of you relate to this?

It does not matter if you are married or single, children or no children – the demands you put on yourself in addition to what anyone else may need from you can put you in a place of exhaustion, overwhelm, stress, and plain survival.

How does this ring true in your life?

Forget that on top of this you all are gorgeous, sexy, desirous creatures. You give life… how is that for magnificent? Yet, the demands on you from yourself and the world can make allowing for a healthy sexuality (part of what in GREATful WOMAN we call our “sexual self-esteem”) becomes simply a luxury.

Are you ever just too exhausted or frustrated or overwhelmed to take care of you? Are you the first person that gets knocked off list to be taken care of?

A GREATful WOMAN understands that truly to be of service to anyone else (partner, children, friends, family, employer…), you need to take care of you first. That is not selfish; that is smart and loving. Even on airplanes, they remind us to put our oxygen masks on before helping others.

Here is your first step to putting on your oxygen mask:

1.     Stand Up

2.     Look at your feet (from your toes to your heals, from left to right)

3.     With your fingers, draw an imaginary circle around your feet – big enough for you to comfortably stand in, but no room for anyone else.

This is you Circle of Power. We need look no further for peace, joy, confidence and success. How scary AND empowering is that?

Keep standing -- Now, let’s bring it to life.

1.     What color is it? Don’t think about it. Just name the color. There is no right or wrong. Each color has meaning. After you name the color, you can google it to see what it means (I don’t want to give any leading suggestions).

2.     What is its name? Give it a name: a name you love, a real name (mine is Veronica), and it does not matter if the name is male or female?

Keep Standing -- Now, let’s feel it! What three (3) words do you think of when you feel yourself standing in your circle of power? Again, I don’t want to give examples, as I don’t want to impact your instincts. These should be three loving words.

This is where we start; everything else grows from here. You can summon whenever you feel anything negative, remember how this felt, and know it is from here that you can become the GREATful WOMAN (or man!) that you desire. 

www.greatfulwoman.com

How blogging enriched my life by Tammy Ryan

At the end of December 2011 I was depressed. Not in a clinical sense, just in a “is this all there is to life?” kind of way. I had just had my third miscarriage, and I was miserable.

At the time I was working in the office/sickbay at a local primary school, five days a week, eight hours a day. I enjoyed my job, (as much as you can enjoy plugging a child’s nosebleed) but I was lacking in some other areas of my life, namely almost everything else. At nights I would come home from work, cook tea, watch TV mindlessly for a few hours, eat more ice cream than I probably should, drink more wine than I definitely should, then go to bed, only to repeat it all over again the next day.

My weekends were even less exciting. Growing up my mother taught me by example that weekends should be set aside for cleaning. She would devote whole days to the pursuit, and so without even realising there were alternatives, I grew up and did the same. All Saturday I would wash/polish/vaccum/dust/mop/fold and wipe until finally, Saturday night, I could collapse on to the couch with a glass of red and smile with satisfaction at the sparkling cleanliness all around me.

This satisfaction would last right up until the next day, when my husband would eat his breakfast in front of the TV and drop crumbs all over the mat, then he would mow the lawns and traipse grass and other crap right across my pristine floors with his work boots. And after that, just in case I wasn’t already seething enough, he would shower and use his dirty towel to wipe the steam off my freshly polished mirror, leaving a dirty big fluffy smear right across its face. The bastard.

Come Sunday night, my clean house would be looking a little more jaded, a little less like a show home and more like an ordinary home again. Sigh.

So January 2012 rolled around and I decided I needed to stop these kinds of time wasting activities (i.e. cleaning), stop focusing on my fertility issues and find myself a project. By divine intervention (or maybe I just glanced at the bookshelf as I was walking past) I remembered a book I had purchased the year before but never read, ‘The Wonderful Weekend Book’ by Elspeth Thompson. The blurb on the back promised the book was packed with ideas that would help you ‘restore the balance to your life, reconnect you to the seasons and other people and – quite literally – not cost you the earth.’ This sounded right up my alley.

Now I am the first to admit that I am, ahem, technically not very good with computers and the like. In fact, my laptop has had to be repaired several times due to unfortunate incidents such as ‘liquid on the keyboard’, (snorting coffee out my nose while reading something funny on Facebook) and a stuck { key because I may or may not have bashed the keyboard out of frustration one too many times. (Disclaimer – am not actually admitting to any such thing here as my husband may read this. As far as he is concerned the fat cat sat on it, and that’s the story I’m sticking with, whether it sounds like a Dr Seuss excuse or not). My husband is also the proud owner of a very flash mobile phone whereas I am only allowed a great big brick of a thing because I have a tendency to drop it. Frequently. Within the first thirty seconds of purchasing the bloody thing in fact.

However, I mused, the whole point was to try something new and different, so technology challenged or not I headed to the first blogging website I could find and I made myself a blog. Which was crap. Really. So I deleted it and went to Wordpress instead. I am still, a year and a bit later, figuring out all the cool things I can do with Wordpress, mainly through trial and error – cue much hysteria when I occasionally do something I smugly think is clever and five seconds later it appears I have deleted the whole damn lot. Luckily hubby is a deft hand with all things technical and has thus far managed to fix or undo everything I’ve done. Phew.

The blog I created is called ‘The Year of Wonderful Weekends – reclaiming life’s simple pleasures.’ The aim was to do a new activity from the book every weekend and then blog about the experience. And I did this diligently for the first few months, including things far (like far, far) outside my comfort zone such as Sleeping Under the Stars on a farm, and a walk to hear the dawn chorus of the Kakapo birds, (which, funnily enough was at dawn, a previously unseen time of day). I made jam out of (stolen) rose petals, went beachcombing and fishing, had picnics at the lake with my family, explored the garden and its inhabitants with a magnifying glass, painted a painting, decluttered my bathroom cabinets and mailed New Zealand postcards to some lovely blog followers scattered about the world. And that was only in the first two months.

I became enthused about my weekends again. While I’d always looked forward to them, I now really looked forward to them, excited to try something new and to share it with people afterwards. I enjoyed making connections with people from other countries, letting them into my life and gaining glimpses into their worlds as well. I was nominated for Inspiring Blogger awards (and while let’s face it, who hasn’t been at one point or other, it was still a buzz for me to know that people were enjoying my blog).

Then I found out I was pregnant again, and while I was too scared to do any activity that could, in my mind at least, cause another miscarriage, I was also determined to stick with the blog. So I just did some of the tamer activities from the book, like mushroom hunting. Seriously. With weapons and everything. OK not really weapons as such…more like…oh just read the blog will you.

The book blurb was right. Over the course of the year I really did reclaim some of life’s simple pleasures; some I’d never even known existed. Like baking my own bread, (it’s so easy!)  and making time for the people you love. And all of it is recorded forever (or at least until machines take over the world) on the internet, complete with photos. I can go back through the archives on my blog anytime I want and remember the fun times I had, and the not so fun, like when I slept under the stars and my face and hands got eaten alive by mosquito’s and I puffed up and looked like I had gone ten rounds with Rocky in the ring. Really attractive. Not. Or when the dog got badly constipated and people at the local park thought we were bonkers for clapping every time she did her, you know, business.

Throughout the year I also shared updates of my baby bump and pregnancy news with my followers and enjoyed their well wishes, and at the end of October our daughter Holly arrived safely into this world. And even though she now consumes my every waking hour (also the ones traditionally known as ‘sleepy time’ like 1.00am, 3.00am and 5.00am - yawn) my year of wonderful weekends taught me that you must have balance in your life in order to be happy. So I make sure that I have still have a little time to myself occasionally to do something that recharges my soul. I’m much happier these days, and more in tune with the world around us. I stop and admire the flowers, feel the sun on my face, and smell the seasons in the air. When Holly is older I look forward to sharing some of the activities I experienced during that year with her.

This year I am still trying to add to the blog, although sadly not every weekend due to time constraints (also known as the baby), and I have a brand spanking new blog about my experiences in self publishing. Yep - I’ve fulfilled a dream and I’ve written and published a book ‘Charlie and Pearl’ available to purchase now on Amazon (please do).

My new blog, charlieandpearl.wordpress.com (known online as ‘Help me – Help Holly’) chronicles my writing/publishing highs and lows, and my efforts to help support Holly and my family through the odd sale of the book. I’d love to see you there!