WHAT I WISH I'D KNOW ABOUT BLOGGING

When you start blogging it's so difficult to wade through all of the should's and should not's to find exactly what you need to focus on. If you're looking to make money from this, then that's a whole other kettle of fish. I think a lot of bloggers that are fortunate enough to use blogging as a means of income today didn't really start out for that reason, we didn't know the career possibilities and thus it's all been a bit of a learning curve. Things are a little different now, with the blogging market becoming more and more saturated with each day, it's definitely harder than ever to be seen, though I'm sure that will only continue as more realise you can make money in what a lot of us define as a hobby.

THE BLOGGING MISCONCEPTION

Although blogging has been around since the dawn of time, in a variety of forms, it's still incredibly new in terms of careers. Bloggers are forging new ways and setting new standards every single day and it can be really difficult for anyone outside of blogging to actually understand what it is we do. I couldn't tell you the amount of times I've heard 'So you just get sent free stuff to write about?' I'm not exactly great at responding to it, I usually just agree because most of the time, people aren't actually demeaning what I do, they just don't understand it. Who can blame them, the world wide web hasn't even been around for thirty years so it's an extremely new path.

SUMMER TIME WITH SIMPLY BE | AD

So it's summer, right? It's actually summer, does the weather want to get with the programme? I've been wanting to talk about some cute pieces I snapped up from simply be for a little while now but the good old British weather has not played ball one bit. It's like as soon as you but summer clothing, the rain clouds appear and decide to go away on a day when you're wearing the most amount of layers. Am I right? So after a couple of weeks of dashed hope, I decided to just ignore the weather and get on with showing off the perfect summer bits from Simply Be, and let's hope maybe we can just use our imagination and pretend the UK actually will have some warmer days coming up.

POUND TOY | AD REVIEW

If your household is anything like mine then you'll know there is pretty much always something or someone to buy for, I always find the first half of the year the busiest and after Noahs' and Johns' birthdays along with Christmas all within a month of each other, you can imagine how stuck for ideas and budget we can get over here. It's not only that but I seem to enjoy making life harder for myself, with Easter and Valentine baskets, I just love throwing things together for the boys to make life that little bit more exciting (and difficult yes). Plus Noah is at school now and pretty much every school age parent will know what that means, parties, I like to be organised now and keep a small stash of presents in the cupboard and thanks to PoundToy, I can now be that extra bit ahead of the game as they kindly asked us to, in exchange for a voucher have a nosy around their website and share our thoughts.

SELF CARE AS A PARENT

Everyone seems to be talking about self care these days, encouraging spa days, trips out, spending time focusing on yourself and generally just doing 'you', it all sounds fantastic right? But when you're a parent sometimes thinking about yourself is the very last thing you do, we usually put ourselves at the end of any list and when you have dishes to do, clothes to wash, family meals to cook and littles to get to bed, self care can really pale into insignificance. But that's so wrong, even though it feels right to get absolutely everything else done first, I feel like I should share just why discovering self care as a parent is so important and why it doesn't have to always be face masks and meditation.

OUR SUMMER BUCKET LIST

I used to do seasonal bucket lists a lot more often but in the end I was sat thinking of things to do as I wrote them, before I figured it's not exactly a bucket list if I can't even remember the stuff I am supposed to want to do so badly. So this year I laid off and unless I really had plans or wanted to make them, I wasn't going to be making a list and discussing it. However summer is a little different, especially as it's Noahs' first summer since being at school full time, I know we have to make the most and honestly I really want to do as much as we can.

PATRICK YOU'RE THREE

It's come a bit of a tradition now for me to write a post on each of the boys birthdays, so of course this year is no different, my baby is turning three and it doesn't feel three moments since he was born never mind a whole three years. You're the youngest, the last one but yet somehow you're the feistiest too, there isn't a chance you're fading into the background nor that anyone could call you a wallflower. We've been hearing about your birthday for weeks now as you're completely at the perfect age to be so over excited, you're really a proper little lad and as sad as it makes me, it's the most rewarding job in the world to be your Mummy and see you grow up right before my eyes.