High Five, Liz Jones

For the next couple of weeks I’m handing over my blog to a brilliant collection of guest posters while we enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday. To kick us off in truly superb style, it’s the inimitable Motherventing. Her blog is currently lying dormant (although if you didn’t follow it when she was posting regularly, you should set aside a morning to sit and read through her archives), but she is still spouting hilarity and filth over on Twitter. She will be delighted by the fact that I’ve chosen an image of pink cupcakes to illustrate this post.

Liz Jones Mumsnet Blogfest

I recently got accused of being a ‘drama llama’ by a person.

I KNOW. Shocking, isn’t it? Basically, this person thinks I’m an attention-seeking hussy and that I PURPOSEFULLY CREATE DRAMA so that I can fill the otherwise empty void that is my life with dramatic situations that revolve, almost inevitably, around ME.

Gosh! Really? How do I manage to do anything ever? I took the bins out this afternoon. Of course, I only did that because otherwise the bin bags would rot in my back garden and then there would be a DRAMA OF MY OWN MAKING. Unless maybe, this person was referring to the actual drama that I do, within an amateur dramatics company, in which case, erm, I’m supposed to be dramatic?

Who knows. I shrug, with studied nonchalance, at the moniker ‘drama llama’, thrown so pointedly in my direction. It’s silly to accuse me thus. It really totally is. I mean, I am attention-seeking  – uh, hello, I used to write a blog, on which I once posted naked photos of myself, and divulged intimate details about sex toy purchases. And I do amdram, obvs – I just don’t care if people think I am or not.

Guess who else is attention-seeking, and VERY VERY GOOD at it too? Yes! It’s our favourite punch bag, Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones, the sperm-stealing, divisive journalist with no friends, especially not within the parent blogging community, after an ill-starred recent appearance at the Mumsnet BlogFest shindig, where, erm, she talked about having no friends because of the divisive and personal things she writes about. Blimey, Liz. Steady on. Tell us something we don’t know. Continue reading

What are your values?

positive street art

‘Values’ is such a funny word, isn’t it?

It means very different things to different people.

One summer, a long time ago, I had a part time job at one of the Edinburgh Festivals. It was nothing very glamorous – just some front-of-house work – but I remember overhearing my manager talking about me to another staff member and saying that I had ‘good values’. It remains one of the highest compliments I’ve ever been paid.

I think very often when we talk about our blogs, and question what the ‘value’ of our blog is, we usually mean in a monetary sense. There was a great post about that over at Geekalicious the other week, written by Molly from Mothers Always Right

But I think it can also be useful sometimes to consider the other meaning of the word. Are we blogging with integrity? Are we staying true to ourselves? Does the image of us that our blog projects align with what our values are?

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One Year On…

Last week marked one year exactly since we moved from Edinburgh to Hertfordshire, and I am pretty proud of how we are doing.

DorkySon has settled amazingly well in his new nursery – it has been an absolute delight seeing him grow in confidence, become so much more curious about the world he lives in, and spend the majority of his time as an incredibly happy wee boy. He is a lot of fun to spend time with right now.

DorkyDad is working harder than I have ever seen, learning new skills and absorbing information about a sector he hasn’t worked in before, travelling to parts of the world he never imagined visiting, and trying hard not to let the unpleasantness of a daily commute get him down.

I feel like I have whinged quite a bit about things since we moved – and it’s no secret that we don’t want to live here forever – but it has also brought some amazing opportunities for us all.

So I decided to have a read back through some of my blog posts, and reflect on ten things – big and small – that we would not have had the chance to do if we hadn’t made the move. Continue reading

Bloggers and Charities

Edinburgh poster art

I have seen quite a bit of grumbling recently from bloggers about the volume of charity requests that are dropping into their inboxes. I can only imagine that in the run up to Christmas such requests will become even more frequent.

To be honest, I don’t mind emails from charities too much myself because I have a fairly strict system for dealing with them.

I give the majority of my support to two charities – one big one (Save the Children) and one small one (PiggyBankKids) – and they are the only ones I’ll write about in any detail on the blog.
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Thanks for a MAD weekend.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve finally mustered the energy to put together a quick post about the MAD Blog Awards which took place in London on Friday night.

It’s just going to be a great big post full of *thank yous* to be honest.

White Stuff Upon a Time dress

Thank you to White Stuff for providing my lovely dress. I really hope no-one took any pictures of me from behind at the awards, because I only realised on Saturday morning that I’d forgotten to snip the big label out of the back. This is just one of many reasons why I am not a fashion blogger.

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