I've always been a great documenter of things, I scrapbooked, I take a billion photos, much to my families dismay and I have been a blogger since bloggers weren't even in fashion.  I've loved my blog, I've hated my blog and my writing style and photography has changed a lot over the last 13 years.

Here's the thing though, my brain doesn't work as many people's, my part autistic, part bipolar thought processes are not quite so straight forward and add some long term bipolar meds in there and wahey, you're in for a mixed-up cornucopia of nonsense on some days.

I've just come back from a (possibly life-changing but too early to tell) solo holiday to the north of Tenerife, I left my Macbook at home and took only my camera, my iPhone, oh and an overpacked suitcase filled with more than I needed.

I wanted to remember everything that I'd done and as I had no one to remind me and my thought processes are often jumbled, I started writing a kind of list every day on Facebook, not just a list, it had an added commentary as well as the collected thoughts of the random things that go on inside my head every day.  After a week I'd grown to love the new shorthand way of writing and after doing a little research I've found it also makes good accessible reading.

I've had so much great feedback from it and found a whole new love of writing in a completely different style that I've decided to start writing my thoughts on my everyday life in the same way.  The only thing is that I'm not always standing in the crater of a volcano or going on a jeep safari so I've decided to just start by doing a weekly post but it will be a collation of my daily thoughts.

My next post will be a collated post of my week in Tenerife as it was written in the moment every evening, although I might correct some of my "in the moment" grammar as writing long posts with one finger is trepidatious, to say the least.

Now, I could have just started with my "Today I Have..." posts but not all of you lovely readers are also friends with me on Facebook and I did it through my personal profile and not my page because it was intended to just be something for me. 

It may not work, it may not translate to my everyday life and that's why I'm doing a roundup post each week at first. If I can think of enough to write though, well, we see how it goes and if you are one of my Facebook friends, feel free to skip the next post and I'll see you all on the other side, probably on a Wednesday!

It has to be easier than this doesn't it?

It's Week 2 of the Boost Buddies plan with XLS Medical and I've excelled myself by still being heavier than when I started!  My hopes, dreams and aspirations have not only been dashed but my health ended up being so bad that my whole body ached and eventually I ended up at the hospital with an eye infection which meant when I woke up on Saturday I couldn't use my eye muscle.

Inflammation has been proved to be the catalyst for depression and so by Friday when I was having depressive thoughts I knew things were bad.  With work, a visit to hospital and my head being a mess I decided to take a weekend off the shakes and by Monday I was feeling much more like myself, I'd weighed myself on the Friday and it wasn't good but the moment I stopped having the shakes I lost weight and was back to just half a pound heavier than when I started.  In the days I was off the shakes I barbecued, I made fresh salsa, I stuck to a plan of eating only things which were made by me or things I knew didn't contain bad things and this was the biggest success.

I can't give up though, I signed a contract to do this for 8 weeks and to blog honestly about the experience and that's what I'm going to do.  I think the main problem is that I don't ordinarily eat processed food, I can't  ever remember having a Mcdonalds and my idea of fast food is Sushi or a wrap with chicken and vegetables, I'm not immune to a takeaway but it's usually from Pret a Manger.  I think my body can't handle massive amounts of sugar or processed powder but I've had an idea...

The 5/2 diet is one of the most successful diets out there on the market, consume 800 calories on 2 separate days a week and then eat a normal healthy diet on the other 5 days so because the shakes contain 750 calories if you have 3 in a day, this would work perfectly and I can live without proper food 2 days a week.  I think adapting it would mean that the inflammation didn't have time to build up, my moods and rosacea should be okay and the 2 days wouldn't be consecutive so it's literally the best plan for me.  

I've had word that my Fitbit is on the way and I've sent a request for some fabulous running shoes and really that's what this week has been about for me, I've amped up my exercise levels and on a couple of days I've done 15 or 16k, when I lost 3 and a half stone I did it literally by walking and walking and walking, it's hard at first to get into the routine as it takes so much time out of my already busy day but when I walk, I have better mental health, my anxiety is always so much better and we all know a daily hit of vitamin D3 is amazing for our health.

I literally hate this weeks full length photo but again, I'm bound to share one, I hate that you can see all of my lumps and bumps and that basically, I'm just a chunk, I've been reading a lot about body positivity and that's overwhelmingly what I'm going to work on after the 8 weeks has finished as well as just learning to live on the plan of eating fruit, veg, meat and some dairy with a sprinkling of nuts, no cake, no crisps, no crap, it's a good plan, I might even call it the C-Word plan.

And so onwards we go into another week of me with my eyes on the prize, that prize being 2 stone of weight loss which would get me back to my curvy happy place, I have lost a probable inch though but it's not really enough to go throwing my arms up in the air and cheering just yet.  This weekend I'm working all weekend again and so that's always good for exercise and I think Looby and I are planning a little mini break with Holly Bobbins if the financial Gods smile upon me, we need walks and we need to be focused, week 3, I am coming to get you...

Just as a quick reminder, I'm not being paid to do this, I've been sent the shakes, and promised a Fitbit and trainers in return for an honest review and I'm sure you'll all know by now, I'm always 100% honest.

Looking Back on 11 Years of Blogging

Today my blog is 11 years old, 11 years, it's a quarter of my life and I can't really put into words just what an achievement it feels like to have gotten to today.  When I tentatively wrote my first post there's no way I could have possibly imagined that I would still be sitting here today typing in anger with my noisy, heavy fingers, I type quickly and I almost punch the keyboard with my digits as I tell my stories of love, life, travel, adventures, parenting, mental health and the rest of the giant cornucopia I have created and curated over the years.

In this, my daily documentation of sometimes everything that I am, I have laughed with you all, I have wept in the darker moments as I pounded my keyboard wanting to get the words out so they didn't hurt anymore.  I have written at 3 am when tipsy and at 5 am when my teenagers were toddlers and loved nothing better than to get up at quite frankly unreasonable hours of the day!

I remember writing with joy when Paul and I renewed our vows after 10 happy years of marriage and I also recall the sadness of the day when I had to write that he had left.  This weblog really is the story of my life, but not just my life, the life of a family, the life and death of a marriage and the rebirth of a woman dealing with her own mental health issues on a day to day basis.  There have been times when I censored myself and only wrote about the good things but it feels so much better now to be real all of the time, luckily even in the dark times I can usually manage a little humour and this is me in my actual life, I can still find humour in darkness, I think it's possibly that which gets you through the bad days and tough times.

Just lately, or at least for the last 6 months as I've seen my readership rise and rise it's become clear that I have found my niche, I'd love my niche to be travel because I love writing about travel and I do when I can but it's obvious now, what I excel at writing about is dating and relationships, it's not even necessarily mine, it's just a topic I seem to be able to write about with ease.  It's the perfect subject and there's no end of stories to write about, I'm certainly thankful for dating sites and for friends who are happy to share their stories and not mind at all that I write about them.  They all think it's hilarious that it's only now, nearly 20 years after Sex and the City that I'm watching it thinking "ooh, that Carrie, she's writing about the same kinds of things that I do" and then realising she wrote it first!

I'm not sure if I shall always write about dating, the great thing about not having one set theme on my blog is that you can write about whatever I want and for the most part I genuinely sit down each night and the words come out, I think whilst I adore photography, writing is perhaps what I was meant to do, it's in my heart and my soul and if I have one goal I want to achieve in the next 5-10 years it's to become a successful writer.  Don't worry though I shall not be giving up photography anytime soon, I feel there's a natural synergy between the two and when they are aligned correctly you have the ability to create something magical and as my friends all call me Magical Mandy it was obviously meant to be!

Always Remember Why You Blog

Ok, so I fell off my own daily blogging habit again, it happens sometimes, sometimes I just need to take a couple of days away to clear my head and sometimes I'll suddenly become aware that there are people out there in the real world reading my blog, so ok, I know this is going to sound crazy but I've only ever written for me, I write with passion and sometimes with anger, I write when I am deliriously happy or when I am overwhelmingly sad and I always write in the moment.

There's a pressure I think when you count the number of readers you have or the number of people following you on social media, I have those times when I don't blog and then I look at my stats and I feel sad because of the lack of readers but sometimes I genuinely can't write.  I wish, with all my heart that I was the kind of super power blogger who could put out three or four blog posts every day but sometimes I can barely manage one or two a week, it's not that I wouldn't like to blog every single day but I just physically can't.

I read more blogs than ever before, I feel like I'm actually becoming part of the blogging community, if you want to check out some great blogs your first stops should be Lisa, Natalie, Hannah, Martyn and Rachel, oh and Lucy, I adore Lucy's blog and I've actually met her in real life!  I've been pushing my blog out there into the blogosphere now since about September 2014 and I love being part of the North East Bloggers but it's also nice to become part of the wider UK blogging community, I find all of the peoples blogs I recommended to be thought provoking, amusing, engaging, well written and witty and they're my first stops on the internet in the mornings whilst I am nursing that first perfect mug of dark liquid energy.  Sometimes I comment on blogs, not always though for fear I'll come across like a mad stalker and really I'm way too independent and headstrong to have any stalking tendencies whatsoever so take heart internet friends!

I guess I wish that everyone came with a blog, it's so much easier to get to know people, there are bloggers who's blogs I may have only read for a short space of time but I feel like I've known them my whole life and of course just like Netflix you can binge read old posts, I tried to do that with mine yesterday in the hope of finding some inspiration and what I found was actually quite scary.  I actually found myself not knowing the girl who wrote so much 10 years ago, I have changed so very much, I'm way more confident and self-assured, I'm much better at embracing my unique eccentricity which makes me the woman I am right now, I also look better in photos!

I wonder to myself how my blog will look in another decade, I'll always blog now, I know that and anyone who I meet will have to be quite ok with that because it's part of me but I think the one thing they'll have to accept is that sometimes I'll blog what's going on in my head and they'll have to learn to not over analyse or question what I am writing because it kind of cramps my writing style.  I write about my teenagers and they know about it, they read my blog (well Abigail does at least) and they certainly never question it so it's not outside the realms of possibility that I'll meet a man with the ability to do the same.

So here's the message at the end (Jerry Springer style) if you blog, blog with all of your heart, blog what really goes on in your mind, don't gloss over it or pretend that things are all around awesome when they're not because you should only ever write what's in your heart and your readers will appreciate your honesty, you may also help someone out there who's reading but feels they don't have a voice of their own.  So write with passion, write with anger and always remember why on that very first day you sat down to write your very first blog post.

Is Christmas in Newcastle the theme for Fenwick Christmas Window 2015?

Well then.... it's been a while my lovely readers, I can't quite name everything that's been going on of late, suffice to say that I'm so busy that my head is in an actual spin, 3 weeks, 5 days and I'll be on the high seas just leaving Rome, there are worse jobs I have to say!!

So, the most exciting news happened, Fenwick announced that this years Christmas window will be unveiled at 5.30pm on Friday November 6th, that's one week people, one week, there'll be entertainment and music from 3.30 onwards and you can bet your life that Looby and I will be there, last year you may remember that they actually made it snow so I can't wait to find out what they do to top that.  I would say that I think that going by their Christmas gift department on the 2nd floor that this years theme is going to be Christmas in Newcastle and that's another reason to get excited, I love a local theme!

I also of course as you might know adore Fenwick, it's my favourite department store in the whole world so when I accepted an invitation from my fellow blogger Samantha to be her date at the Fenwick food hall party I could barely contain my excitement.

Walking in was like walking into wonderland, no sooner had we made it through the doors before a glass of something sparkling was thrust into our waiting hands and two steps more we were greeted by the most amazing platters of samples from all of the producers who are now occupying the new Fenwick food hall.  It reminds me a lot of Harrods, they've made food buying an experience, and a magical one at that.  I adore artisan local produce and Fenwick will be my go to place, it's not just about the retail magic though, for example you can visit the Champagne and Oyster Bar, you can eat amazing asian food at Kosai, or maybe you could have a glass of wine and a platter at Fuego or even (and I'm delighted about this particularly) a clean treat from the Naked Geordies.  It's almost too exciting to talk about (except it's not).

If you put together the amazing new food hall filled to the brim with small local artisan producers, the amazing gift floor experience on the second floor, the magical Christmas escalator, the brilliant beauty hall and of course the legendary Christmas windows then you have no need to shop anywhere else this Christmas (or ever in fact).

Me, Myself and I...

Thanks to Honestly Helen for tagging me in her blog post challenge which aims to let you all out there dear readers know a little more about what goes on in the chasms of my mind (scary!!) by answering 5 simple questions, so here goes nothing....

1.  Would you rather win the lottery or find the perfect job?  

 Well now, I think I actually have the perfect job, I adore what I do and each and every day throws up more exciting challenges and offers I'd never imagined were possible, today I'm thrilled to announce that I've been asked to write some travel articles for Beagle Welfare magazine In Full Cry, it's always a thrill to have your work published in magazines because you get to hold them in your hands!!

2.  What is the one thing that you will never do again?

This is a truly hard question to answer because whilst I'll never regret anything I've done because it's made me the person that I am today there are some things I hope won't happen again, I'd rather not be hurt in love again although it doesn't mean I am going to switch myself off to it, I'd rather never be flat broke again but sometimes some things happen which are totally outside your control.

3. What "Mostly Likely To?" Would you be nominated for?

Hmm, I'm pretty flaky and a bit of a klutz so probably "Most likely to fall down" or also it could be "Most likely to stop and take photos every five seconds" I can't even help myself, even when I'm just out with my iPhone I take a ridiculous amount of photos.

4.  What's the weirdest thing you find attractive in a person?

Heehee, this is a funny old question, I'm only just asking myself what I find attractive in the opposite sex again after all of these years, I do like a geeky bespectacled man who's tall and wears suits, think David Tennant or Ewan Mcgregor and you're somewhere near my type, I would say that I'm very visual and have incredibly high standards now so if someone does come along it's probably going to take a very long while as it's all well and good out there window shopping but they have to also like you too!  (no one would choose to be single again after 40)

5.  What do you think Victorias Secret is?

Well I've been around long enough to know it's an American brand of lingerie store but I don't think I'm ever going to be it's target customer sadly, I'm more of an M&S or Debenhams type of girl!

Well that was a whole lot of fun and I hope that you all enjoyed it too, I'm going to nominate - 

Samantha at Life As Mrs R to carry on the baton...

Faffing with flowers, in association with The Flower Studio

There's something amazingly uplifting about having beautiful flowers adoring the spaces and places in your home don't you think?  For many years I'd always bought the occasional bunch of flowers to cheer me up but since I've lived on my own I make an effort to always buy myself a bunch (even if they are reduced to 19p a bunch in the supermarket) at least once a week so when the wonderful people at The Flower Studio in Marlow Buckinghamshire asked me if they could send a beautiful luxury hand tied bouquet from their garden flowers range I was so excited!  I waited patiently and then last week one very early morning there was a knock at my door, now I should state this 7am door knocking reduced my beagle to some kind of bonkers puppy and we had quite an adventure whilst the post man and I chased her around the front of my house when she wandered off barking at his high visibility jacket!

The flowers arrived in their own little box to make sure they were safe and well travelled on their journey all the way from Buckinghamshire and I couldn't wait to unbox them any longer.

I couldn't believe the sight that greeted me as I peeked in the box, that Hydrangea, I really didn't want to put them in a vase or take them out of the packaging, I think if you are planning a wedding on a budget you could simply remove them from the cellophane and voila, a bouquet which looks like it's cost significantly more than £39.99 (use the code WELCOME) at the checkout and get an extra £5 off your first order.

Feel free to use any of the above as wallpaper for your desktop or smartphone, I know I have!  On Thursday morning I decided to have a go at changing them around and I sat in the garden for a couple of hours just faffing with flowers feeling the wonder of being so connected to nature, I used an old vintage jug that I found in a charity shop and it really shows off the glorious messy arrangement I made, let me at this point of course state that I am no florist, floristry is a form of art and takes years to learn, I would adore a trip to flower school at some point in the future but like many branches of art it's never going to be something I am an expert in.

I got to thinking that again if you are planning a wedding there are so many different ways you could use this one bouquet and came up with a couple of ideas for simple table arrangements which would cost very little to produce and would look amazing at any vintage style wedding.  I should also state that I'm writing this blog post a couple of days later and the flowers are still wonderfully fresh and adorning my hall console table cheering me up every time I see their pretty little heads smiling at me, I adore that the flowers in the garden flowers range are all ones you could grow yourself and in fact I am currently cultivating many of them in my small back garden.  One thing though is that I always remember a huge hydrangea in my grannys garden when I grew up and I never really could see the beauty in it but I have a whole new appreciation for the delicate flower heads of the hydrangea, I plan to grow a couple in pots (because of their need for special conditions so they don't all end up the same colour) my only fear is they'll never last very long in the garden because I'll be cutting them and putting them around the house.  maybe I should just treat myself to Flower Studio bouquets once a month?

I want to say a big thanks to the lovely people at The Flower Studio for sending me this beautiful bouquet, it's a very rare occurrence that someone sends me flowers, in fact I would say I could count on one hand the number of times I've had flowers sent, feel free to send me lots of bouquets in the future because they will certainly be appreciated, for one flowers connect you to nature in a way you can only understand when you handle them and point two is that as a photographer there's always a delight to photograph truly beautiful things.

So what do you think?

It's looking a little bit stylish round here don't you think? Thankfully it didn't take me too long to redesign my blog, mostly because I can do all that myself! I really love the new look of both here and my website and I think it's the start of a new phase for the business.

There hasn't been a whole lot of photography today mostly due to rain and making little pocket albums for clients, have you seen the pocket albums, they're soooo sweet!

So anyway I've also been brushing up on popping photos with photoshop, now as you may know I loathe and detest photoshop but it is kind of handy to be able to use it when you're a photographer as sadly (and though I wish it did) Lightroom doesn't do everything. so anyway here's some super popped photos of the girls taken in that sweet sunlight I was telling you about. If you're not a light watcher you might miss golden hour, try looking at the light an hour before sunset and you'll see what I'm talking about.



Looby!


Abigail!
Right, I'm off to finish making dinner, tonight its Duck with Gnocci, yummm!

New Look and Bye Bye Boo

It's been a weekend of changes down at the maison le Charlton (please don't comment on my very bad french, I haven't done french since I was 13 and that was many many years ago!!) Firstly I spent the afternoon yesterday changing my blog, I've made it wider, I've changed the header and I've changed the colours thanks to those fabulous HTML colour charts which are nearly as good as Dulux paint charts ;)

We're starting a major rewire this week with new gas central heating to boot, this means the entire house is going to be pulled apart, the kitchen has to come out, the floor-boards have to be lifted, the carpets rolled up and all the furniture from all three floors moved a metre into the room, this is not the best time but when is? Atleast it means I get to redecorate 1 room at a time and I'm taking my time on this one so that we do it properly.

ny amount of disruption of course means chaos for our menagerie of animals and we have to say goodbye to Boo Boo this week, he's got himself a smart new family with a huge house and a garden which is actually a field. It's never easy to say goodbye to a pet but rationally I know that we can't manage him, we're not here half as much as he needs us to be and not all clients are appreciative of a dog which can jump as high as them. Plus our constant attempts to housetrain him have just not worked so I have to admit to being releived that I can clean my carpets on Wednesday and for once not have to deal with the pungent aroma of doggy wee, hopefully the new owners will find a tactic which we sadly didn't. Sometimes Love isn't enough and you have to do what is best for all concerned. It's funny that I got a series of portraits of him on Saturday and these are now going to be blown up onto canvas so he'll always be able to watch over us.

Right, moving on before I get emotional again...

I booked another wedding yesterday with a lovely couple who I'm really looking forward to working with and sharing their day. Those hot dates are filling up like you wouldn't beleive now so one last request to any lurking Newcastle brides, book me as your wedding photographer before you can't get the date you want!!! I have another consultation tonight and 1 on Wednesday, if you want to book a consultation then don't forget to click through to my w.