I have lost track of the days as its the school holidays so only just realised its Thursday and time for Reasons to be Cheerful! Hopefully folks will still join in and share the love. Despite having a cold for a few days I have had plenty of reasons to be cheerful during a week off school:
1) Marshalling and Filming at Fell Foot parkrun
I had my monthly volunteering slot at my local parkrun by marshalling at one of the turns. I managed to combine it with videoing the runners too. Amazing how many smiles I managed to raise in the rain:
2) Barbondale Fell Race
This has to be one of the most entertaining fell races to watch. It is so steep most runners come down at least some of the route on their bottoms or in one case fronts! There were a few spectacular face plants as well. My son helped me film this time and our videos have had nearly 1000 views in less than week!! Here is the summary video:
3) Fixed Internet
Just as my YouTube videos were becoming popular my Internet connection had lost lots of it upload speed so it was taking a day to upload one video! BT finally sent out an engineer and the upload speed has gone back up to taking only a couple of hours for one of the videos:
I am oh so late joining the lovely Jo at Ojo's World with reasons to be cheerful! Life is just far too busy and I haven't blogged over a week... Any way my reasons to be cheerful are:
1) Blog love
Seeing my much neglected blog pop back into the "Tots 100" top 200 at 186!
April 2015
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186
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I know that is because I may not post much on the blog but when I do it is good quality. I also engage with people on social media and my photos recently on Instagram have been extremely popular recently.
2) Blipfoto
Hard to believe I have been on Blipfoto for 5 years! It has honed my photography and I have made new friends. These are my most popular photos over the years:
3) Running
Its been quite a week running wise. My daughter finally got the running bug and joined him in a fun run:
Then I ran the 10 k St George's Day race!
And the next day my daughter and I did the colour dash in Kendal:
Not only is the lovely Jo hosting this week but its her birthday so pop over to Ojos world and say hi! Here my reasons to be cheerful: 1) School trips
Its that time of the year when schools have lots of trips. My son was lucky and went to our local zoo with his class. He looked so grown up as he walked off to catch the bus:
He was lucky to go on a sunny day though it was a wee bit hot for me! Tomorrow I am off to assist his big sister's class trip to the local paper mill... 2) Juneathon and running
Having got so much out of Blog Camp last year I was really excited to be off to Manchester for Blog Summit this year. Being an impoverished Northener I can't .get to many conferences but this was is not too far away. I did have to get up at 6 AM but it was well worth it. Before the conference I met up with a bunch of mostly familiar faces for a coffee. We chat every day online but only see each other face to face a few times a year. Such a lovely bunch of mums. Then we headed off to the Studio for the actual conference. Its a lovely venue with plenty of room for all of us to both mingle and learn. First up was Ben Wakeling to talk about learning to take online criticism and how to market your own publication online:
He coped very well being heavily outnumbered by a predominately female audience. His use of photos of male Cbeebies presenters as poster boys may have helped! Did you know that Mr Tumble has a huge mummy fan base? Ruth from Geek Mummy gave us 6 quick tips for our blogs including backups! One of her tips I am using for this post as I am remembering to export photos to a smaller size before uploading them to this post... Next up was Sarah McIntyre a children's illustrator and author who talked about collaborative blogging and reaching out to your readership through interactivity. As you can see she is far more glamorous than your average blogger:
As a pre-lunch quickie Sally from Tots 100 gave us a great explanation of how the Tots 100 ranking system works:
Then it was time for the all important buffet lunch:
Dessert was provided courtesy of Divino and their divine fruits with fat free gelato inside:
Fully refreshed we headed back in for a talk on Food blogging from Emma at A Mummy Too and Helen from Fuss Free Flavours. I will never be big on the foodie front but the tips on food photography will come in useful. Helen has challenged us all to to a recipe post this month so watch this space... In the meantime here was how I tried out their tips at the tea break:
The event was sponsored by Volvo and Cow and Gate so their PRs were there to talk to us between sessions. Of course their freebies were a great excuse for a quick silly photo:
I never got a chance to go the blind baby food testing on the Cow and Gate stall but the fruit puree looked yummy! We finished with a PR expert panel to talk about how PRs work with bloggers and share the good and the bad:
Afterwards a few of us retired to a local pub to mull over some of the day before heading home. All in all a great day out and I really hope I can go again next year!
This is my 6 year old son enjoying some fun in the park in the snow. At his age he just loves being outside being active whatever the weather. On this day he was enjoying a rare bit of one to one time with me and really making the most of it. I was spinning him round on one of those combined climbing frame/roundabouts:
The sheer pleasure on his face makes this on of my favourite photographs him that I have ever taken.
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