Highs and lows of BritMums Live 2012

At 1pm on Friday 22 June, I shut down my computer, cheerily waved goodbye to my colleagues, skipped out of the office (in my head) and hurried along to one of the most anticipated events of my year; BritMums Live!

A massive conference (there were 500 people there), it had a busy schedule of workshops and discussions, stalls to look over, style advice to take, goodie bags to claim, competitions to enter, PR people to speak to and other bloggers to meet.  It was a day and a half long, intense and immense!

It's time for BritMums Live!

I'm feeling rather excited today.  Excited but nervous.

Today, Friday 22 June, marks the start of a major blogging conference: BritMums Live!  It's an intense day and a half long and aimed at mums and dads who blog.  If you were wondering how many people would be interested in such an event, there'll be 500 bloggers turning up to this conference.  That's a lot of people.

Brands take heed: Third party companies can harm your reputation

At the end of last week, I had a rattan apple daybed delivered for the garden.  It’s something my husband and I had been hankering after for a while but, while we’re over the moon with our purchase, its arrival was marred by a real lack of customer service. 

We ordered the daybed from a well known national furniture company.  I don’t wish to name them in this post because their customer service was impeccable.  However, the company they used to deliver the product was not.  Far from it. 

Although this isn’t the fault of the furniture chain, I'm afraid to say that it does reflect badly on them.  In this web 2.0 world we’re all living in now, a bad experience will spread like wildfire on social networking sites and via the more traditional word of mouth method.  If you’re a company, it doesn’t matter if the incident was your direct fault or not, it will be linked to you and that in itself can damage your brand and reputation. 

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A hand-made Father's Day

The case of the giant apple

Look what's turned up in my back garden.  It's less 'James and the Giant Peach' and more 'Chez Mummy and the Giant Apple'!  But, can you think of a caption to go alongside this photograph?  Go on, I dare you!

Time and the fragility of life

‘Old Man Time’ is a strange character.  If he was a real person I imagine he’d be the ageing, wizened man in the corner of the room, perhaps watching mind-numbing TV game shows or cackling away to himself. 

He'd let things – people, events or objects - pass by around him without so much as a nod of the head but, get too close and he’d clump you round the legs with his solid oak walking stick.  His aim can be a bit hit and miss; sometimes all you’ll be left with is a purple bruise that will fade quickly, but at other times you’ll be dealt a blow so cruel it can leave you reeling for months, maybe even years.

Yes, time is definitely something that is so easy to take for granted, to overlook any potential for danger until it’s too late and you’ve got the scars (whether they’re emotional or physical) to prove it.  This has happened to me recently.  In the last week I’ve been given a metaphorical clump around the head and it’s made me realise that no-one is immune to the advances of time.  'Old Man Time' may be old but he catches up with everyone in the end.

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This is all sounding a bit morbid isn’t it??  Sorry about that, I don’t mean it to be, not really.

When sickness strikes

I've been away for a few days.  The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed the longer than normal gap since my last post, the silence on twitter, facebook etc.  You see, last Saturday, Saturday 2 June, marked the start of nine days off work; nine whole days to devote to my children.  Last Saturday, Saturday 2 June, also ended up being my last 'healthy' day for six days. 

Sod's law isn't it?

Instead of being at the mercy of my children (for which I could not wait), I found myself at the mercy of a nasty virus; a brain-pounding, bone-aching, searingly painful virus.

Awesome.

Firsts: "Show Real" video challenge

Welcome to June.  Can that be right?  Already?  It means this is the third in my "Show Real" video challenge linky - wow!

The theme I'm setting for the next couple of months is 'firsts'.  We've had a big one here at Chez Mummy recently.  Dexter took his very first tentative steps back in May (at 17:03 on Monday 7 May or thereabouts!).  It was totally out of the blue but amazing.  The look of sheer delight etched onto his face was fantastic and rather emotional to see.  He revelled in the attention showered on him for his achievement and duly repeated the feat as if to confirm that yes, it wasn't a fluke.