I’ve been thinking about the direction I want my blog to go in and rethinking the articles I want to write, probably starting when Heath was born and more so with the start of the New Year and after reading this article about wanting more from mummy blogging by Steph at littleeandbean.com. When I started this blog, over a year ago, it was mainly about my passion for food and craft. But after I found out that I was pregnant, I knew I really wanted to share my pregnancy experience. You may wonder why I would share that publicly and it is quite a selfish reason actually. I knew it would motivate me to write regularly and not to delete anything. As a teenager, I used to rip up everything I wrote as I was so critical of myself and now have no written memories from my younger self. So I shared and the number of monthly visitors soared which was obviously thrilling, especially when I hit 10,000 views. Now that I don’t have my weekly pregnancy updates to think about, I didn’t really know what direction to take. I didn’t want to be motivated by stats, freebies (as nice as they are) or to follow the crowd. As a reader, when I see my favourite blogs contain too many ‘Sponsored Posts’ or ‘Ads’, I feel a bit cheated. I absolutely loved reading a couple of blogs until I knew that it was all a bit fake (not saying it applies to all of them, just some of the ones I used to read regularly). And this is where Steph’s article fit in. What I used to love about in those aforementioned blogs was the truth. The things good or bad that happened in their real life. I enjoyed seeing the process of decorating their nursery and I was saddened to hear that they had postnatal depression. I didn’t however like reading an entire article only to find that it was sponsored by a really big company that didn’t really fit in with their style before the moneymaking revamp! I also hated scrolling through a blog seeing endless product reviews. But enough about that, you must be wondering how this related to my blog and my plans moving forward, right?

Well, I’ll first start by saying that although I haven’t been dishonest up until now, I haven’t really shared the nitty gritty of my life. I have only focused on the positives as, like Jonathan Saccone Joly believes, I do think there is too much negativity out there (I can’t watch a lot soaps for this reason!) but I do feel that I should try to strike a balance. I still won’t tell you anything that may upset my family or friends or that would embarrass my children when they are older for obvious reasons but I will let you know about my hardships. I will tell you about my battle with postnatal depression (after Annabelle was born and triggered by finding out that my dad had cancer, which up until now I had only told one or two friends and my closest family about) and the tough times we have had since Heath was born (I haven’t had postnatal depression this time around as the challenges have been ‘fixable’ and temporary). Phew, that was a long sentence…

In summary, this is a taste of what you should expect to see going forward:

• Two birth stories
• My struggle with breastfeeding and postnatal depression
• Our family adventures: Trips to visit the in-laws in Cornwall, hopefully a family holiday to Thailand
• Some OOTD (Outfits of the day as I love reading these!)
• My Monday Meals (same reason as last bullet point)
• Postpartum Monthly Updates
• A few parenting articles: What’s in my Changing Bag, Mummy Must Haves

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading in 2014 and to wish you a Happy 2015! I hope it is kind to you. With love from me and my family to yours. Bx