Eleven

Today I’ve been blogging for eleven years - and I’m not quite sure where the time has gone.

As you’ll know this space has changed name in the past year, but I’m still keeping my original starting date as my ‘blog birthday’ as that’s when it all started for me back in 2013. I’m sure lots of things have changed since then too, more than I can probably remember!

Photo by Marcel Eberle on Unsplash

But as part of my blog birthday tradition, I thought I’d give it a go - so here’s eleven things that have changed for me since I started blogging:

1. Where I blog: I started off using a free Blogger blog with one of the inbuilt templates. I soon outgrew the inbuilt template though, and learnt enough html to make changes to its look and feel and feel a bit more like the Life at 139a home that I changed from back in the summer. I relatively quickly decided to move away from the Blogger platform, and to move to my own url, which I did with Squarespace. Then last summer following our house move I updated that url to the one I’m using today, so quite a journey.

2. Where I live: that’s the other big change you’ll know about already. After growing up and living in London we’ve escaped to the country. We left our house of twenty one years - 139a - and moved to Nottinghamshire. I’ve still plenty to share about our new house, and our move!

3. Where I work: again a big change, as I am no longer working having taken early retirement in 2022. But even before that I left my job of nearly thirty years in the City in 2014 taking some time out before working locally in Greenwich for six years.

4. My name! While I was working I continued to use my maiden name, but used my married name for non-work related things. That was the plan anyway, and quite often I’d forget which led to MOH regularly asking what name I was using that day! Since I’m no longer working I’m using my married name more and more, though it’s still taking some getting used to - even after sixteen years of marriage (seventeen this year) I feel I’m always surprised when I answer to my married name in the doctors!

5. What I blog about: one of the reasons for starting my blog was to share updates on the work to update our house in London, once that completed though I still found plenty to share especially visits to gardens and our own garden, again starting with the work we undertook shaping the grass and then to monthly updates. It’s almost as if it’s come a full circle now though, with a new house and plenty of projects to come.

6. Getting my craft on: back in 2013 I was a lapsed crafter having tried many crafts over the years. Life was busy and there was little time to craft back then, but now crafting is a much bigger part of time and more regularly, especially as I’ve now got a dedicated space for crafting - so different to having my craft materials across several rooms of the house (though MOH might legitimately comment that that hasn’t really changed!)

7. Blogging: it’s changed quite a lot, or perhaps I don’t have the same time or energy for blogging groups, blogging circles or blogging events - though I suspect the latter may have been scuppered initially by Covid, and then more recently by reduced budgets. However, I think that’s ok, things move on. Quite a few bloggers I got to know back in those early days have stopped writing their blog, but it’s great to still keep up with many of them. I do a lot less brand work and when I do I’m even more choosy than I was before!

8. How I use my social channels: this also relates to how blogging has changed, but also to how social media has also changed. I now rarely use X and my blog’s Facebook page has lapsed (even though I renamed it back in the summer) and I share fewer and fewer of my blog posts on my social channels. Where I previously resisted using Instagram stories, these are probably now the social channel I use the most - I think that also reflects how life, and how we use technology has also changed.

9. PoCoLo, the weekly linky I co-host: I started to co-host the linky back in 2016, and since 2019 I’ve co-hosted PoCoLo with Suzanne from Chicken Ruby. The linky itself has changed as we no longer include the Blogger Showcase element, as quite honestly we didn’t have people wanting to share information this way. As I said, things change but there is still a community of people who join in each week, and we both love to host each week.
   
   Ermm… now I’m struggling.
   
   Clearly so many things in the world around us have changed and I’d need a much longer list to cover off those. So instead I’m finishing my list with two things that haven’t changed quite so much, if at all.
   

10. Clearly MOH has been here all along, and I’m grateful for that obviously - though occasionally he still finds things out when people we know in real life ask him about posts on my blog. He really should read here more often, but he’s not much of one for things online!

11. And you, I’m grateful for everyone that reads my blog - whether you dip in every now and again, or more regularly. It really wouldn’t be the same place without you!

Thank you for being here, and for being part of my online space and community.

Post Comment Love 16 - 18 February

Hello there, and welcome back to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed from the linky, and if older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here this week we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

We’ve had a busy and productive week here, and one that’s been blessed with peculiar weather and some glorious sunsets. We definitely notice the sunsets more here than when we were in London, and I think that’s partly how our house is positioned but also because there’s a lot more space around us. It’s definitely not a complaint though!

This week’s photo is one of those glorious sunset days. It had been raining on and off, but mostly on for a couple of days, and we nipped out for a brief walk during a break in the rain. That thankfully lasted for the whole of our walk and I was able to snap this photo on our way home - it has a look of the Old Masters painted quality about it, doesn’t it?

Have a great week!

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The year of the shelves has begun

At the start of the year I unofficially christened 2024 as the year of the shelves. I think MOH thought I wasn’t serious, but actually he knows me well enough to know better, and so it’s good to report that the year of the shelves is officially underway.

One of the things that’s obvious about moving to a new build is that you’re the first person to live there. That means there’s a lot of things you usually take for granted that just aren’t there. I think I’ve spoken before about light and curtain fittings and toilet roll holders, but today it’s shelves.

These aren’t the first shelves for MOH since we moved as we ordered some self-assembly freestanding shelves for the utility room and pantry at the end of year, and which tested the patience of a very patient MOH. I’ll share these here soon, as they look great and have made both of these areas incredibly usable.

MOH’s also recovered sufficiently, so it was time to reintroduce the need for more shelves. We have three spaces identified, plus the shelf above his workbench in the garage, but first up was the bathroom cupboard. It’s a big cupboard and will be great for storing towels but to make the best use of it, yeap - shelves. We’ve already added a open shelf unit for cleaning stuff, toilet rolls and such and a washing bin (both from Ikea) but even so, we weren’t making the best use of the space.

I wanted some simple slatted shelves, which MOH said he could make. When we bought the wood for the hooks for tools in the garage we bought extra knowing that there were more shelves on the horizon, which given the price of wood was a smart move. It also gave MOH enough to get started, but getting started meant nailing down the details, which is where my handy drawing came in.

While it may seem overkill, it was a great way of explaining what I had in my mind’s eye, and helped MOH envisage the end result. It also meant I didn’t have to answer 101 questions like did you want it like this, or that as he went along. And it meant that I was in for a fab surprise when I got back from my last gelli plate printing class to this work in progress.

I perhaps need to get out more, but it was just what I wanted. Sadly though he was out of wood so we needed a trip to get some more, and I found myself pondering life choices after spending way too much time in the screw zone, where you can pick up ‘pick and mix’ screws to fill a pre-determined sized and priced bag.

But it wasn’t long before the bathroom cupboard started to look like this.

And then this.

Originally my plan was to lightly paint these white, hence the white blocks (which I made MOH buy specially!) - but seeing the shelves in situ I changed my mind. I like the natural look of the wood and so we’re keeping them like that for now at least - there’s an option to paint them at a later date, but right now that’s a long way off.

Don’t they look great?

It looks even better with the towels on, and as well as it being another job jobbed, it’s another space that now has functional, practical and good looking storage, and means our towels are now stored together. It also highlights that we have a penchant for cream and blue towels!

After a suitable shelf-break, next up for MOH is some shelves to maximise the space in our pantry! He really can’t wait…