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 three 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.

Welcome to Bosworth Life

Well hello there.

If you’re reading this then it’s all gone to plan (or as to plan as it could have gone) and I’ve refreshed my blog to reflect our recent house move.

I’d been Life at 139a for ten years, which is a long time and although I’d never felt the need to change before now, now feels right.

When we first started to look to move house people were quick to ask if I’d change my blog name - back then I was ‘no, why would I, 139a can be a virtual space for wherever we go’. And in some ways that’s true, it has been a big part of our life for the twenty one years we lived there, but we were also so, so ready to move. It wasn’t until we got to Nottinghamshire, that I realised I was also ready to move my blog on too.

So why Bosworth Life?

I was always going to keep the life element of my blog name, as the things I cover are more wide reaching than just house and garden, and I didn’t want to feel constrained by a name. Bosworth is part of our address here, and so it was a fairly obvious choice.

Our new house is a new build barn, which is quite an unusual concept, and I toyed with variations about life at the barn, life at the new build barn and many more. But none felt right, and some felt quite similar to names that were already in use. That was a disappointing find, as when I wrote the post sharing that I was mulling over a blog name change, that was where I thought I’d go.

But it didn’t turn out that way.

I checked various names with Bosworth, and I was sold when I realised the .life suffix worked with it. It may not be as normal as a .co.uk or a .com suffix, but it is a lot cleaner and it makes me smile.

A cleaner look and feel

Now I like stuff, and I like my stuff - but something strange has happened as part of our house move. Like many people moving we’ve gone through years and years of ‘essential’ items pruning as we go, recalling memories and finding plenty of things we’d long forgotten about.

I thought we’d been pretty ruthless, but as we unpacked in our new house with its bright, white spaces we had a rethink, and have got rid of a load more stuff. We’ve been here two months and are only just getting some pictures on the walls. And we know that all we had before won’t all make it onto the walls here, which is another surprise to us both.

And so it makes sense for me to refresh the look and feel here too. The old logo was pretty minimalist, but this one feels cleaner and brighter - though I realise some may say dull (and that’s ok just please keep it to yourself!).

So what’s next?

Now I’ve got this new space set up I’ll also be changing my social channels (wish me luck!), but I’m also hoping that the refresh will inspire me to share more about our move, and our new house. For some reason I’ve held back as it didn’t feel a good fit under the Life at 139a banner, which given what I said before about it being a virtual 139a is odd, and that cemented the idea of a new blog name.

We’ve also got a whole new area to explore, so that’s exciting too. The countryside is right on our doorstep, as is the local history - the last battle of the War of the Roses, the Battle of Stoke Field took place close by in 1487. Newark is less than four miles away, Nottingham about seventeen miles - and there’s plenty more to explore in between and beyond.

I’ve also - finally - got a dedicated craft room here, so no more having craft supplies scattered between rooms, and it seems I’ve been collecting a fair amount of stuff, so I’ll be aiming to use some of that too as well as finish the projects I have on the go, and start some of those that I’ve planned. Though be warned, that list has grown!

So exciting times, and I can’t wait to get started - thanks for being here to see how it goes!

Ten

At the end of last week my blog turned 10, which seems quite unbelievable to me. And while the voracity of my posts have slowed somewhat since I first started out (and some of the very early posts are no longer viewable having moved platforms) it’s still quite a remarkable achievement, and one that I’m grateful that many of you are still here for.

Photo by Timo Müller on Unsplash

It’s another tradition of mine to mark my blog birthdays, and it seems also a tradition to deliberate about a theme for the post. I am clearly a creature of habit, so this year is no different on both counts. So I’ve decided to share ten posts from over the years which are memorable to me, whether that’s because they were great achievements, great opportunities or just because they were special to me.

I know I have been incredibly fortunate to have had (and hopefully to continue to have) some great opportunities come my way just by posting here, and I’ve met some fantastic people through this online space over the years too. This is, and I hope will continue to be, a space for me to share many things from our home and garden projects, our garden visits, my many works in progress and hopefully much, much more.

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

Ten for ten

Having decided to choose ten posts, I soon realised just how hard a task I’d nonchalantly set myself. So with a brief explanation the ten are:

1. Please ring the bell - our visit to Hunte’s Garden in Barbados which is I think the most inspirational and moving gardens I’ve ever visited, and it wasn’t just because of the rum! Even looking back over these photos, and the many more that I haven’t shared here, gives me all the feels.

2. My cross stitch marathon - I have many work in progress projects as you know, and this one is one that’s likely to be around for a while yet. MOH still asks what it’s going to be, and I still say ‘hopefully finished one day!’ I know I should focus on fewer projects, but where’s the fun in that, hey?

3. More bubbles in my sourdough - this one’s on the list because I regularly refer to it to make sure my brain fogged brain has remembered the recipe correctly. And yes, I make sourdough almost every week sometimes more than once a week, but I still find myself checking to make sure.

4. The one with the redecorated loo - many of you will have at some point wondered what my fascination with the decor in loos is all about. Quite honestly, I don’t know but I knew there had to be one from The Loo Series on this list, so what better than this one.

5. A map on my wall - this is one of the collaborative posts I’m sharing here, and it’s the one that really still does give the wow factor. Having a map on a curved wall was absolutely inspired, even though I wasn’t totally aware of just how well it would turn out back at the planning stage, though I’m claiming all of the credit!

6. Highlights of my Chelsea (part 2) - I’ve been fortunate to have been invited to many events and shows such as Grand Designs and Gardener’s World Live over the years, and they’ve all been brilliant. The real highlight though was when I went along to the Chelsea Flower Show on Press Day. Totally awesome, and something I hope I’m able to repeat.

7. Highlights of my Chelsea (part 1) - this is a bit of a cheat really, but I couldn’t choose between the two posts from the day, so they’re both here.

8. Circles and slate - this is one of my great achievements posts where we transformed our garden ourselves. In the end it turned out we were up against a bit of a deadline after arranging our 110th party for that summer, so we put in many hours hard work, but it was definitely worth it.

9. More than ‘just’ a lawnmower - I never knew there was so much to know about lawnmowers, but I’m glad I got the opportunity to find out on this press trip to the Viking factory in Kufstein, a town in Austria which we travelled to by coach from Munich airport. I will never forget the warmth and hospitality of the Viking and Stihl teams and the relationship which resulted in a series of posts, and I remain impressed by the knowledge and passion which goes into each of their products, which are just brilliant too.

10. 52 Cookbooks: 52 new recipes in 2014 - this series of posts was a great challenge taking place over the whole year, using a different cookbook every week. And yes, I had more than I needed to choose from so I’m minded to redo this challenge at some point, who knows maybe next year as its decennial - watch this space!