Happiness Is...Being On Twitter On A Friday Night

My blog has been seriously neglected lately and, for that, I sincerely apologise to all my lovely readers.

Life with a new baby has been a blur. The past 6 months since his arrival have just flown. I honestly thought time went fast when Mini Cheddar was born over 3 years ago but now, the arrival of Tiny Ched has made each day whizz by in a blur of happiness.

Talking of happiness blurs. I'm very happy today.

I shouldn't be! I only had about 4.5 hours sleep last night. No, TC is still sleeping through.

I didn't sleep because at 9.55pm last night I received this tweet:

I had to pinch myself.

Seriously.

I should have been in a swanky London hotel enjoying the company of some fabulous bloggers and friends but I chose not to go. This was for two reasons if I'm completely honest. I have a baby who is exclusively breastfed (and I live in North Wales)...plus, I never in a million years thought I'd actually win an award.

I'm still shaking.

So, I'm just writing this quick THANK YOU to all my wonderful readers who voted for me. I honestly can't believe my little blog has won an award. I can proudly say I am 'Best Baby Blog'. Also thanks to Sally and the whole team at The MAD Blog Awards and to the lovely team at Emma's Diary for sponsoring the award (and collecting it on my behalf).

The last couple of weeks have been quite up and down for me so I've not been around - I'll be able to blog about it all soon - so this has really made my day (and week, month, year etc.)

A proper thank you post and details will follow but I just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive and regular blogging will commence shortly.

Thank you once again - and thank you from this little guy too...

Heather xx

I'm Really MAD...Again!

I took a blog break last week.

Yes, it was only a week but Tiny Ched and I were full of cold and my freelance work had been catching up with me a bit. I've also been off Twitter and Facebook, choosing to lose myself in the escapism of the photographic loveliness of Instagram instead.

I was completely unaware of something major happening in the world of parent bloggers last week.

The MAD Blog Awards finalists had been announced!

I didn't have a clue.

I wasn't expecting to be shortlisted. I thought it was sheer fluke I was up for Best New Blog last year.

So, imagine my surprise when the very lovely Katie from Mummy Daddy and Me Makes Three (she's up for some awards, check her out - she rocks!) wished me congrats on Instagram and asked if I was going to the Awards Ceremony.

I was drinking Yakult at the time (yes, I'm THAT rock 'n roll) and it almost came out of my nose! I headed over to the MAD Awards website, clicked on Best Pregnancy Blog and low and behold there was my name. Wow!

I was over the moon!

Then, almost 24 hours later I got a tweet from the MAD team with a #ff to the Best Baby Blog finalists and mentioning me.

Eh? *confused face*

I went to write a tweet back saying I was 'Pregnancy' but before I did I checked the site as I'd not had chance to go through all the finalists at that point...I'd just headed straight to Best Pregnancy. Sure enough, there I was down for Best Baby Blog too. My baby is only coming up on 7 weeks old. Double Wow!

So, this post is to say a huge....

THANK YOU

to each and every one of you who voted for me.

I only have a very tiny number of close friends and family who know about my blog and a small number of followers compared to my fellow finalists so it means such a lot to me that you guys got me through.

The fellow bloggers in my categories are all amazing and I'm feeling like the donkey in a race of pure thoroughbreds. I'm quite sad that a lot of bloggers that I voted for who I assumed would easily make the finals haven't.

I'm under no delusions of grandeur, I haven't a hope of winning and, you know me, I'm not one for asking for votes but hey I'm ecstatic that I've made enough of an impact in the blogging world to make it through to a second consecutive final. I've only been blogging less than 17 months so you have no idea what it means to me.

I love you guys so much.

Thank you once again for making me MAD. Not often you can say that without sarcasm!

Vote for your winners above

Tiny Ched and I say THANK YOU!

Liebster Blog Award

I was tagged the other week for this new meme *groan* that's floating around the blogosphere.  I'm not sure where the meme originated so if anyone can let me know so I can credit the OP that would be great.

New Mum Online was the first one to tag me with this Liebster Blog Award and then I received another tag a couple of days ago from Mummy and the Beastie so it's spurred me along to actually complete the meme. Thanks again for the tags and sharing the blog love ladies.

It's designed for people with 'little' blogs (less than 300 subscribers) to share the blog love and spread the word.

The thing is though, I'm a little confused (doesn't take much, I know!) as is this just Google Friend Connect subscribers?  I guess it must be as no-one knows how many other subscribers we all have unless we display our stats.

Anyway, here are the rules of the meme:

1. Post displaying the award, linking back to the person(s) who awarded you.
2. Choose your own blog picks and let them know they're awarded.
3. Hope everyone discovers some new favourites
4. Revel in the blog love!

From my blog picks I'm going to choose some wonderful ladies who I met on a baby forum when we were all expecting our little ones - all due in March 2009.

3 of them I've met in real life and we have remained friends.  The other I hope to meet one day.  3 of them have been blogging quite a while now and 1 is a brand new blogger.

Alysons Blog
Never Found The Plot
Dreaming Of Beer
Mrs Ramble

Go and show them some love!


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The Wonderful *cough* Memetastic Award

Okay, okay, I'm feeling more and more pressure to do this so here goes nothing...this is a very quick one though as I have cakes to bake and china to polish...being a domestic goddess is so very demanding.  Yeah right!

I was originally tagged last week by All For Aleyna and I've been putting it off and since Metal Mummy double tagged me today I thought I'd better get this in before some other bugger tags me.  Thanks guys *rolls eyes*

So, what the hell is this 'gorgeous' award?  Well it was started by Jillsmo and she made the following rules (I've copied and pasted directly from Jillsmo's blog as I'm lazy like that and crystal and china doesn't polish itself ya know):

1. You must proudly display the absolutely disgusting graphic that I have created for these purposes (put it in your post, you don't have to put it in your sidebar, I think that would seriously be asking too much). It's so bad that not only did I use COMIC SANS, but there's even a little fucking jumping, celebrating kitten down there at the bottom. It's horrifying! But its presence in your award celebration is crucial to the memetastic process we're creating here. If you need a higher resolution version... I totally have one!!

2. You must list 5 things about yourself, and 4 of them must be bold-faced lies. Just make some shit up, we'll never know; one of them has to be true, though. Of course, nobody will ever know the difference, so we're just on the honor system here. I trust you. Except for the 4 that you lied about, you lying bastards! But don't go crazy trying to think of stuff, you'll see by the example I've set below that we're not really interested in quality here.

3. You must pass this award on to 5 bloggers that you either like or don't like or don't really have much of an opinion about. I don't care who you pick, and nobody needs to know why. I mean, you can give a reason if you want, but I don't really care.

4. If you fail to follow any of the above rules, I will fucking hunt your ass down and harass you incessantly until you either block me on Twitter or ban my IP address from visiting your blog. I don't know if you can actually do that last thing, but I will become so annoying to you that you will actually go out and hire an IT professional to train you on how to ban IP addresses just so that I'll leave you alone. I'm serious. I'm going to do these things.

5. This one isn't actually a rule, but once you do the above, please come back here and link up to the Memetastic Hop so that I can keep track of where this thing goes.



Right, so here are my 5 things.  Can you spot the odd one out?  Answers on a postcard to:  I couldn't really care less, PO Box 999, Someone beam me up now....(well, leave them below and maybe you'll win a prize...or maybe not)


1. When I was 14 I represented my county in the 100 metres at some Welsh sports event that I can't even remember the name of.  Shows how much I cared.

2. I have an irrational fear of cotton wool - which doesn't bode well when you have children.  For those first few weeks when my daughter was born and you're too terrified to use wipes I had to get my husband to change her as I can't touch the stuff.

3. When I was 31 I was driving in London on work business and someone crashed into me in an old green Mercedes - it just happened to be David Walliams.

4. I have quite a famous Uncle but I never talk about it (and never will) because I don't want people to know.  Besides, I don't see him anyway and I'm actually really embarrassed about it.

5. Despite being a size 10 I hate my body and don't like myself without clothes.  However, that didn't stop me getting so wasted one night on cider, when I was 28, that some guy I was seeing dared me to run down my own street completely naked.  And I did.


With that I'm getting rid of this award out of my 'pile of things to do' and passing it on to these suckers (sorry if you've been tagged before and I love you all obviously):

Inside The Wendy House
Anecdotes Of A Manic Mum
Bod For Tea
Choc Orange City Mum
Show & Tell

*swipes hands together* So glad to have rid of that one!