12.11.13 | THIS BLOGGING LARK / HATERS GONNA HATE

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Blah Blah Blah.- that's my warning to you!

Turn away now if you don't enjoy a good old bit of ranty incoherent babbling from a 34 year old blogging mum of three who cooks good grub from her tiny kitchen - because in blogging terms, that is simply who I am.

This old blog of mine, what is it now, 4 years old? Well, I say 4 years old but really that's when i started it, back when in actual fact I had no idea what a blog was. I just saw it as a place to store all my badly taken photos of my (then two) toddlers because I hated Facebook (still do a little bit) and I thought Dizzy Loves Icy would be a nice little corner tucked away for basically my mum to go to and see pictures of the kids without having to update my Facebook every 5 minutes.

Then, I forgot about the blog really and couldn't be arsed and it was like that for about a year  until I was lolling around on the sofa suffering from Flu and preggers with India that I stumbled across this whole world of bloggers out there who were documenting everything from pregnancy to fashion to food and interiors! I was in heaven and spent hours looking through them all. Some of them have folded, some of them I've grown out of and others I still adore to this day and it was those bloggers that inspired me to get a little more creative and pay more attention to my own little space. I used to, and still do read some of the main players as well as lots of smaller blogs i'm discovering on a daily basis,which is lovely, but sometime's I don't really know where I fit in in this whole blogging world, reasons which i'm sure will become apparent (grrrrr!)
I don't make regular money from my blog for a start, I mean I occasionally get sent products to review or recipes to try, or I get asked to write articles for people in return for a cash fee or product but at this moment in time, in no way do I consider this blog a job or a business. I'm babbling now but just before the summer months, i suspect after I wrote a couple of paid posts, i received a ('less than charming' shall we say) email from someone saying how they didn't think it was right how I was using my blog to  'pimp' out my kids as a way to make money (errr, wtf?) To say this made me gasp is an understatement - don't get me wrong, it didn't upset me (bitchy comments tend to not do that, sorry if that was the reaction you were hoping for) but it did make me think. I showed the short but blunt email to some friends, discussed it with others and wondered if that's how I was coming across? I had actually thought that since my gallbladder turned all nasty on me and i had to dramatically change my eating habits, my blog had gone more down the food route - something I was ok with. I was using it to take pictures of my food, to share recipes and to fulfil what had become a new found hobby. Ironically, I was actually worrying that people would think that I'd 'lost interest' almost in blogging about the kids and I actually felt guilty every time I hadn't blogged about a day trip we'd taken or updated the kids pages for a while. Not in my wildest dreams did think that someone would think the complete opposite and actually accuse me of using them to get money. Urgh - hater's gonna hate i know, but man you suck! As if I would do that?! Make them do something they didn't want to do, or make them take part in something they were not intertested just to gain site traffic, or money?! As i have said before, sometimes my kids get asked if they would like such & such stuff as a gift and IF it is something I think they would enjoy THEN i MAY say yes - not always, but sometimes.
So what did prompt that person to email me that? Should I give a shit? I didn't reply to it, and I haven't mentioned it to this day on here, but recently i've been thinking about it again.
Should I change what i'm blogging about and how I'm doing it? Should I no longer post reviews if i'm asked? Should I no longer post things about the kids? I don't think I should change what i'm blogging about unless it's an organic process. I enjoy my food posts and I get lots of emails and comments relating to them and for every one of those, I am so grateful. I love that side of this blogging lark, i really do. I also feel so lucky for the love the many friends I've made both online as part of this community and locally who i catch up with regularly. I am also grateful for the various opportunities that it has opened up to me so far and hope it continues to do so in the future, as it grows or moves in whichever direction I see fit.

This place is where I blog about the stuff going on in my life. Simple. If i blog every day about food for  a week, then so be it. If i don't write about food ever again, then that's the way it is. If I share pics of our holidays or day trips or whatever, then great. We've had over 80,000 hits since I started blogging full time in at the start 2012 so some of you enjoy what I have to say and do you know what, even if i'd have only had 8 people look, i'd feel the same. This place is a happy place, and i'm happy to share it with you as long as you are happy to be here.  And if you're not happy to be here, then jeeeez - go somewhere else ;)

BTW - this was a long time coming! Sorry, rant over.