me and mine November

Me and mine – November 2018

by with No Comment Family lifePersonal

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I am so pleased that I do these posts every month because they give me the push I need to make sure we take photos of the four of us together.

Some months it feels like quite a bit of effort to do it, and there are times when I think about not bothering.

But every single time I’m so happy that we take the time to just do it.

And I know that in another month’s time when I can look back at a whole year’s worth of family photos I will be thrilled that we’ve stuck with it.

This month’s photos were taken on a quiet Sunday walk in Clyne woods.

Me and mine November

Me and mine November

 

We’ll quite often have a slow start to the day on Sundays.

Then we’ll take the children to their swimming lessons after an early lunch, then go straight from swimming for a walk somewhere.

We tend to head to either the beach, Singleton Park or Clyne woods for a good wander.  With these places being quite a regular part of our family routine, I really love having family photos taken there.

I hope the children have happy memories of these little Sunday outings when they’re older, I really do.

SEO advice I wish I'd known

SEO – what I wish I’d known when I started blogging

by with No Comment Family lifePersonal

I think the story behind how I started this blog is one that a lot of people share.

I decided I wanted to do it and just jumped in without any real clue of what I was doing.  I had no idea how much work was involved and how many skills I would need to learn.  One of the big challenges for me has been getting to grips with SEO.

For anyone new to the blogging world, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  And it’s all about the different things you can do on your site to help it show up higher on the list of recommended sites on search engines like Google.

This little guide has some of the information on SEO that I wish I’d known when I first got started with my blog:

SEO what I wish I'd known when I started blogging

 

Get to grips with keywords

Keywords are often thought of as the foundation of good SEO.

Basically, these are the words that people will type into google when they want to find something out.  If you want your post to be one of the first that comes up after people search, then you need to include the keywords they’re using in your post.

So, if you’re writing a post for a chocolate cake recipe then you need to think about what people will type into google to find a recipe like that.

Most people will search for something like ‘best chocolate cake recipe’ or ‘simple chocolate cake recipe’, so these would be the keywords that you want to make sure you include in your post.

A few places to try and use your keywords are:

  • Your blog post title
  • The post url
  • Your image names
  • The post meta data
  • Throughout the post itself

Don’t go crazy with this throughout the post though.  If you force the keywords into every other sentence it’ll make the post feel forced and unnatural, and google may well actually rank the post lower as a result.

 

 

Start building links

Another great way to improve your site’s SEO is to work on building links.

Ideally you want a good mix of internal and external links leading back to pages on your site.

Internal links are links from one page or post on your site to another. 

So going back to your chocolate cake recipe post, you might include a sentence about how baking with your children is one of your favourite rainy day activities.  Then you would use ‘rainy day activities’ as anchor text to link to another post on your site all about, you guessed it, rainy day activities to do with your children.

Did you catch that I’ve done this within this post?

Where I first mentioned chocolate cake recipes I linked to an old post of mine with a recipe for an amazing chocolate cake.

Adding links to old posts is something we should do every time we write something new.  It’s also worth taking time now and then to go back to old posts you’ve written and seeing if you can add in links to some of your newer posts.

 

External links are links from other websites back to yours. 

Getting these links can take a bit more effort but it’s well worth it.

A good place to start is by commenting on lots of other people’s blog posts.  If you’re going to do this make sure you actually leave decent, thoughtful comments that show you’ve actually read the post.  Commenting something like ‘great post’ doesn’t really help anyone.

 

Another thing to try is guest posting on other sites and responding to crowd sourcing requests.  This is where a blogger will ask for people’s thoughts, opinions, or tips on a particular topic and include them all in a blog post.  I did this on a post about why I won’t do my son’s homework and the result was win win.  I was able to show various opinions on the topic instead of just my own, and all the bloggers included got a back link to their sites.

 

 

Optimise

With the basics covered there’s still more you can do to improve your site’s SEO.

You can optimise your blog post’s title, url and meta date by making sure they include your keywords.

Then move on to optimising your images.  Make sure that the image title includes your keywords.  Next think about the image description and make sure it states what the picture is of.  This is especially helpful for the visually impaired who can’t see the image so they know what it’s of.

You might also want to look at what you can do to optimize your server so that your site loads as quickly as possible.  We all know how impatient we are with websites that are too slow to load up.

After doing all this you want to make sure your site is optimised for the web and for mobile use.

So many people these days use their phones to browse the internet so your site needs to be mobile friendly.  If you’re using WordPress then check that the theme you’re using is set up to work perfectly on phones.

 

Hopefully this post has given you a good basic understanding of what you can do to improve your site’s SEO.

There are loads of far more detailed posts out there if you want to dig into it further, and if you want some expert help then companies like Click Consult offer some great guides and services to give your site a real boost.

Now I need to take my own advice and go back to the posts I wrote when I first started and give them a bit of SEO love and attention.

 

Disclaimer: this is a collaborative post

living arrows

Living Arrows 2018 – 48/52

by with 5 Comments Personal

‘Tis the season.

The season for coughs and colds and runny noses.

Last week it was Nerys’ turn to feel particularly poorly.  She’s had a lovely chesty cough, a sore throat and snotty nose.  She powered through most of the week but on Thursday night she was awake a few times in tears, with a temperature and saying her throat was hurting.

So on Friday I kept her home from school to cwtch up in the warm and rest.  It seemed to do the trick luckily and she was much better in herself over the weekend.

We had a pretty quiet day at home on Saturday, and then on Sunday we went for a little walk in Clyne woods after swimming lessons.

living arrows

 

We didn’t venture too far into the woods this time, as both children were quite tired and not really up for too long a walk.  But we did go to the spot where Nerys hid a painted rock that we found in Singleton Park a good few weeks ago, and she was quite pleased to see that it had gone.

We’ve found a few of those rocks this year and we all really enjoy being part of this big game of sorts.  There’s something really fun about finding them and then deciding where we’ll take them to hide them again.

At some point we’ll get some stones of our own to paint and hide, I think that’s something both the children would enjoy.

Have you done this with your children?  Or have you not come across this whole painted rock thing where you live?

 

Living Arrows
ways my life has changed since becoming a parent

3 ways my life has changed since I became a parent

by with No Comment Family lifeParentingPersonal

I’ve been a parent now for nearly 8 years, and can honestly say that my life now is nothing like it was back then.

So much has changed, in so many different ways.

Here are 3 ways my life has changes since I became a parent.

3 ways my life has changed since I became a parent

I have less time.

Or maybe it’s a case of having more to do and keep in top of in the same amount of time.

Either way, it feels like I have a lot more on my plate since having the children.  So I do find myself looking for short cuts and ways to save precious time where I can.  I tend to do my food shopping online rather than spend 2 hours on a round trip to the supermarket.  And I love finding sites like love catalogues that help you compare prices and availability on various items to save you time doing it all yourself.

 

I have less sleep.

Before the children came along I loved to sleep.

I would quite happily get into bed around 9pm and doze off for a whole blissful night of sleep.

Now, even though I’m lucky and Rhys and Nerys generally sleep well through the night, I don’t get anywhere near the amount of sleep I used to.  I think it’s due to that classic parent thing of working all day, then sorting the children out and then trying to fit your adult life into those few hours after they’ve gone to bed.

So I end up staying up much later that I should.  Just to be able to relax a bit and watch Game of Thrones episodes that I’ve seen several times before.  Or squeeze in a bit more work to feel like I’ll have a head start on the next day.

 

Putting those changes first makes it seem like everything has changed for the worse since becoming a parent.

But honestly, there are so many other things that have changed, in more subtle ways perhaps, that have made life so much better.

 

I have more love.

More patience, more understanding.

In a direct contradiction of what I’ve already written, I also have more time.  Children, especially when they’re young, force you to slow down.  To take life at their pace.  To stop every 2 minutes as you walk to the park, to look at a stone or a flower or a particularly sticky stick.

Before I had the children the seasons would change and I would almost miss it.  I remember one year looking up on the way home from work and realising that the trees were almost bare, and I hadn’t noticed.   I hadn’t seen the gorgeous reds and oranges of autumn.  I’d been in such a hurry to just get home each day, I’d missed it.

Now though, I feel like I notice so much more.  We have time to watch the seasons change.

And watching my children watch these things happen, fills me with even more love and joy than I could have imagined.

 

So yes, I have less time and less sleep now than I did in my pre-children days.

But I have so much more of so many other things.  Things I didn’t even know I was missing out on.

What changed the most for you when you had your children?

Disclaimer: this is a collaborative post

Living arrows

Living Arrows 2018 – 47/52

by with 8 Comments Personal

I had one of those proud parent moments last week.

You know those moments, when you just feel all emotional and so damn lucky to be a parent?

It wasn’t even anything that big really that brought it on.  We were invited to school to see the artwork that Nerys’ class have been working on and to listen to them sing a couple of songs they’ve learnt this term.

So I went along with my mother-in-law and watched as Nerys and her class sang all about making your mark on the world.  And oh my word it took so much effort not to start crying.

I can’t even explain why really.  I just felt so emotional; so proud of my little girl up there singing away.  So lucky to be the one she calls Mummy.

Living arrows

 

Nerys wasn’t the only one who got up to something a bit special last week at school.

Rhys and his class were lucky enough to go on a trip to the local theatre to see ‘Awful Auntie’.  I was a little bit concerned that Rhys might struggle a bit with the play, because he gets quite anxious watching things with mean characters or where people do things they shouldn’t do.

But he came home saying it was absolutely amazing and he really enjoyed it.  

And next week he’s going back to the theatre for a back-stage tour which he’s so excited about.  He likes finding out how things work so I think he’ll really enjoy learning some of the tricks behind the magic of the theatre.

 

After a quiet day at home on Saturday, the children went with their grandparents to see the Christmas lights being switched on in town, and Santa making his first appearance of the year.

It all still feels a bit early to me, but I know the next few weeks will fly by.

We had the note home from school last week that Nerys will be a narrator in her year’s Christmas concert which she is so excited about.  Rhys still doesn’t seem to know what his class is doing, but maybe the older classes don’t need quite as long to prepare as the little ones in Reception.

It would be nice to know what he’s going to be soon though, so I can start trying to sort out costumes.  He was an angel last year which he enjoyed, so I’m curious to see what he’ll end up doing this year!

Have your children started preparing for their Christmas concerts yet?

 

Living Arrows
November siblings project

Siblings project – November 2018

by with One Comment Personal

I can’t quite believe that we’re halfway through November.

I also can’t quite believe that my siblings photos for this month are of the children outside in short-sleeved t shirts!

The pictures were taken a few weeks ago, before the weather really started getting wetter and chillier.

 

I’d taken the children out to the car park area in front of our house after school one day to take some photos for another blog post.

They demonstrated some power poses for me beautifully, so do go and check that post out to see how well they did!

After they’d helped me out with that they were looking out over the fence to see the sea and the light was just right for taking a few siblings photos.

 

Siblings November 2018

 

Along with the lovely autumn light I really like the fact that you can see the trees behind them, starting to change from green to orangey-red.  With the children dressed the way they were, I’m not sure you’d have any idea that these pictures were taken so late in the year if it wasn’t for the autumn colours behind them.

Things are definitely starting to feel more wintry around here now though.

We went to St Helens at the start of November to see the fireworks display, and it was absolutely brilliant.  The choreography of the fireworks and the music was spot on.

Bonfire night sort of signals the start of the new season for me, and with that now done I have a feeling we’ll be on a fast track to Christmas.

Nerys is already bringing the festive spirit home from school as they’re busy learning all the songs for their Christmas play.  Last year in nursery class they just sang a selection of songs, but I think they’re doing a full nativity play this year.

Funnily enough, as I typed that she turned to me and told me that one of the songs starts, “we’re counting the miles to Bethlehem” so it seems pretty certain that’s what they’re doing.

I don’t know what parts the children will be playing yet.

What I do know is that I’m already looking forward to going and watching them.  I always get quite emotional for some reason.

I’m not the only one am I?

Living Arrows

Living Arrows 2018 – 46/52

by with 4 Comments Personal

I’ve been struck down with the lurgy.

I’m tired and achy and, if I’m honest, a bit complainy.

Luckily we didn’t really have plans for the weekend so on Saturday I was able to spend a fair chunk of the day in bed and on the sofa resting.

On Sunday though I thought it might be worth trying a different approach.

So after the children’s swimming lessons we headed down to the beach for a blast of fresh air and to have a look at the events taking place to mark armistice day.

Living Arrows

We walked down to the cenotaph first and spent a few minutes reading the notes on the wreaths that had been put down there.

Nerys in particular seemed to enjoy doing that, asking me to read various ones out to her.

Then we walked back along the beach all the way to the civic centre to see the pages of the sea event in progress.

The main portrait of Dorothy Watson wasn’t quite finished by the time we left, but I’ve since seen photos of it and it looked great.  I think it was such a brilliant idea by Danny Boyle, and so emotional to see the photos last night of the various portraits in the sand slowly being washed away by the tide.

I’m not sure quite how much Rhys and Nerys understand about the war, but to be honest I still struggle to get my head around it at times.  Which is why it’s so important that we keep talking about it and reading about it and never, ever forgetting.

Did you do anything with your children for remembrance day?

 

Living Arrows