My First Blogger Event and Thoughts About Blogging

My First Event....

On Friday I went to my first blogging event, one of my best friends Ellie who has a blog called EleanorGraceful (click over to her blog here) asked if I wanted to go so I read the description on the Manchester Blogger group over on Facebook and thought it sounded quite interesting. It was an event hosted by Holland and Barrett to promote their beauty products and if I'm honest I wasn't even really aware they did beauty products so it was interesting to see what they have on offer. I've had a little browse of their website now and there are a few brands I've used before like Burt's Bees and Trilogy and then lots of new ones I'm less familiar with that I'd be interested to try. If you're curious about any of it you can have a browse here, I particularly like their section about DIY beauty recipes.

I've not had a chance yet to try all of the products we were given but I've given the hand cream a go which is great and the body scrub. I'll definitely be giving the self tan a go next now that I've started to fake tan recently. A lovely lady from Beauty Kitchen showed us how to make a basic lip balm and gave us some to take home, as well as demonstrating the effectiveness of one of their hand scrubs on both me and Ellie (its gave us seriously baby soft skin).

They provided us with the nicest buffet, I took full advantage of this and had A LOT of food, me and Ellie may have also had 3 glasses of Prosecco each, woops, well they did say we could help ourselves (I swear).

We both had our make up done by a lovely MUA with make up products that Holland and Barrett sell, which again I was surprised that they do as I've never heard anyone mention it. The MUA did quite a dewy base on me which I'm always really wary of with my problematic skin, but it made a nice change. There was also a chance to get a manicure done by another beauty professional but I didn't get around to doing that. 

All in all it was a really lovely experience for a first blogger event and the people I chatted to were all super friendly. It's definitely made me want to go to more events, try out new products and meet more bloggers.

Some Thoughts On Blogging & Where My Blog Fits In..

Going to a blogging event made me think again about the fact that I don't have a certain category or niche that my blog particularly belongs to. The thing is I really don't want it to either. This blog is a kind of reflection of who I am to some extent, that's not to say I would share every part of myself on here but equally I don't want to limit myself either. I don't want to have to just stick to certain topics because say for example I've chosen to do a Film blog or  a Beauty blog. I'd say the majority of blogs I read do seem to choose a clear category and I can fully see why. Doing it that way the readers know what to expect and therefore you're more likely to gain a following of people who go to your blog when they want to read about a certain topic. If you write about whatever you fancy I guess the reader goes to you for your writing style and personality over your particular focus on a topic because the content will be unpredictable to some extent. I like the idea of blogging not having strict boundaries so for now I will keep just writing about the topics that I feel like on that given day, sometimes it may be something a little shallow, sometimes a topic that may open up discussion, or maybe even neither, who knows? I'm happy with doing that for now and I hope if you're following my blog you will enjoy the random nature of my posts, I really do enjoy writing at the moment and having my own little space to just share whatever I want.

My favourite places on the internet

I thought for this post I'd share some of my favourite places to visit on the web- blogs, sites, videos. The last post I made was a bit downbeat and I feel like spreading some positivity and maybe you'll find something you enjoy in the list.

Ted Talks is a website I visit if I want to learn about something new or feel inspired. They are basically short videos most no longer than 15 minutes covering a massive range of topics. Their bio states that their mission is to 'spread ideas' which is basically the essence of it. A lot of the speeches are very motivational too, I recently watched one about letting go of regret that I found really insightful. The range of people they have doing the talks are brilliant too, people from all walks of life, there's basically something for everyone. I'm pretty sure you can find their videos on Youtube as well as just through their own site.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film reviews are next on my list. I don't always listen to the full pod-cast which you can find here, sometimes I like to put that on if I'm doing other things and I'll just have that playing in the background but for when I just want to see a specific review I go to their Youtube channel here. The pod-cast is good though because it has interviews with actors/directors and listeners emails read out, as opposed to just solely reviews. I just find their dynamic quite entertaining and Kermode knows so much about cinema that I always find myself discovering other films I would never have known about through his reviews. Not that I always agree though, I mean he liked Twilight so..... but then again, maybe that shows that he he is confident in his own opinion enough that he can say that? Yeah, I dunno.

I think I'll throw a blog in here now. This girl Charly is hands down my favourite blogger, if I could write anything like she does I would be one happy bunny. I can't actually believe she's only 20. She writes about a number of topics- men, friends, fashion, mental health and everything she writes she writes with such openness and honesty that's rare to find on the internet. I admire the fact that she hasn't succumb to the usual style of writing nowadays where there is pressure for everything to be super concise bitesize reads.I think often people are worried that their readers might get bored unless they can put their point across into a few neatly packages paragraphs.This post about her experience with Bipolar is worthy of anyone's time.

Next upppp, a Youtuber. Anthony Fantano 'the needledrop' is just great. I watch most of his videos even when I know It's an album I'll probably never check out, like Kermode his wealth of knowledge alone makes it worth watching. Then on top of that the dude is funny. 

I've discovered some artists I now LOVE through him like FKA Twigs when she released her first album and he gave it glowing reviews. This is him reviewing her latest EP. He also has a mostly trolling 2nd channel thats funny if your into dumb shit like I am look it up- thatistheplan.

I'll leave it here for now, there's more bloggers etc that I'd love to include so I'll probably revisit this and do a round 2 soon. That's it for now, I hope you enjoyed the list! x