The BritMums Blog

Try something different this weekend: female football

So the World Cup was a damp squib, wasn’t it? Well the men’s World Cup was last year, with England sloping out after a humiliating defeat to Germany. But wipe away the sweat and beer of the men’s game, and look to this year’s women’s World Cup in Germany. 

While Japan were the eventual winners, England’s women’s team fought a brilliant campaign to reach the semi-finals before going out of the competition in a penalty thriller with France. The quarter-final match was watched by over three million live viewers on BBC2, highlighting the growing interest in the female game.

#BritMums Blogger of the Week

I have to say, this feature on the BritMums blog is just the most fun! Keeping my eyes peeled for outstanding posts and bloggers each week makes the blogosphere a very fun place indeed. Isn't it great to showcase a wonderful blogger and celebrate his or her talent? I think so! (Group hug??)

In my travels this week I have stumbled upon a blog which is just downright hilarious. This blogger writes about what a lot of us are feeling...always a good sign in a parent blogger! Her tagline is "All Children are messy hell-raisers!" which might give you an indication of the tone of her blog.

Is Twitter really turning children off books?

When former MI5 director and current Man Booker Prize judge, Dame Stella Rimington claimed that Twitter and mobile phones were diminishing reading, an age old debate was brought to the fore. 

Speaking to the Telegraph, Rimington said: “I think much of the Twittering and emailing and texting and all that sort of stuff that children go in for now may be taking their eyes off reading fiction. When I was young we read more than the average child reads now.”

Rimington was clearly sharing an opinion, rather than a robust piece of research, but various studies do back up her basic assertion that fewer children are picking up books for pleasure. 

BritMums Good Reads

Another week, another opportunity to draw a bit of attention to posts that have caught our attention. We love to read posts from new and "experienced" bloggers so please feel free to leave a recommendation in the comments section below. If you've got a brilliant post to "pimp" or if you've read something from someone else, feel free to share the love. Now, in time for your Elevenses (or High Tea or Evening Reading....) we bring you this week's BritMums Good Reads.

School’s out for summer...

Whether you’re a working mum with a sudden childcare blackhole between 8.30am and 3.30pm, a stay-at-home mum with a sudden increase in household decibels, or one of the many in-betweeners, the summer holidays bring more than their fair share of challenges.

So how are you going to face the next six weeks? 

Home Office Mum asks, “How can you tell it's the end of the school year and the start of summer holidays? 

“By the number of wine bottles in the recycling tub.” 

Guest post: It's time to banish the children's menu!

Families eat out together more than ever. But @Working_Mum, who blogs at Adventures of a Working Mum, finds the situation not quite up to snuff when it comes to the food on offer for the kids. Find out what she has to say about it and tell us whether you think the "children's menu" should be ditched.

Apparently London has been confirmed as the gourmet capital of the world after a record 53 restaurants were awarded Michelin stars in the 2011 guide. Really? Well here’s an idea for you Mr Michelin Inspector: try eating out with a toddler. Go on. I’ll loan you mine if you like.

Take Toddler-Not-So-Tiny-Temper out to eat and you’ll soon find a whole new area of the restaurant scene. Introducing the dreaded ‘Children’s Menu’. Not so fancy now is it? The main menu may be full of ‘seared breast of this’ and ‘tartare of smoked that’ but ask for a children’s menu and the options are somewhat limited. All together now mums: “Fishfingers and chips, sausage and chips, or pasta with tomato sauce”. We all know it – it never changes.
 

Rosie Millard on the joys and perils of extended family adventure travel

 

We’ve all tried to motivate recalcitrant children for an outing or even a trip to the corner shop. Just imagine getting them enthusiastic about a trek across five continents.

The journalist Rosie Millard, who blogs at Helicoptermum.com, set off with her family to a tour of the French Overseas Departments and Territories (the Dom-Toms) to make a documentary series. We keep seeing more and more of these type of big family trips – usually documented in a blog. For Rosie's family, it was an adventure, but initially the response from her children was, er, less than enthusiastic. Here she describes their reservations. Over to Rosie:

There were many reasons why my children – aged 11, 9, 6 and 4 -  didn’t want to come with my husband and I on a trip visiting all the French overseas territories around the world. Here are the top 6.

1. “Speaking French is incredibly annoying and we didn’t want to learn a new language.”

 This was one of the key reasons for doing the trip. Taking my four children out of the Anglophone bubble was very important. I wanted to show them a world released from the control of Hannah Montana or In The Night Garden. I even wanted them to take a break from The Simpsons. It would have been quite nice if they had learned how to speak French, but this proved an ambition too far, in the end.

Guest post: 18 tips for writing a novel + review Seven Days One Summer

Kate Morris joined BritMums just months after we launched in 2008. She told us she was working on her next novel and we were impressed at how she kept at it, while raising a young family and posting regularly on her blog Writing and Moaning.  She’s just released her newest novel Seven Days One Summer. I picked up the last copy (!) at WHSmith Terminal 1 for my summer read, and can't put it down. We asked her top tips for writing a novel.

When Susanna invited me to write a blog about novel-writing tips, I sat down and wrote a list. What this list perhaps doesn’t convey is how it has to be something you really want to do - you can’t imagine life without writing a book.

I know this sounds extreme. It has to, because the whole process of writing a novel is hard but even harder perhaps, is getting published. Inevitably you will have to face rejections from agents and then later publishers, before your novel is accepted. If you don’t manage to find a home for it, you need the strength and will to dust of the rejections and persevere.

BritMums Blogger of the Week

This week's BritMums Blogger of the Week is a blogger who is known for making a difference. She has also been around the blogosphere for quite a while now and is loved and respected by bloggers far and near. She's a shining example of what bloggers can achieve when they use their voice.

So who might this blogger be? Well, she has a rather appropriate surname, is just about the kindest blogger around, has a precious daughter who amuses us all with her quick wit and thoughts and who blogs with integrity at every step.

BritMums Good Reads

In our ongoing weekly feature, we like to give you a handful of good reads to fill those moments when you're not being an amazing housewife, mother and/or business woman. You know, those 5 minutes where your child is either out of the house or asleep and you can't find anything better to do? Here are this week's BritMums Good Reads with which to enjoy a cuppa...

• Dorky Mum shares with us her plethora of high-flying friends on Facebook with The Book I'd Like to Write: 373 Friends. What a genius idea for a book! Wonder if she can get a major airline to sponsor her?
• A Scaninavian Sojurn takes us on a journey with her children's imagination in Close Encounters of the Dirt Kind which ends up introducing us to a traditional Danish chimney sweep! Who knew?

Should mums be too busy to blog?

Well, another article has hit the web, this time from the Telegraph. Another article that criticises the online parenting forums (Mumsnet and Netmums in particular) and the plethora of "mummy bloggers" who somehow find the time to blog amid all of their other responsibilities.

The author, Jojo Moyes, manages to criticise the topics on the parenting forums and points a finger at the forums which, she says, are nothing more than an online "school gate". She adds:

But read them for long and it’s hard not to imagine your average user glued to her screen, posting tips or criticisms, while her own child sits ignored in front of CBeebies. Yes, they offer support and community, but they also soak up the one resource most mothers have in shortest supply: time.

Another mother/journalist who is weighing in on the precious topic of blogging and motherhood. What do you think? Are parenting forums and blogs detrimental to the raising of your children? Do your children suffer while you sit, glued to the screen? We're pretty sure we know what you will say but let's hear it anyway! Is Jojo Moyes right?

~Karin

Photo credit: More good foundation

Time Saving Tips Twitter Party

We held another successful Twitter Party on 12 July where we asked Mums to give us their top Time Saving Tips. We always know where to turn when we're looking for the best tips in the UK...our BritMums!

We asked for your top tips, favourite apps and Mummy's Little Helpers that make your life easier. We're all running around managing our lives, families and selves. How DO we do it? So here are some of our favourites from you, the bloggers.

Announcing The BritMums Awards -- we need you!

You’ve heard of The Brit Awards, right?

This spring, we are excited to announce the first ever BritMums Awards!

The BritMums will celebrate real mums all across the UK. The awards are open to all mums, not just bloggers, and we are depending on you to help crowdsource and develop the programme.

We are in initial discussions with ITN productions to help produce the awards, and we are planning for them to culminate in a gala event that will be lived casted for everyone to enjoy. It will be very cool!

We need your input when it comes to categories and programming. Please let us know which categories you want to see and what types of mums you’d like recognised. We are looking for bloggers to spearhead and evangelise categories, which will include lots of video, so let us know if you are interested in that too.

We want to hear all your ideas, especially for the not-so-obvious categories, like the mum who has the most balls in the air, has prevailed against unusual circumstances, or who has made the biggest difference.

So wrack your brain and let us know which type of mums you’d like to celebrate. We don’t want to miss out dads either.

Please email susanna@britmums.com with your category suggestions or leave a comment below.

Looking forward to hearing your creative suggestions.

Does blogging cramp your style?

This weekend we attended one of the highlights of our summer: Giffords Circus in the Cotswolds. I made mental notes, jotted down observations and took pictures with my iTouch. I’m kinda in love with everything about Giffords and I wanted to convey that excitement and affection with my blog post.

As a result, I was looking at an Instagram picture when the acrobat on the aerial silks fell dramatically from the top of the tent almost to the floor. I was jotting down an aperçu when the rest of the audience gasped at a gymnast’s feat. Eventually I had to put down the camera so I could enjoy the show.

This isn’t the first time I’ve missed things in pursuit of a good blog post. As a journalist I was accustomed to the trade-off between documenting something versus enjoying it. But with blogging, the idea is that the only thing you’re reporting is your own experience and perceptions. So why am I missing out?

My theory is that - like a lot of other bloggers - I can’t help responding to the jump in quality we see these days. Blogging has improved so much that it’s not enough to post just any old thing. Free-form observations, creative writing, stream of consciousness, photos that speak for themselves – these are all great formats and fodder. A good blog shouldn’t read like a newspaper; in the same way, it shouldn’t be written like you don’t care if nobody reads it.

The good news is that the quality of blogging just keeps going up. A side effect of that, at least for me, is that posting isn’t effortless. It requires forethought, planning and occasionally a bit of sacrifice.

-- Jennifer Howze (www.jenography.net)

Does blogging interfere with, interrupt or enhance your experiences? Tell us what you think.

(Picture: From Foxtongue via Flickr)

BritMums Guest Post Pairings

We're kicking off our FIRST BritMums Guest Post Matchup this week! Bloggers signed up last week to share their blogs with each other and this week they will be guest blogging on each other's blogs and expanding their blogging audience.

The only constraints that we're putting on the pairs is that they need to guest blog on each other's blogs THIS WEEK. They can blog about anything mutually agreed upon. What fun we'll be seeing in the blogosphere this week! Good luck and happy blogging!

BritMums guest post matchup

At BritMums, we like to help new bloggers and "old" to find each other, learn from each other and grow the community. Inspired by Erica at Littlemummy, we are launching the BritMums Guest Post Matchup. What are we talking about? Well, here goes...

We all know what guest blogging is, right? Well, in case you don't, it's simply sharing a post with another blogger who will then publish YOUR post on their blog. Why is this important? Well, you open yourself up to an entirely different audience, introduce yourself to new readers and potentially will draw new readers to your own blog.

What BritMums will be offering is the opportunity to RANDOMLY match you up with a fellow blogger. You simply sign up through the form below by SATURDAY 16 JULY and on Sunday we'll do a RANDOM draw matching up each blogger enrolled. On Monday (18 July) we'll post the Matchup Draw in a post here and will also notify each pairing of their match's contact details.

 

Blogger of the Week

It's that time of the week again! That time where we honour a BritMums Blogger who has done something amazingly outstanding in the week. Something to make us all sit up and take notice. Now who might it be this week?

Well, this particular blogger has been around since October of 2010. She is rather fond of motherhood, as is evident by the name of her blog. She has impressed and amazed us with her 2nd pregnancy Bump Watch progress and stunned us all with her presence at this year's CyberMummy when she was 38 weeks pregnant. She also managed to deliver a brand new baby yesterday evening after just 5 hours and with only gas & air. Who might this be?

BritMums good reads

We love to know what good reads are flying about in our blogging community so we went straight to the source on the BritMums Network! We asked you to give us some good reads to take us into the summer holidays and you gave us some outstanding ones. Have a look, grab a cuppa, sit down in a comfy chair and prepare to be entertained.

If you'd like to add one of your "good reads" to our list on the network, please visit the BritMums site to "link" up your favourite read (yours or another's).

• Typecast's "Caution: Men At Work (a.k.a. Fitting A New Radiator Almost Made My Head Explode)"
• The Mum Blog's "The karaoke song meme"
• "My whole world", by Crystal Jigsaw
• Simply Hayley: Sibling love
• The Gorgeous Girls: On raising girls
• "Later" by Country Lite
• "The no TV experiment" by WAHM-BAM
• DorkyMum's "Life with my husband who is 35 years older"
• The Frugal Family's "Worst weekend ever"
• "Getting my crafty on" by Ramblings of a Suburban Mummy
• Mommy has a Headache's "Are you sale-able in the current market?"

We'll have more good reads for you next Wednesday, so make sure you check back. Thank you to all of the bloggers who nominated their posts (or someone else's) for us to read! We love a bit of self-promotion! Keep on blogging!

~Karin

Bloggers designing time-savings apps? Vote & join our Twitter party

Three  have teamed with the BritMums blogging community to help show parents how they can get the most out of their smartphones and use the internet on the go.

It’s not often you get asked to take part in a brainstorm with ten of your friends to come up with an idea for a time-saving app. Five bloggers were asked to invite their network of parents to a series of brainstorming events from Oxford to Ipswich. We chatted about tasks that take time and how our phones could make life easier. It’s resulted in five app ideas that could help parents across the UK. The thing is, Three’s only going to develop one of the ideas so we’re battling against each other to get our app idea created.

How much social networking is too much?

This weekend everyone was talking about Google+, the internet giant's social networking raspberry at Facebook. People pleaded for invites on Twitter from those lucky enough to be let into the inner sanctum of the field beta.

The thought of building it all up again on Google makes my head spin. I've just mastered how to create a Facebook fan page, have spent hours building up friends, and keep trying to stay on top of Facebook's ever-changing privacy setting. I'm a busy working mum and all this networking stuff takes A LOT of time.

It begs the question: how much social networking is too much?

Coupled with the news a few weeks ago that Facebook numbers have dropped recently in developed countries, it makes you wonder perhaps people are opting out in favour of more niche social networking sites (and less privacy headaches??). 

Thoughts? Are you fed up with Facebook? Do you have time for Google+? Are you spending more time on more niche sites?

How much social networking is too much?

(Thanks to mtjam for the inspiration for this post)

-Susanna (A Modern Mother)