366 #3

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Welcome to week three of the 366 photo a day project.

I know you're reaching the point where you think you've exhausted your subject material, but you haven't. The weather is grim, it's cold and bleugh outside. You think there's only so many photos of your children playing with lego that you can post, but you're wrong. This is your chance to show the changes in them throughout the year. Take it as an opportunity to do something different. Wrap up warm and get out there; go to the park, the beach, even soft-play if needs be! If you're staying indoors then make something different; do some baking, make a den, have a movie afternoon. Not every photo has to be worthy of David Bailey!

Anyone taking part is welcome to join the Project 366 Facebook group. The fabulous community building up there offer support to those taking part in this photography project, and give much blog love. We've made it a closed group so that not every Tom, Dick or Harry can see the content but if you'd like to join just click the 'ask to join group' button in the top right hand corner of the page.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on just a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
ShowOff ShowCase

Sweeping Clean! (A GTech Review & Competition)

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About a week before Christmas, when Mr. TheBoyandMe was completely and utterly sick of the sight of strands of tinsel all over the floor, he asked if we could get a swiffer. I gasped at him and told him that in no uncertain terms, we would not be getting such an antiquated, useless and unhygienic contraption, to just get the vacuum cleaner out and stop complaining! (He doesn't even do the vacuuming, so I have no idea what he's complaining about.)

My reticence at agreeing to one was based on traumatic flashbacks to my childhood in the early 1990s which involved one of these items:

My nan had one in '70s brown, and we had one in '70s blue and I hated them! They were noisy, awkward, dirty, didn't pick up the bits and, if you tipped it at a certain angle, they emptied the few bits that they had picked up all over your still dirty floor.

My husband slunk away having realised it was a no-go, and retrieved our cumbersome vaccum cleaner out of the understairs cupboard. Upon I realised the point he was making, but was determined not to back down!

Then I had an e-mail asking me if I'd like to review a cordless electric-powered floor cleaners. Curiosity sent me to the site, and I realised that the GTech SW20 was the 2012 version of what my mother had used, but with added extras. I giggled to myself at Mr. TBAM's reaction when I showed him and agreed to test it quite happily.

I did not realise just how clever this little device was going to be. The SW20 is a floor sweeper in the conventional sense, but with the added bonus of being electric and cordless. To charge the sweeper, it is placed onto the small, charging platform and left for up to five hours. From that, it gives an hour's worth of run time. That might not sound a lot, however I charged it three weeks ago and have used it every other day without recharging it once. It's designed so that you can leave it on the charging platform as it has an auto cut off device which allows you also to safely leave it on the stand to maintain full charge, however we didn't have a plug at the right height and out of the reach of The Boy.

"A conventional vacuum cleaner (2000 watt) used for 2 hours a week on a 0.30 tariff, will cost £300 over 5 years. Using a Gtech sweeper for the same period and tariff costs £7.80 and an energy saving of 55.5 KWh per year, per home."

So it's cheaper to use as well then?

As for my concerns about how unhygienic they are? Unfounded. The GTech SW20 has Germguard built into the handle and bin. Germguard action traps and kills over 99.9 of bacteria including MRSA, Salmomella, Listeria and E-Coli. It is also incredibly easy to clean; there's a pull out 'bin' which neatly collects all the dirt (and it gets up a lot) allowing for easy emptying and cleaning.

I did vacuum yesterday, I promise! And I had been wondering where that jigsaw piece had gone.

The other thing that I really like about the GTech is how easy it is to use. The extendable handle has a swivel motion when attached to the sweeper which allows for excellent manoeuvrability. It's so easy, even a two year old could use it:

At £69.95 it is slightly more expensive than the conventional carpet cleaner, but then there's nothing conventional about the GTech SW20 and I do think that with the money it saves, along with the time and effort, that it is worth it.

And thanks to the kind folk at GTech, I've got one for you to win!

Simply fill in the Rafflecopter form below:


a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was given a GTech SW20 for the purpose of this review. My opinion is honest and unbiased.

The Gallery: Eyes

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And so to this week's Gallery theme.

Which is simply: Eyes

And because the theme is simple, I'm going to choose a simple photo and let it (mostly) speak for itself. I will just say though that I see a wealth of family members in The Boy's eyes. Sometimes they are big and green-ish like his father's, sometimes they are old and blue like my father's. That was disconcerting when I was breast-feeding!

His heritage, and his future, is in his eyes everytime I look at him.

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Now click on the button to see the other entries

Listography: Top Five Tips For Bloggers

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The fabulous KateTakes5 has come up with a cracking theme this week for her listography!

1. Use the same name on your blog as all your social media platforms.

Building up an identity is essential to helping people remember you easily. I follow several people on twitter who use a completely unrelated nickname to that of their blog, and then have a Facebook account that uses their real name. It's really difficult to remember all three, especially if they have obscure spellings. If you want people to find you easily then use the same name for all platforms, make it easy to spell, different to others (there's a lot of 'mummy' names out there) and preferably under ten characters long (saves space on twitter for conversation within 140 characters). And yes I know my name is eleven characters long, but there you go! Do as I say, not as I do.

2. If you want comments, make it easy for your readers.

Don't use word verification like captcha, etc. It is a big, fat inconvenience for your readers. If you are on blogspot, they'll probably give up halfway through because it is a ridiculous process to comment: write comment, fill in details, press publish, enter word verification, press submit, press publish again. It's not encouraging is it? Install Disqus and your readers will love you forever. If you don't have word verification and don't want to use Disqus, then enable the name/url option for commenting, self-hosted blog-owners will appreciate the effort.

And while we're discussing commenting; if you want comments, then you need to comment on other blogs. It's a two-way street!

3. Consider going self-hosted for more freedom

This depends entirely upon your reason for blogging, and the range of subjects that you blog about. I started blogging on 5th December 2010 and within a month had started the 365 photography project. I quickly realised that I wanted the posts on a separate page to my written content, but wordpress.com doesn't allow for separate posts to be made to any page other than the home-page. It was pointed out to me that by photograph 150, it was going to be difficult to find the comment box, and to know which photo each comment related to. By mid-January 2011, I'd transferred to wordpress.org which is self-hosted. It allows me to set up categories/pages and post to them separately, with individual posts and individual comment boxes per post. I hope it's easier for my readers, because it certainly is for me!

4. Subject matters!

Ha, like the pun? Please don't make me explain it to you!

In all seriousness, your blog is for you, yes. However, I strongly disagree with anyone who says that they only blog for themselves, and have had several discussions about this. If the only person that you wanted to read it was yourself, then why not keep a diary? Or make your blog password protected if just for family? The minute you press publish, then you are opening your thoughts up for anyone in the world to read. To think otherwise is naive (meant without offense).

Therefore, think really carefully about what you put on your blog. If you don't want someone to find you, blog anonymously. If you don't want to be open to criticism, then don't post controversial content. If you want your child to still talk to you when he or she is twenty, then don't post that photo of them naked in the garden. If you don't want your child to be the subject of ridicule in the playground, then don't divulge about his problems wetting the bed. If you don't want your in-laws to know about something going on in your life, then don't press publish.

5. Engage with your readers

Use twitter and become a part of the blogging community. I was using twitter before I started blogging, and I thoroughly blame MammyWoo and The Moiderer for getting me into blogging in the first place. They are two of the first 'real' people that I started following, apart from my husband. If you install a 'Follow me on twitter' button in the sidebar of your blog, then it will make it a damn sight easier for people to know who you are and 'talk' to you in 'real' life.

Another way of engaging is to install a plugin which enables your comment replies to be e-mailed directly to your readers. I saw GeekMummy had this and copied her. I've been told that it was a pleasant surprise to have my reply e-mailed across, and it opens up a dialogue and will encourage return visits.

And because it's my blog and I can, I've done another one!

6. Enjoy it!

It's a competitive world out there, full of stats and rankings. It's incredibly easy to get upset if you've found that you've dropped in the rankings, or haven't been invited to a major PR event in London that the world and his wife is going to, but don't. In all reality, could you make it to London for an event that lasted only an hour? Would you want to? Will the drop in rankings stop you from blogging? When you rise, someone else falls and think how that makes them feel. When I climbed 200 places in the Tots100 and made it into the actual 100, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed. Until I found out that one of my real-life friends had fallen 150 places. Swings and roundabouts see?

Do you have any more to add to the list?

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