Four

Buttercup Days is four years old today. It's changed quite a bit over those years and good things have come from it. When I typed my first blog post I had no idea what my goal with it was: I still don't really. I started it while at home pretty much full-time with my then one year old son and five year old daughter. The blog served as a creative output in those stay-at-home days. Blog posts tended to be family centred. It was about being a mother to two young children, while also looking back at my own childhood. It documented those tiny but significant milestone and occasions that make up life. Food was always part of it and recipe posts were a fairly regular thing back then.

Every now and then, I have to stop and see where I am going with this blog. With both of the children very much settled into school life, I work those school hours 5 days a week. There's my daily task list for Seen and my Shopping Editor role at The Simple Things to fill the hours. The blog gets squeezed in as and when time allows, which isn't nearly as often as I would like, which can be frustrating. If only I had thought of doing this before having kids, back in the day when I had something called 'spare time'.

With the vast majority of my posts being recipes that I make, style and shoot myself, I couldn't have chosen a more time consuming blog to write. To keep a blog going it has to be about a subject you are passionate about, that much I've learnt. My passion extends further than just the food itself and I plan to share that with you in the form of content that won't require me to cook up a storm in the kitchen in order to achieve a blog post. I still want the recipes to be very much the core of the blog; these new elements I hope will support and compliment the recipes.

Over the coming weeks I will be introducing a few new elements to the blog as it enters its fifth year.  I will be posting about inspiring cooking and eating spaces, beautiful kitchenalia and simple ideas and thoughts on the act of cooking, sharing and connecting over food.

No matter how I write up and plan my posts in orderly subjects, there will still be a few random posts (probably children related) that will pop up. I've got to keep it real, as they say.

To all my family and friends, the people I've met through Buttercup Days, and those who may have just stubbled across this post today - thank you so much for your support. It means the world.

A Sneak Peek of What's To Come

I hadn't planned to say anything until everything was in its proper place (these things always take longer than expected), but I can't wait any longer - I'm going to let you in on what I've been up to recently with Buttercup days.

Buttercup days will start to subtly change its focus becoming more refined in its content. Specialising in food is the most natural (and obvious) path for it to take. More often than not my posts are food related and my growing portfolio of freelance writing has also channelled itself into food. The over all identity and familiarities of the blog will remain and there will still be a smattering of ad-hoc posts that sit comfortably with the elements of Buttercup days that focus on family, occasion and nostalgia. The changes in content will be delicate, and possibly had you not read this post, you would be non the wiser. However, what I hope you will notice within the next month or so is the new look that Buttercup days will be donning. There will be a brand new logo and an altogether cleaner look which will allow the images to stand out proud.

Imagery is the other area of the blog that I am currently tackling. Until now I took images using either my phone or a rather dated camera that we used for holiday snaps. Both options, it is fair to say, had their limitations. So, I bit the bullet and bought myself a 'proper' professional camera on Ebay and recently undertook a crash course in food photography with the talented Brighton photographer Emma Lucy, who has shot some of my work in the past for magazines. I am now just practising at every given opportunity and honing any underlying photography skills I may have hidden somewhere. It will no doubt be a work-in-progress. The images on this post are from that first shoot. I'd like to say a huge thank you to both Emma for setting me on my way and to Keep It Vintage for the loan of all the lovely props.

P.S. I will be running the photographed recipes over the coming weeks: pineapple upside down cake with honey & pistachios | rhubarb french toast | fig & goats cheese salad.

A Year Ago Today

 Image: Stardaffs Photos

 

It was exactly a year ago today that I wrote my first Buttercup Days blog post. I'm quite amazed that I'm still writing them a year on. It's true that I've never been short of something to say.

When I started writing the blog I was a full-time stay-at-home mum. Yes, I'd work some evenings as you do when you have your own business; you never switch off completely but essentially the main part of my day was spent at home. I love being mum, it suits me down to the ground, but I like to have a creative output of sorts and that is what this blog provided for me back then.

Now, I'm busier than ever doing everything I did a year ago, but also working three part-time work shifts into the week. However, after a year of writing, recording and sharing it would be hard to just stop. I still have more to say. 

It's been a rather organic process. I never set out with a particularly clear idea of what I was going to do, let alone achieve. But scrolling back through the year I've recorded, I think that it  certainly gives a fairly accurate insight into life right now. I try to make my writings honest and to some extent varied. One thing I like about the blog is how it's become a record of the kids year too. I've always been rubbish at keeping photo albums so its a rather nice bi-product of writing a blog of this nature.

I’m no writer and certainly no photographer for that matter. So often much of what I write is done in done very quickly with posts just churned out whilst eating my lunch or having a cup of tea before the school run. The first draft is the final draft. I've had to except that I haven't the time to be a perfectionist when it come to blogging. But whatever I am waffling on about, I'm getting readers and that is just lovely. Over the last year I've had 6,476 hits and I've written 117 posts. It's not huge in the blogging world I know, but I'm quite pleased all the same.

So whatever the reason that drives you to drop by Buttercup Days; the family stuff; the recipes; the craft projects; the tunes or the occasional rants and moans, I'd like to thank you. It’s been a really enjoyable year.