My Little Swedish Adventure: Part 2

Let us begin with a tip. Do not think you can wing not charging your phone before a long journey. Such things cannot be, um, wung.

It's 5am and I'm sitting in a little cafe in Gatwick, finally charging my phone and filling up with a delicious breakfast. I've slept maybe 2 hours in total, sharing a bench with a snoring Spaniard. Happily I made friends with a Norwegian lady and got to practice my Norwegian!

Now it's time to wait for my plane. And perhaps a teeny bit more shopping!

Oh! Last night we drove along a beautiful harbour which was sparkling in the most perfect sunset. I'll see if i can upload pictures here :)

My Little Swedish Adventure: Part 1

Can you believe how hot our little country is, fellow Brits?

Part 1 of my overnight journey to Sweden sees me melting on the coach as we crawl down the motorway.

Three things are making me smile:

1. My business cards arrived, just in the nick (the nikki) of time!

2. It's a beautiful, sunny evening,

3. The bus driver has cranked up the air-con: a gesture I could, quite frankly, kiss him for!

How are you all this evening, my sweaty darlings? I'm blogging from my phone so apologies for the format. Also, it seems i'm not appearing in your feeds again, so am possibly talking to myself. Sad face.

Summer Days

Good evening my dears, how was your Monday? I hope you didn't all have to crawl back into yucky warm offices today when it was so beautiful and sunny outside! 

England was very hot and sunny this weekend. I was home alone for much of it and spent many hours out in the sunshine, eating little treats and reading What Katy Did. Don't you just love quaint, oldish literature? 

Just perfect. 

Tomorrow night I'm going to the airport. I fly to Sweden early on Wednesday morning so I have to have a little sleepover there until I can check in at 4am. It's terribly exciting to spend the night with happy people waiting for their holidays. I hope I will be able to update you on my little adventure as I did before! I most certainly will be blogging from Sweden! 

Have a wonderful week everybody! If you're not gobbling up some nice, cool ice cream then go get some right now! 

the little nordic cabin

x

Tea Party for One

Having recently moved out of a shared flat, I'm really enjoying some time on my own. Sometimes it's nice to take a book out into the sunshine and enjoy some peace and quiet. Reading is good for the soul, after all, and it's so important to treat ourselves once in a while. 

Why not find yourself a beautiful place to take a peaceful walk? I love walking in the woods and through fields of wild flowers. 

Time to settle down with some treats! It doesn't get more British than tea and fruitcake! Can you hear the birds chirping? Does the grass feel funny, tickling your toes?

Watch out for these sneaky ones! They like to steal bits of cake when you're not looking!

Do you enjoy spending time on your own? Have you picked your summer reads? I'm currently reading The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George. I highly recommend it if you enjoy historic novels.

the little nordic cabin

x

@nordiccabin

help yourself to my pics, just be sure to link back to me :)

A Perfect Weekend

Clockwise from top-left:

1. My baby brother blowing out his candles on his 8th birthday last Friday. Doesn't time fly! I remember holding him moments after he was born and kissing his tiny, wrinkled face!

2. The beautiful sky that I spied out of the window of my coach to London. 

3. Drinks with friends at the Fullham Wine Rooms.

4. The wine came from these vending machines. You put a prepaid card and selected your wine. Neat, right?

1. Celebrating my results and my best friend's birthday with healthy snacks and champagne!

2. Bryony and I. 

3. A wonderful evening wine-tasting and chatting. 

4. Zara-sale! I love these bright trousers and of course, how could I resist a snuggly jumper?!

One final picture...

Smile! It was Bryony's birthday. We've been friends since we were 15 and she was one of the lovely girls who helped me through my difficult times. It was so lovely to spend the weekend with her, especially now that I've been feeling brighter ♥ She's an angel! Thank you and happy birthday, beautiful ☆

How was your weekend, my dears? Did you do anything special? HAPPY CANADA DAY to my Canadian readers and to all of you, have a wonderful week ahead!

the little nordic cabin 

x

Coming soon...

I'm on my way. I'll be back here shortly with a whole load of new posts for you guys. I'm so sorry for my absence, I'm going to follow the advice from the Cosmopolitan event I went to (see post below) and try to be open and honest with you about why I've been so flakey with my blog recently. I hope you will understand. 

I hope I can still find all my wonderful friends here. In the meantime, does anyone have any advice on dealing with spam comments? It seems 'anonymous' has been a very busy bee posting all kinds of rubbish all over my blog! 

Miss you so much, my dear readers ♡ 

the little nordic cabin

x

Blogging Tips from the Cosmopolitan Superblogger Masterclass

Two nights ago I attended this amazing event. I had never met any bloggers in real life before, so it was wonderful to meet like-minded people! Since I've been away from social media for a little while, I wasn't sure if any of you guys were going but I kept my beady eye out anyway! Let me know if you were there, it would be fun to know that we were under the same roof! 

The event began with a glass of champagne and general chatter with lots of friendly people. I soon learnt that business cards are a must for these kinds of gatherings, I felt very unprepared in comparison to some ladies. I ended up making my own business cards, not quite as professional looking as some peoples'! 

After chatting with the other guests for a little while, we found our seats (and amazing goodie-bags!) and sat down ready to hear all about the world of blogging from an amazing panel of inspiring people! 

Louise Court, Cosmopolitan's Editor, chaired the evening, asking questions to the panel. In my opinion, the most helpful and informative part of the evening was when she asked each of the panelists to give one 'do' and one 'don't' when it comes to writing a blog. These do's and don'ts are particularly helpful for those that would like to turn their blogs into a business. Here is what these incredible people had to say:

Dominic Smales, founder of Gleam Digital advised us to be tenatious and to not give up, something that spoke straight to my heart after my recent absence. I've been rather nervous about coming back to blogging, so he really inspired me to keep going. 

Vicki Fogwill, social-media manager for Next said do think about the brands that you can work with. Picking them specifically to suit the angle of your blog means that you will have much more to offer and, of course, more to gain. However, don't send bland emails just asking for work. It's essential to know the brands that you want to work with, that you have something that you can write about in terms of products. Sending out emails to any company you can think of won't help you in the long run. 

Andreas Pouros who is the COO of Greenlight Digital couldn't stress enough the importance of honesty. He reiterated this later, when I (very bravely - I'm terrified of talking in front of people!) asked how to go about regaining the trust of my dear readers, after abandoning you all for so long! He told me that honesty is the best policy, to open up to you guys and let you know why I've been away. I'm planning a post for this in the near future. Actually, it's quite a difficult topic for me to write about, but I'd like to be honest with you and let you know why I have such a tendency to write so sporadically at times! As for his 'don't', don't assume that people are interested in what you write. If you want to gain a wider readership then it's useful to use the Google key-word search. Think about three things you'd like to write about, then check the stats using a key-word search and see which of the three has been most searched over the past month. This will boost your 'search-factor' and increase your traffic, whilst helping you to find readers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. 

Kat Williams from Rocknrollbride.com advised us to value our worth, both commercially and emotionally. She told us not to be afraid of thinking with a business brain. She said that Brits are often shy when it comes to discussing money, something that I believe to be very true. Kat told us that it's ok to think business and that we shouldn't be shy of talking about money. 

Emily Johnston, founder of Fashionfoiegras.com explained the importance of social media. She said do use social media as far as possible to put yourself on the radar and organically gain more readers. She told us that social media is very good if you want to work with brands and that if you write a post about a product or a company, you should tag them in it as they do very often check these posts out. Another excellent 'don't' for me was don't get frustrated. Blogging is not always a quick process so stick with it, you just have to keep going. This is so true in my case because I get so discouraged when I go through a period of having low readership, despite working hard on my posts. However, these things happen. We mustn't give up. 

Finally, two bonus pieces of advice: Don't misbehave on twitter! Nobody likes a ranter, a complainer or a creator of twitter storms! Secondly, try not to just sit at your computer, churning out post after post. This is the fastest route to writer's block. Instead, go outside, get some air, find inspiration and look for your stories. Keep a fresh and open mind and let the creativity come to you! 

I hope you found this helpful my dears, I definitely learnt a lot from the evening and met some very lovely people who I hope to keep in contact with. I'm off to delve through my goodie-bag, you know how I love a freebie ;)

the little nordic cabin

x

@nordiccabin

PS: Don't forget to enter my giveaway!! I'm giving away some beautiful little handmade hair-clips. The giveaway ends on the 21st May and a winner will be picked at random :)