Rosie Scribble

Cybermummy - Heathrow - Tel Aviv

Excitement is growing in our little household as once again there is a rare opportunity for me to dust off my passport and familiarise myself with the challenging layout that is Heathrow Airport. Thankfully I am better prepared than last year when the issue of liquids in hand luggage was completely new to me and tight airport security was not something I had experienced before.

So in a weekend that will see me either dancing around with excitement or slumped in a corner with exhaustion, the plan is to travel from Cybermummy to Healthrow and on to Israel to take part in a Vibe Israel tour for bloggers courtesy of Kinetis, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to raise awareness of Israel as the creative energy capital of the world.

Israel is a nation known for its history, its religious heritage and biblical landmarks but also for its conflict, so I am unsure exactly what to expect but it will be an experience nonetheless. We’ll be offered a glimpse into real Israeli life and the opportunity to talk to parents, women in business and also to visit children’s centres and a kibbutz, whilst avoiding the areas where travel is not advised.

Exmoorjane is also hoping for a camel ride. Or to sell me for some camels. One of the two. It will all add to the experience. I’m looking forward to seeing a little sun and soaking up a different culture, although the chances of developing a beach body at this late stage are remotely slim, for want of a better word.

I’ll be travelling to Cybermummy with the winner of Little Dodo’s competition to find a new mascot. None of us could ever have envisaged that it would then be travelling on to the Middle East, if it gets past security that is. I’ve always said that the world of blogging is strange and unpredictable and that has once again proved to be the case.

Now I’m just hoping those Cybermummy goodie bags aren’t too heavy!

Photo credit.

Donate a Little Dodo for Charity

Today my Cybermummy sponsors and all-round nice people, Little Dodo, have launched a fundraising competition to find the store’s mascot and raise money for charity.

All ages and abilities can enter and all you need to do is make a handmade dodo and send it to the store. Do bear in mind that the winning entry will accompany me to the conference, most likely hanging around my neck, so anything that looks like a gold medallion is probably best avoided.

Here's one that owner Maddy made earlier:

For every dodo received, Little Dodo will donate £1 to charity with donations divided between  Save the Children and Hexham NCT (National Childbirth Trust).

The store’s website features a pattern that can be used and or you can design your own dodo with from fabric, card, papier-mâché, pompoms … anything you like really. Dodos will be displayed in the Little Dodo shop and featured in a 'Dodo Gallery' on the store’s website.

The winner will be chosen by store owners Maddy and Owain Bennett and will receive a goody bag worth £50. Two runners-up will receive prizes to the value of £20.

The winning design will become the store’s mascot and have its own little space in the shop and on the Little Dodo website, with the winner receiving credit. It will also be photographed during its trip with me to Cybermummy and may even indulge in a few after dinner drinks and a spot of late night dancing.

Entries can be sent to (or handed in in person if you live in the area) : Little Dodo, 23 St Mary’s Chare, Hexham, NE46 1NQ. The competition will run until June 18. The winner will be announced on June 21 and travel with me to Cybermummy on June 25.

More details are available on Little Dodo’s competition page.

Good luck!

The full press release for this competition can be found here: Little Dodo press release.

I haven't agreed to speak at a conference, have I?

It is always a little nerve-wracking walking into a room full of people, as I did last year arriving at Cybermummy two hours late thanks to forgetting London is not actually a small village that can be easily navigated.

This year, with lessons learnt, and remembering the uplifting atmosphere of last year’s event, there will be no need for any last minute nerves and stresses over what to wear. It’ll be a relaxed event, an opportunity to catch up with old* blogging friends and meet others for the first time.

No need for nerves whatsoever. It will all be absolutely fine.

But hang on.

At some point between purchasing my ticket (thanks LittleDodo) and forgetting that this will be a huge monumental event in the entire history of blogging as we know it, I have agreed to speak at the event. Thankfully not a ‘standing-up-in-front-of-400-people’ situation, but sitting on a panel in front, I hope, a significantly smaller audience.

I am sure it will be *relax, deep breath, calming thoughts, imagine them naked* absolutely fine.

I’ll be on the blogger activist panel talking about blogging and charities, and no doubt mentioning Cameroon at some point, clinging to with my adopted blogging sister Sian (aka MummyTips) and Liz Scarff from Save the Children.

It’s an afternoon session so feel free to take a very long lunch, wander out for a brief look around the shops and treat yourself to coffee and cake. I will happily provide you with a short summary of our talk later, in written format, cutting out the need for me to say a single word.

See you at Cybermummy!

*Not old as in ancient, just to clarify.

A day with Little Dodo

In the strange and slightly unpredictable world of blogging you never quite know where it will take you and who you will meet as a result. So it felt a little surreal to be packing up and heading off to Northumberland, to a place I didn’t know, to spend time with people I’d never met before.

Easy to turn down such an opportunity, as I might have done in the past, but thankfully I didn’t because it all turned out to be a little bit perfect.

Securing a sponsor for Cybermummy was exciting enough, but the fact that my sponsors have turned out to be lovely people, and now good friends, is something I could never have predicted. And it makes representing Little Dodo at Cybermummy all the more worthwhile.

I travelled via Newcastle to the ‘Very Far North’ to have dinner with Maddy and Owain from Little Dodo, to meet their two young sons and visit their shop.  This post is obviously very one sided, but it’s fair to say we really got on. It was a relief all round, I’m sure, that I didn’t have two heads and neither did they.

I thought they were great. We talked for hours during my stay and occasionally they were able to get a word in edgeways.

Their shop is a gorgeous little baby boutique in Hexham – beautifully presented with a fabulous range of stock, and run by the two of them. I like the idea of independent family-run businesses and in this case Maddy and Owain turned their gift shop into a baby shop when they became parents. They are parents supporting parents, and I’d say, they are doing a pretty good job of it.

By pure coincidence I was staying in a local bed and breakfast with a couple from Derbyshire who knew the Little Dodo shop well. In their words it is competitively priced selling a mixture of modern and traditional items and offering a high standard of service. Nothing I saw during my visit differed from that.

It’s an impressive operation, a gorgeous shop and a really lovely family. It would have been perhaps added to this post if I could have thrown in a little drama, invented a highly amusing scenario in which I discovered a little dodo costume hiding in the storeroom that they wanted me to wear at Cybermummy, or if in fact they had turned out to have bright pink hair and an unusual interest in historic re-enactments.

But not so, although I am still wondering about that little dodo costume.

Little DoDo are sponsoring me to go to the Cybermummy conference in June. They can be found online at Littledodo.co.uk. Their shop is in Hexham, Northumberland and well worth a visit. They also have their own Little Dodo blog.

Introducing my Cybermummy sponsor

After hesitating about pitching for sponsorship for Cybermummy11, I decided to take the plunge last week. A week of snowbound isolation had left me keen to meet up with my online friends again and to be part of such a significant event in the mummy blogging calendar.

Despite being a little uncertain about putting myself out there, I’m delighted I did because I now have a fabulous sponsor in the form of Little Dodo.

Little Dodo is an independent business for ‘bumps, babies and beyond’ run by Maddy and Owain Bennett, with the help and advice of their young sons Jonah and Alexander. Situated in the Northumberland market town of Hexham, the shop was born from a desire to provide useful, interesting and stylish products to an ever-growing market.

A look around their website reveals an extensive range of merchandise covering everything from bathtime to bedtime, clothing, feeding, toys, gifts and more. Already I am looking at gift ideas for my baby niece or nephew who will be born in January.

There’s also a Little Dodo blog which has contributed to Jay’s Silent Sunday and Josie’s writing workshop.

The team at Little Dodo have been a pleasure to deal with and I am thrilled to be representing an independent business. I’m really keen for Little Dodo to gain as much from this sponsorship arrangement as me, so you’ll see them mentioned here in forthcoming posts.

It was hard to contain my excitement when I discovered I would definitely be going to Cybermummy11. For those on twitter keen to know who my sponsor was, the clue came in the form of a tweet where I nearly blew our cover and made this announcement too early.

It has been a fabulous blogging year for me and one that has taken me from the luxury of the Lowry Hotel in Manchester to the mud huts of Cameroon. So securing sponsorship at this stage rounds it off perfectly.