OMG Huge Thankyou’s for the MAD Blog Awards and a few less tears!

I have HUGE thank you’s for you guys, because you put fingers on the keys and voted for me for the MAD Blog awards ‘Small business category’, and even better I actually WON!!!!

I’ve got to write this post, because my acceptance speech consisted of slightly muffled ‘sob’ … ‘thank you’ .. ‘sob’ .. ‘OMG’ .. ‘lip wobble’ …. ‘this is so important to me’ …. yep, I did one of those ‘oscars speeches’, nothing like the planned face I’d videoed!  I’m very much hoping that the organiser Sally Whittle (better known as ‘overlord’) does not publish the real video acceptance speach!

First some stats, because I’m a bit of a geek and love a stat.  Plus some people (like the guy who commented on my FB page) might think ‘hmmpf a few mummy bloggers, whats that all about?’.

• Mummy (and Daddy) blogs are the new must have thing for PR companies to use to review/advertise their products.  We are a little behind the USA, but it’s becoming a real phenomenon.
• People tend to read/write them to share experiences of being a parent, review products, and be a lot more interesting that the news (they are also not all about being a parent, there are tonnes of subjects covered).
• Many are now getting regular writing jobs or writing books (like mine ‘Six steps to a sparkling you and enjoying being a Mum‘, due out on the Kindle at the end of Oct, plug, plug)
• There were 700 blogs nominated for 14 different categories
• There were 50,000 votes of nominations
• 750 people watched the live blog at home and thousands watched it on twitter
• There were 1500 tweets on the night reaching 360,000 people and generating 2m impressions

So, the thank you’s ….

Thank you so much for taking the time to vote: I still get tears in my eyes when I look at the award or tell people about it.  All the awards before hand seemed to be going to ‘big name’ blogs, so I had totally assumed that I had no chance, and was jokingly hiding at the back with the rest of the Small Business Nominees who had a really good ability to down glasses of wine.

Thank you to my family, clients, and friends for inspiring the ideas for the blogs: I love to write and you are a constant source of ideas (I have over 100 draft posts!).

Thank you to TK Maxx for my gorgeous princess dress (official photos to follow later in the week) plus photos of the other girls who I thought looked lovely.

Thank you to Katie from K and S Jewels who leant me the beautiful Stella and Dot jewellery that sparkled on my ears, neck, fluffy coat and wrist.  (official photos to follow).

Thank you to Sally and the team for organising a fab night out; which involved a lot of extremely excited Mummy Bloggers (and 3 daddy bloggers, as unusually there were very few nominations for Dads this year), great music, loads of applause, lots of music, and the amazing Bangs And A Bun who managed to keep us all in order and be the main presenter of the night.

Thank you to Parent dish and Talk Talk (sponsors of my award and providers of the location) for backing the event

Thank you to Little Dimples who had to come with me on the night, and stunningly slept all the way through the awards.  When she gave me this hug, it so felt like she knew what had been going on and that I had won (thank you to whoever took the photo too; Lindy I assume it was you?).

Thank you to the lovely Betty (irish granny I found in Tescoes) who looked after Little Dimples upstairs so I could have a little freedom (I’ve promised lots of Mums at the blog to tell you the story behind my discovery of Betty), who burst into floods of tears when she found out I had won, and who appears to be my lucky mascot when it comes to getting on a train with 1 minute to spare.

Thank you to the other Small Business guys for not booing or tripping me up as we had previously discussed when we assumed that Baby budgeting was bound to win (Little Stuff, All about the boys, Queen of Easy Green); only joking Becky, thank you for all your advice, I’m so going for the Kindle publishing now and not worrying about other options!

Thank you for all the lovely chats with the mummy bloggers that I’d always wanted to meet in person: Violet Posy (Liz Grayson who designed and moved my blog to self-hosted), RedTedArt (my fave crafting blog, who was thoroughly lovely in person), Carol (for all her tips), Liska from New mum online, Marylin from softhistle and a tonne more!