I’m starting the year with a resolution to continue supporting the good works that bloggers can do by becoming part of the Mom Bloggers for Social Good with 400 founding blogging Mums.  I know I am in great company and hope that we can make some noise in 2012 for all these good causes.

Mom Bloggers for Social Good is a global coalition of mum bloggers who currently span eleven countries – United States, Canada, UK, India, Spain, Nigeria, Singapore, Netherlands, Malaysia, Jamaica, and the Philippines  – who care about spreading the good news about the amazing work non-profit organizations and NGOs are doing around the world.

When the campaign partners need to reach the masses about new initiatives, advocacy campaigns, or fundraising efforts we will work collectively to spread the word through our social media and blogging platforms to spread the word.

Here’s where you can follow the campaigns in social media:

If I don’t see you there, please follow the hashtag to join the conversation.

When: 17 September 2011

Where: Save the Children, St Johns Lane, London, EC1M 4AR

Time: 9.30am for tea and croissants, 10am start, 4pm finish.

Children welcome

Save the Children’s blogging conference is for all bloggers and vloggers. It’s going to be a fun packed and informative day with sessions from leading bloggers, prominent You Tubers and special guests.

Whether you’re a You Tuber, a parenting blogger, food, politics blogger or travel blogger we’d love to see you. We’re putting together a day packed with brilliant workshop sessions for all levels of experience.

Join our campaign

Come and spend the day with your blogging friends, learn new skills, meet Save the Children’s healthworker heros and join our healthworker campaign.

Health workers are critical to saving lives: they are the single most important element of any health service. Without them, no vaccine can be administered, no life-saving drugs prescribed, no family planning advice provided and no woman can be given expert care during childbirth.

We’ll be providing lunch too. Workshop details below.

Register now using the sign-up form to the right of this page.

9.30am: Arrive for tea and croissants

10am : Welcome and introduction

10.10 :  Amanda Mealing, actor and Save the Children Ambassador, talks about her experience visiting our work in Sierra Leone and hosts our live video chat with a healthworker in the field.

11.00 :#Pass it on:

Hear from our three mums who followed the journey of a vaccine from a warehouse in Maputo, Mozambique to a rural clinic. Together we reached just under 30 million on Twitter, had over 150,000 You Tube views, had hundreds of bloggers up and down the country blogging, we met politicians and encouraged world leaders to pledge enough money to pay for vaccines. With Chris Mosler, Tracey Cheetham, Lindsay Atkin and Liz Scarff

11.30:Tea break – sponsored by Netmums

12.00: First workshop sessions:

1) Blogging 101: Everything you need to know about blogging but were afraid to ask

If you are new to blogging or want to know how to set up your blog from scratch and how you can blog to support Save the Children then this session is for you. This roundtable discussion will be led by our expert bloggers.

• Chris Mosler, http://christinemosler.wordpress.com
• Nickie O’Hara,  www.iamtypecast.com
• Kate Gunn – representing Netmums,  http://katetakes5.blogspot.com
• Jennifer Howze -  http://www.britmums.com, www.jenography.net
• Elinor Shields, Mumsnet - http://www.mumsnet.com/
• Sarah Blakemore, Save the Children

2) Get Vlogging: Inspirational stories of how to use YouTube for social good

This roundtable discussion will enable you to get top tips on vlogging from the experts and get inspired as to how you can use your skills to support Save the Children. Our speakers:

• Lindsay Atkin, http://www.youtube.com/user/liliesarelike
• Myles Dyer,  http://www.youtube.com/user/Blade376
• Kristina Horner,  http://www.youtube.com/user/italktosnakes
• Liz Scarff, Save the Children

13:00:  Lunch break: we will be providing lunch.

14:00:  Second workshop sessions:

1) Taking your blog to the next level

Roundtable discussion: this session is designed for those who have been blogging for a while. Learn how to build a loyal following, create quality content and build an audience around a particular niche topic. Our speakers:

• Eva Keogan - www.nixdminx.com
• Sally Whittle - www.tots100.co.uk , www.the-mads.com ,www.whosthemummy.co.uk
• Maggy Woodley - www.redtedart.com
• Josie George - www.sleepisfortheweak.org.uk
• Tracey Cheetham - www.tchee.co.uk
• Saira O’Mallie – Save the Children

2) From floods to famine: multimedia storytelling using photography and film

This practical film session is hosted by Rachel Palmer our multimedia expert. Rachel will give a fascinating behind the scenes insight into both our life-saving work and her job producing and commissioning photography in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

From Niger to Somalia Rachel’s job is to commission and shoot incredible photographs that we can use to bring the world’s attention to events like a forgotten famine or under-reported natural disaster. This session will be practical and you will come away armed with top tips on how to film content for your blog, how to shoot for your edit and what makes a good visual story.

• Hosted by: Rachel Palmer, Save the Children

15:00: Gareth Owen: When disaster strikes- dispatches from East Africa

Gareth is our Director of Emergencies, when a humanitarian disaster strikes Gareth is the first to know. But how do we do what we do? Gareth will be focusing on the current crisis in East Africa.

15:55:Closing statement and thanks.

16:00:Finish.

A-lister Gywneth Paltrow has established her llifestyle and family blog/newsletter Goop and a year or so on, there’s still lots of negative backlash. I’m not exactly sure why – it’s a pretty, well designed, considered, and sometimes wistful, statement of who she is; yet it’s had a pasting. It’s more genuine than, say, the lifestyle pages of Vogue. At least when I read her thoughts on London, I don’t feel I’m being sold something, which I so often do when I ready glossy mags fattened by advertising. I love what she does, and by the way, if you haven’t seen Glee, you have to watch her in this.

Celebrity Mommy bloggers aside, Dooce is the leading US Mom blogger, and a great success story to boot. One of my favourite blogs, Gawker, has run a piece on the amount of attention she receives which you can read here. There’s a bit of ‘So what?’ about it when I read it – and I wonder why shouldn’t she get media coverage if she’s a trailblazer, and why is a blog bashing another blog? Well, there are no rules in the blogosphere which makes it such an interesting and frustrating place to be.

Sadly, blog-on-blog bashing is becoming an all too familiar story. I don’t do it myself because I have neither the time nor the inclination, but it’s tough to be on the receiving end one way or another. It’s a very weird feeling to read a blog post written about something you do, or are doing, and the comment trail that follows. It’s then that you have to take on board that blogs are to some degree public property once they are put out in the web at large (and don’t ever forget it, for good or bad). It’s a sympton of the cyber conversation culture that love and snarkiness co-exist – free speech resonates with others and comments can take as little time as a text message to write and post.

But all hope is not lost. Dooce is owned by Heather Armstrong and if you’re into blogging and you can’t fail to have heard of her, she has very resourcefully turned snarking on its head and her army of dissenters into a new art form. It makes me laugh out loud that she has developed a huge ad revenue stream from her ‘hate mail’ by publishing it on an area of her blog for people to read – it turned out to be hugely popular, obviously people love to read a good snark if it’s at someone else’s expense – if only I could the same from spam comments!

And who are the other US Mommy bloggers worth checking out? I’ve just got two super special reads to recommend, and both of them have made me cry with laughter and they also are shit hot writers, so well worth taking a few quiet moments to read and enjoy the stillness (by that I mean after the kids have gone to bed!):

Nashville, Tennessee based Suburban Turmoil is a favourite of mine which I have definitely not had enough time to read of late. While it’s a window on another world it airs the common themes of modern life with a large dose of humour

MTFF is another one, she’s a Brit with a massively creative life, and her blog is choc full of beautifully written prose

And if you don’t know what snarking is, it is by definition:

a) A strange creature created by Lewis Caroll

b) A sarcastic, caustic comment or interaction in cyberspace

The theme of these posts is what has really happened, and this little adventure was the one that made the blogosphere a real place with real people.

Contrary to the generaly rule; that bloggers are a sad and lonely nerds, I’ve made a lot friends through blogging and so have loads of us who snatch the odd hour or two to update our blogs. We’re the people that never shut up! Plus, we’re not the usual run of the mill Mums are we? I’m not sure about you but I’m mildly eccentric, quirky and busy as hell so not only do I keep strange hours, I’m out of the loop on competitive-school-gate-mum-syndrome – which means social media suits me just fine and dandy.

Not long after starting out, I discovered the British Mummy Bloggers social network on Ning and signed up.

To me, it was a bit like walking on stage naked, staring into the spotlights and waiting for the howls of laughter. (I’m a sensitive soul really)

It’s not fun being the newbie is it? There’s nothing worse than feeling you are encroaching on a space you have no right to be in – I was quite apprehensive and worried that maybe it would be a negative experience and that I’d be snubbed.

Imagining if I posted anything ‘uncool’ that I would be kicked into touch, I posted a tentative ‘Hello’.

And.

I was pleasantly surprised.
The welcome was a warm and friendly one.

There were quite a few people saying ‘Hello’ back and offering advice on blogging, family, fun in fact anything. I had lots of help when I wanted to move from wordpress to a hosted environment and the gorgeous Violet Posy gave me a blog make over – which I still sport to this day.

Next up was an interesting development, an invitation to meet up for coffee with the BMB ladies…how intriguing, who were these people hiding behind avatars and blogger handles? My curiosity got the better for me and I accepted.

Just one look in the mirror told me I’d become quite the unemployed-slovenly-singlemum-housewife – I had to scrub up…meet real people. I was scared.

I was meeting Potty and A Modern Mother at Starbucks in Paddington. It all seemed very 2.0 and urban, just my thing in fact.

I scuttled in a panic walked into the coffee shop. Nervous as hell and looking for prams. I spotted two ladies and took a chance.

‘Hello, I’m Nixdminx – are you…er, ummm??’

My words hung in the air, my throat dried, I started to feel a bit stupid – I didn’t know their real names!

‘Hi I’m A Modern Mother’ said the lovely Susanna, she was friendly and warm.
‘And Potty’ beamed the other BMBer.

Gulp.
Phew.
It’s them.
Thank God for that!
I liked them both immediately.

We didn’t have long and we chatted over coffees. It was a very brief meeting, but I’m so glad I went.

Behind these blogger handles were three women, real people, real lives. Things were getting interesting, and a bit more real.

At the next get together at the Rainforest Cafe there were loads of us including kids and this week there will be even more as the guest list now stands at 100 – that’s astounding.

Thanks again to Susanna for setting this up – I hope this reaps great rewards for you in the future but I know it has already x

And so, so glad to escape the glass towers where I had worked. Once a bustling enterprise, it was haunted by glum, grey, despondent suits wailing over share prices and school fees. Ironically they had kept their jobs but with a world gone so crazy in the throes of the credit crunch this oxymoron was quite the norm.
They lived in fear.
I was way past that stage.

Okay – I’m glossing over the bad stuff – there were bills to worry about, friends and family frantic about me not working, self doubt etc etc. but I could not allow this to consume me.

And I have to fess up to luxuriating in all this new found free time and being a full time Mum. All the same, I still kept a semblance of busy-ness to give myself a purpose. I wrote. A lot. For some reason, I felt that this would really help me out of this situation and lead somewhere, exactly where, I wasn’t sure but for the time being, it seemed 150% right.

Dropping Miniminx off to school became a leisurely past time rather than a rabid rush. Walking along the river on the way home, I’d start thinking of what to write. Life as a ‘no hoper’ had such rich pickings, and while it filled the yawning gap left by a career on hold, there was never any shortage of ideas.

Back in the tedious mind-numbing and utterly depressing world of jobhunting the jobs evaporated in front of my eyes. I spent hours trawling the web, calling people, meeting headhunters, writing my CV, following up, rewriting my CV, and uploading my CV to sites. But there was nothing out there for me or anyone else.

And then it was February.

I started to contribute to other blogs; London Mums, Mummo, Mumsrock and was a Mychild top blogger- it was really great fun, and I suppose I was of the moment; a vocal and blogging credit crunch casualty but that was just a sideshow. I’m a Mum, with a daughter, and I was able to share that with other Mums and for the first time felt I was able to discuss Motherhood and feel the empathy.

Then, I found out about a Carnival. I wasn’t quite sure what a Carnival really was – I’m an ex Notting Hill girl so to me it means one thing – a three day bender and a week to recover. But I soon learned it was much more civilised and a round up of blog posts with links to the stories and name checks. This one was to appear on AlphaMummy – the top site for Mums. I was in awe.

I submitted an article.

Well, actually I didn’t, I drafted the email.
Then had a coffee and thought it over.

‘Would it be such a good idea?’ I asked myself. ‘What if anyone reads it?’

I left the email in draft and felt a bit flustered.

‘What have you got to lose?’ I said to myself. ‘Hmmm, um, nothing?’

I pressed send.

Then I dashed upstairs and hid under my bedcovers. I’m serious, I did!

‘What the bloody hell have I done?’ I was cringing.

Gawping at myself in the mirror before heading out the door to pick Miniminx up from school, I splashed my face with coldwater and told myself;

‘Get a grip, it won’t even make it anyway – who’d be interested in me?’

And when I checked AlphaMummy a few days later, it was on there…I had made my first carnival!

It meant a lot and inspired me to keep on going.
For all my bluster, I’d still taken quite a knock and this helped me rise above it.

I began to love carnivals and continued submitting to them, even creating my own Credit Crunchista Carnivale which proved to be quite possibly a bit too tongue in cheek popular (thankfully!).

That’s when I started to really enjoy the whole thing with a passion.

And come to think of it, I never actually stopped working really, did I?

More to follow…

Incredibly, this story I am writing is post number 149 which means over the last year I’ve probably written around 75,000 words here. That combined with the other writing on sites and blogs I do probably amounts to around 120,00 words – no mean feat when you look at it. But it’s my no means been a difficult challenge, it’s been a total blast and has helped me get to grips with more than just how to click ‘publish’.

So back to where it all began. Facing a particularly difficult situation; no job come January, a Christmas without my daughter and and the end of my work contract wind down, the months appeared before me like an abyss. It was hard not to feel alienated and a social outcast. Even if I wasn’t one, I felt it. It was no suprise I succumbed to an awful attack of the flu. That Friday, the fever was so bad that I was unable to leave the house for three days, and fortunately Miniminx was away for the weekend.

With no choice but to live online while snivelling and bedridden, I just about managed to survive on what was in the house, ordered some online supplies and kept writing. Just a blog post each day, but it was something.

At the end of day three with the tissue box empty and the lemsip packets crumpled, there was a knock on the door and a groaning ghostlike-heap greeted the delivery man. Yes, it was me, and it was at that point I had a revelation.

Nothing was going to be the same again – I’d found a new tool for survival and wasn’t going to give it up.

Blogging might be easy, but getting started is the hardest part. I determined to say anonymous. And by blog name summed up the sense of futility at that time. My high hopes had been nixed and my minxy life crushed. Clown that I am, I set about writing with humour not despair, it took me a while to get it right and it certainly lifted the dark clouds and put the light back behind my eyes.

There is something really unnerving about putting a story out there in this new cyber world they call ‘the cloud’. I imagined my blog posts would be like raindrops falling from this cloud and evaporate before even hitting the ground and, in reality, no one would ever read it.

But they did and hey ho, I got a visitor or two, and thought

‘Oh my god, I wrote a blog post and someone bloody ready it – shit!’

….and then I got a comment, and thought

‘Um, so what happens next? This is quite scary. Who are these people, they have funny bloggy names.’

I had a look around and found other bloggers. Mummies. With beautiful blogs, stickered with awards. I had discovered the Mumosphere, or rather, it has discovered me.

‘Ahem.’ I thought. ‘Well goodness me. I see I’m not alone here.’

I replied to comments, it was like making invisible friends with lovely people. It was a miracle. I was no longer alone at my laptop.

‘Wow. Wahaaay.’

I had a new job.

I had become the accidental Mummy blogger.

Here’s how I survived this week without even a squeak or a tear…but terms and conditions have been applied!

‘Oh no Mummy, not the dentist.’
I can only say that visits to the dentist have been more like an encounter between the wide mouthed frog and the Alligator. Patently pointless. No amount of nagging or removal of television rights has altered this, but patience and gentle persuasion actually has. It’s taken four visits for my daughter to be able to trust this dentist. The last one physically pulled out a baby tooth a couple of years ago with his bare hands and charged us £200 for the displeasure. We’re now with an NHS dentist, who hasn’t pulled anything or charged us a penny. Miniminx happily opens wide to show off her pearly whites and even though she says she’s shaking afterwards, she was still cracking jokes in the chair. Her last trip was rewarded with a bribe membership to the Beano Club – this one had the potential for a month’s membership to Club Penguin.

Terms and conditions; on no account are you to squeal, misbehave, wriggle or wrestle with the dentist, just be good.

‘I am not, not, not going to have an injection!’

Early years injections always ended in tears (both of us) and usually a fever, so you can imagine this trip for Typhoid and Hep A was not exactly being looked upon as a walk in the park. However, I was determined this time would be different.

SYesterday at 7am, I covered Miniminx’s upper arms with cream and wrapped them in clingfilm. Two hours later were in with the Doctor for our shots. She nearly fell off her chair laughing when Miniminx took off her cardi to reveal her peculiar plasticated arms but there was method to my madness.

‘It’s anaesthetic cream so she won’t be afraid of the injection.’ I grimaced smiled

‘Can you give me your arm?’ said the Doctor.
‘Yes, but I can’t look at the needle’ said Miniminx. I was surprised at her easy cooperation.
‘I’m just going to put the needle in.’
‘Ok.’ I was bracing myself for the blood curdling scream.
Silence.
‘It’s a bit scratchy.’
‘All done’
You couldn’t hear a pin drop!
‘Your turn Mummy!’

Another month of membership to Club Penguin. Plus my nerves and hearing are still intact.

Terms and conditions; on no account are you to squeal, misbehave, wriggle or wrestle with the doctor, just be good.

‘Oh I hate tablets! I’m not taking them!’

I now have to coax Miniminx to take anti-malaria tablets for the next 18 days – at great cost I might add, about £200 for the both of us, but getting such a serious illness is a risk I just don’t want to take. So now my bank balance is really suffering and I’ve had enough of bribery.

As the Doctor starts to explain that the tablets for malaria are just one a day she then finds the children’s dose is three tablets. I spot a glint in Miniminx’s eye. She’s calculating her bonanza for taking 54 doses. I turn to look at her with eyes of steel. She can not out-psych me on this one.

‘Hmmm, malaria is really dangerous isn’t it?’ I say to the Doctor.
‘Yes, there’s a fact sheet on it.’
‘Oooh, nasty….ewk…yuck…we definitely wouldn’t want to get that.’ I say with eyebrows raised.
I pass the crib sheet to Miniminx.
‘Darling you really must take these tablets. It’s a nasty disease you can get from a mosquito bite. Have a look at this if you don’t understand.’
She read it.
And read it again.
By the tone of my voice she knows it’s non-negotiable.
‘Yes Mummy, I promise I will.’

Terms and conditions; on no account are you to bargain, haggle, nag or pester me, just be good – final.

Oh, if you want to know what cream we used, it’s called EMLA – apparently popular among users of Botox and fillers – and about £2 at the chemist without a prescription.

I received these latest chapters on Friday for my sneak preview of Corduroy Mansions.

In this tranche, we travel across town with Caroline, who discovers that her would be lover James bears all the hallmarks of OCD – so kissing is off the cards.

While they begin a journey into a the West End to pick up a specialist book, just a few feet away begins the quarterly meeting of the Ragg Porter Literary agency begins. We meet Barbara Ragg, nice but dim and the vile, spiteful couple Rupert and Gloria Porter.

Where is it heading?
What of the world of wine and MI6? ….I’ll just have to wait until next week. With 80 chapters in the book, I feel the pieces of the jigsaw are still being spread out, so we’re well before the stage of being able to compile the puzzle.

Throughout the Summer I had great plans to overhaul my life – to really make the back bedroom a fabulous walk in wardrobe instead of a dumping ground, to go through all my paperwork and get on top of things. But I confess, there was rose to be drunk – barbecues to be cooked, Summer was just too much fun and sadly, being the child of chaos that I am, I’ve obviously not done it at all. .

After two days of enforced rest with suspected wine swine flu, I decided it was high time to streamline a few things, be a bit more orderly and grow up….

In fact, I have surpassed myself and outsourced the whole lot. I kid you not.

I had to – I mean really had to. You see there is nothing worse than having no food in the house is there, especially when you have a growing child who is constantly hungry – I mean hollow legs is her middle name. Or waking up to no milk for the essential morning cuppa (I can’t function without at least two massive mugs of tea before I leave the house) and the bowl or five of cereal that Miniminx quaffs.

Then, while trying to get myself ready for work, even worse, finding not only the cupboards and fridge bare, but also the wardrobe and I’m rummaging around to find something in a reasonable state to wear when most of my clothes have been hung up on the floor. It just can’t go on.

Yes, I’m a slacker, and that’s why I work. I would make such a bad, bad housewife that it terrifies me and everyone else around me at just the thought. People have seen me hoover and taken the damned thing off me – they even shout ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’ Imagine that would you? Do you know how it feels to be so perplexing without even trying? It’s embarrassing. And as for washing up, my friends who have seen me in action just smile glibly when I offer to muck in at their houses – as if I’ve offered to straighten their teeth manually.

I’m the kind of person that uses every pot and pan in the house to cook a meal and takes childish delight in moving me and my delightful mess around with me everywhere I go. A total and utter clutter nutter. It’s just the way I am and I decided to get professional help.

So here goes, here’s my 4 Step Programme for Nomestic Godesses and believe you me, it’s working:

Step 1 Fresh Food
Abel&Cole are now taking care of fruit and veg intake (oh and nice organic wine and lots of other sumptuous things) and delivering to my front door weekly – all packaging recycled weekly (no plastic either)

Step 2 Milk, Milk, Milk
Who would have thought that I would find a man called Dean who would drop by my house every so often and make sure I could have a nice cuppa every day. Well I have, by some chance google search, I found Dairy Crest online so now have a milkman who delivers organic milk three times a week and juice too. And no packaging – just give it all back when it’s finished and the bin stays empty!

Step 3 Clean Clothes and Bed Linen
No more dragging sacks of clothes around or wrestling with king size duvet covers and sheets – there’s a new and very reasonably priced laundry and dry cleaning company Wilton Green which picks up and delivers. They even did loads of stuff for free on my first order. I absolutely love them – they even put my clothes on my favourite wooden hangers so none of that annoying dry cleaner hanger stuff any more (and the bin stays empty again).

Step 4 Clean House
I hate mess, it depresses me, and once every few months I go into a zen like trance and clean the house from top to bottom but it’s only for the novelty. Imagine my delight when I got a text from my cleaner. Oh yippe yay she is back in business after a stint selling kitchens that didn’t quite work out…so I’m making use of her as much as I can and the house is clean and sparkly.

And what’s next? Ooh, lets have a declutter. Or maybe I’ll just bag everything up and shove it in the back bedroom…

A little poem for Miniminx and Renee

So off we went on a Sunny day
to seek each other and go out to play

This is when the big red balloons came
and more than once they flew away

It was quite a job
to get them to behave

And so to bed both girls with their balloons
all safe and sound, asleep in their rooms,
But maybe they’d pop in the middle of the night
and scare us all, half to death with fright…

But on the next day, with the
naughty Mummies in all their rush
One balloon was left behind
Another was popped on a bush

Then two little girls
both pout at their Mums
So here for you both
is a big red balloon x

I hope you like this Maternal Tales!