My point of pain which I feel with both facebook and youtube, is that as a blogger, I have to split my blog name up. So nixdminx becomes Nixd Minx (see below). Because this is a personal blog I just don’t see the need to create a fan page or group, may I should have but it doesn’t seem right. It’s the same with my youtube channel, I really want to rename my personal channel to my blog name but I can’t. It seems such a simple thing to do so why can’t I? Don’t you remember when you could change your IM name on a whim on messenger? It also means that people miss out on me when they’re looking for me. Grrrrr.

Nixd Minx

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And now it’s my turn to give some of you an early christmas pressie back.

So without further ado, here are the recipients of the goodies, and I only ask that you email me at nixdminx@live.co.uk to organise posting things to you.

Karaoke Golden Ticket

The Lucky Voice Golden Ticket with two hours free singing in this most glamorous of establishments with cocktails and microphones galore goes to: MummyTips

Uh Oh Oh Oh Oh and the song below turns out to be Crazy in Love by Beyonce!

Super Lush Sweet and Dreamy Box

This gorgeous Sweet and Dreamy Lush briar box of rosy dreams and sugar candy baths will be winging it’s way to Sandy Calico.

Festive Fun: Peter Pan tickets

Two tickets to see the Peter Pan show at the 02 from lastminute.com* will be winging their way to Liz a Living with Kids.

The Simple Human Sinky Caddy & Drainer is going to Gotyourhandsfull.

Tickets to SeaLife
And two tickets to Sea Life – take your pick which one you want to go to – are given to The MadHouse

Transformers DVDs
We have four winners of the of Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen DVDs and you are:

Amy at and1moremeansfour

Clarebabble at clareybabble

Vic at Glowstars

and finally Insomniac Mummy

Thanks to again for dropping by. And thanks also goes to Lush, lastminute.com, Simple Human, Lucky Voice and Paramount DVD for their generosity.,

*valid for performances Monday to Thursday before December 17 2009

While I’d love to buy a drink for each and every single of the one hundred bloggers heading to the Zoo this Sunday, I don’t think it’s fair on those of you that can’t make it.

How about I make you all some cake? Yes, that photo is me in the kitchen, rustling up something tasty, wonderful and celebratory – but oh, what rotten luck, with our low-tech social networking, you can’t even taste it!

Well fear not, I’ve managed to magic up with a bit of blagging and barefaced cheek blogging goodness some cracking goodies for everyone to have a shot at bagging.

And here they are and they could be yours, just drop me a comment on this post, or a tweet @nixdminx and I’ll pick the winners of these darling goodies by December 10. I’ll be adding a few more over the coming week too, so keep your eyes peeled lovelies x

Karaoke Golden Ticket

I’ve got a Lucky Voice Golden Ticket on offer. That means two hours free singing in this most glamorous of establishments with cocktails and microphones galore!  It’s so much fun, you’ll want to say longer…I ended up staying an extra three hours on my Birthday last year.

If you can work out what this song is below, will you let me know…the lyrics aren’t recognisable but I think we sang it more than once!

Super Lush Sweet and Dreamy Box

This gorgeous Sweet and Dreamy Lush briar box of rosy dreams and sugar candy baths (quite tempted to keep it actually) could be winging it’s way to you ahead of the Christmas Party Season and could help you get over all those dreadful hangovers feel fresh as a winter daisy.

Festive Fun: Peter Pan tickets

This is one hot show this Christmas – I have two tickets to see the Peter Pan show at the 02 from lastminute.com*.  It’s also a little known fact that my birthday falls on the same day that the original book was published (Peter Pan by J M Barrie)

Kitchen Goodies from Simple Human

Thanks to Simple Human for the Sinky Caddy & Drainer – I would hate for you all to be scrubbing pots and pan without some kind of stylish kit…

Tickets to SeaLife

Here’s one to fill the days after Christmas when you simply have to get out of the house, two tickets to Sea Life – take your pick which one you want to go to

Transformers DVDs

Blockbuster movies are always great for rainy days and I know this one is a goodie. I have four, yes four!, DVDs of Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen

I really enjoyed the first film, so please let me know what you think of it – but remember it has a 12 rating.

Thanks to Lush, lastminute.com, Simple Human, Lucky Voice and Paramount DVD for their generous offer of prizes – it always helps to keep the readers happy! x

*valid for performances Monday to Thursday before December 17 2009

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.

Simply put, it’s been an incredulous and fabulous year.

November 29 2008 was the day I clicked ‘publish’ on my first wordpress post. I was amazed I’d even managed to work out how to set up a blog, but compared to what was going on in the world, it was really easy.

I knew from the start of the credit crunch I was heading for a sh*tstorm – working as a contractor for one of the biggest companies in the world, and with a job offer on the table, nothing was set in stone and I became more nervous day by day as the stock markets crashed…an invisible fall out dust was settling across desks, it was suffocating, it was paralysing people, it was as if we were under attack. People mouthed frantically to each other behind the glassed vacuums of ‘private’ offices in a vastly open plan glass space. I took cab rides through the City and the cabbies drove at the suits as if they wanted to mow them down.

This was really shit.

I knew I should look elsewhere and so did everyone else but to no avail. Jobs I went for evaporated, people I knew were sacked by email or text.

I had a ‘war effort’ breakfast with a colleague and by the time we had eaten our scrambled eggs and half drunk our fancy coffee – 40 people were out the door leaving laptops, mobiles, blackberries and thwarted ambition behind.

My Christmas present for 2008 was my P45.

So what?

It’s the frailty of corporate life that makes you question your personal values – who am I without this junk, without this stuff? Who am I without a job, a career, a profession, a hope? Ego no longer plays a part, it’s a great lesson.

So this…

Against all odds, and the backdrop of possibly the worst financial meltdown I’ve seen in my lifetime, I’ve been lucky enough to find a new and exciting way of life that’s helped me to overcome what was initially a hugely daunting prospect.

More to follow…

Thanks to the Royal Mail strike, my review samples from Simple Human are still sitting in a depot somewhere but the company has kindly sent me an extra 2 of their stackable recycling units. From the photos on their web site which I’ve used above, they looked like they would fit nicely in my Ikea shelves – so I’m a little peeved to only have two.

So, on first impression, they arrived in a massive box and were packaged on what we called as kids ‘pop buds’ and giant plastic blisters – we’re very easily distracted in my house so Miniminx and I happily popped for ages – before remembering that we had a purpose in the packaging – recycling units.

I was quite in awe of the size of these things…but I like them. I’m not going to post a full review until I’ve used them for two weeks – I’ve chosen to go for the paper and plastic options to see if the boxes can handle our output.

First impressions are good – my piddly Ikea aluminium boxes I was using to store paper, bottles and plastic for recycling will be used as planters…

Ever have those bizarre conversations that verge on the complete abstract and sublime?

I had one of those this morning with my daughter over the breakfast table.

‘Mummy?’ she said, one eyebrow raised to announce that she had a profound statement coming on.

‘Yeah’ I answered distractedly, somewhere between packing lunch, loading laundry, applying lippy.

‘You know when we went to Formentera on holiday this Summer?’

‘Yeah’ I answer, wondering where this is going to go?

‘Well Dad’s friend went there the week before us.’
‘Oh really, that’s cool’
‘Yeah, and do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘He’s going to Morocco, like we are but a month later.’
‘Oh what a coincidence.’

‘It’s like twitter Mummy…isn’t it?’ she says, very seriously.

‘Umm, how do you mean exactly little one?’

‘Well we followed him and now he’s following us back.’

‘That’s hilarious – how did you work that one out…?’ (I’m wondering if the little minx has sneakily set up her own account).

‘Oh, you know, you keep saying so and so’s following you and you follow them back. That’s twitter isn’t it and it’s like holidays too!’

So there you have it, in the mind of a 9 year old, holidays are just like twitter!

Hmmm, I knew Dee might be ‘one of those’ types. This week she has the barefaced cheek to lie to Caroline about her dinner with James but of course is found out as the star-crossed lovers unravel the mystery behind the last evening’s disaster.
Berthea Snark also reveals her duplicitous streak as we learn that she is writing an expose of a Liberal MP disguised as an unauthorised biography. That in itself would be fine, if only it weren’t for the fact that the MP in question, is actually her own son…