Introducing: Bonjour, Blogger!

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Hayley Constantine

Well, this is awkward, dear blog.

I’ve been neglecting you. Ironically, so I can write about blogging. I’m sorry. Let’s be friends again?

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For those who have no idea what I’m on about, or for those who have missed out on me talking about it (what feels like) constantly on Twitter, I’ve been busy the past few months, and super busy the past few weeks.

I wrote a book.

OK, so it’s only self published, and the version up on Amazon at the moment isn’t quite as finished as I would like, but I wrote it. I wrote 20,000+ words (over twenty flipping thousand words – probably more than I wrote in essays in my entire degree) and I’m going to be writing some more (which I’ll republish and make sure everyone who has a copy so far gets – because it’s kinda sucky when new versions of things come out the day after you bought the old one)

I’ve been working on this book since before Christmas, writing bits before work, in lunch, while on the bus – everywhere and anywhere I could, I wrote things. But then I realised that the problem with a book is that it isn’t updated as soon as something happens. While writing the book, I had to change things I’d written to account for sites closing down, sites being merged and just things not doing what they used to. I will aim to update the book when major things happen, but for certain things like explaining how to do something, a website works better. (Especially the way I like to explain things, with lots of pictures and screenshots. That just couldn’t work on Kindle)

So I made a website as well

bonjourblogger.com (and indeed the book) were created because while I love sites like IFB and iFabbo, I didn’t really feel like they were catering to their audiences very well. Both sites assume that all bloggers will want to become professional full time bloggers, but every blogger I’ve asked are just happy to bumble along and if they make some money, awesome!

I felt like there needed to be a more central sort of place that bloggers could find out tutorial style things (maybe you’re wondering about how to make a Google map of your favourite places or how to remove the WordPress admin user – which I didn’t really know until I did it recently!) or have discussions that are a bit more than just a tweet or two (like whether you’re disclosing everything you should be).

I’d really love it if you followed bonjourblogger.com – and if you have anything that needs to be answered (or you want to give some information out to other bloggers), I would love to hear from you too!

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Review: The LadyBoys of Bangkok

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Hayley Constantine

Blogging has allowed me to do things that I would never have though to do myself. It’s pretty awesome. I’ve lived here for nearly 5 years and have seen the tent pop up every year, but have never made it along to the Bristol leg of the Ladyboys of Bangkok UK Tour.

I was invited along with a plus one, so I asked SJ when we went to see Liberty London Girl talking in Bath last week (a seriously interesting talk, which gave me lots of ideas for future posts)

I had no idea what to expect, so I’ll try to explain as best I can without giving too much away – the room is set up with lots of tables (rather than seats in rows which is what I expected) and we were sat pretty much at the front (which wasn’t so great for the boys on our table, hee!) I guess it’s sort of like a cabaret, where you have lots of different songs and musical skits.

Want to see some photos? Well, OK then…

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(loved this – she did “Starships” by Nicki Minaj)

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(Don’t think this needs explaining!)

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(I totally want a sparkly bra and pant set)

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(This was based on a certain popular book – I’ve not read it though, so didn’t really get it!)

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(I want a sparkly suit as well)

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(One of my favourite Girls Aloud songs!)

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(The finale – very Victorias Secret!)

I loved loved loved the outfits in the show – seriously sparkly and very glam. While this wasn’t something I have been able to go to before, I really enjoyed myself. My mum had always wanted to go to see this show, so it was quite nice to be able to do something she would have enjoyed as well. It’s definitely more of a girls night out sort of thing to do – the few men in the audience were the ones dragged up on stage a lot!

The Lady Boys of Bangkok will be in Bristol until Saturday 27th, so book your tickets quick!

Posted in Bristol, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Review: Hello Fresh

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Hayley Constantine

I’ve seen quite a few reviews of Hello Fresh recently where bloggers have been sent a box to try out. I saw these reviews on a few blogs I love  (like Frithas!) , and thought that it was a good idea, but a little too expensive at £39 for three meals for two people to try out if it wasn’t any good. When I saw the Amazon Deals offer for £15, I thought it was worth a try.

It wasn’t.

For those who don’t know, Hello Fresh is a meal delivery service where they send you the ingredients for a meal to make. It’s an awesome idea. You get to try new recipes that you might not have done before, and you don’t end up with massive amounts of an ingredient you only needed a teaspoon of. I ordered the box to arrive the night before Alex came home after three weeks – I knew that we probably wouldn’t have the chance to go out to the shops to restock the cupboards, and I didn’t fancy trying to carry all the shopping home on the bus.

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In my box, there were three recipes – one that I’ve made so many times before (sausage and mash), one that was a bit different, but was still nice and simple (pork chops) and one that although I’d eat it in a restaurant, I wouldn’t think to make at home (chicken yakitori)

I received the box on Thursday evening, and unpacked it. First up – the creme fraiche for the pork chops side was badly packaged, so had leaked all over everything. Annoying, but that could be the fault of the courier. Unpacked more…only to find that the potatoes for the sausage and mash were missing. Not cool. I ended up going shopping before work on the Friday to make sure that I could get home quickly, which was annoying as I hadn’t planned for that.

So, the meals. First up: sausage and mash. I make this at least once a week, but I don’t normally make my own gravy, and the mashed potatoes were done a different way to mine. (All I ever add to my mash is a big dollop of Philadelphia. It’s OK, I use the extra light, it’s not as fatty as it sounds. (It’s a little fatty))

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It certainly has more ingredients than I was used to, but I wasn’t put off. I followed the recipe exactly, with a minor alteration – there seemed to be too much milk, so I only used half.

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Green gravy and sloppy mash? Seriously unappealing. Not a recipe I’d use again – 4/10.

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Next were the pork chops. As so many of you know, I love pork, but it’s not something I cook at home very often.

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It’s a terrible iPhone photo, but this was probably our favourite meal. The crushed potatoes with lemon would be a good side dish for a BBQ, the pork chops were juicy (and I learnt a new way of cooking them) and the sage butter made me glad I have planted some sage in my herb garden! 8/10

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Finally, the chicken yakitori. This was the meal I was a little afraid of because I’ve never made anything like this before from scratch.

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The marinated chicken was pretty good – I may make this again for a BBQ. The noodles and the chilli dressing weren’t bad either, but the crispy onions were just a mess. I probably would have added a bit more veg to this as well. 6/10.

If I were to judge this on the box alone (ignoring damaged and missing items), it wasn’t bad, but probably not worth the money every week. It’s something I might do as a one off, perhaps.

What really dragged down my opinion of this service was the customer service. Firstly – perhaps it was me being stupid (it probably was), but I didn’t see until I had clicked to complete my order where the voucher code was supposed to go. Thankfully, there was a live chat help box available, so I spoke to someone on there and they fixed it for me.

When I received the box with the broken and missing things, I tweeted my disappointment, and made a note to myself to email them in the morning. They tweeted back before I had chance to email on Friday morning asking for my name (which is on my Twitter profile, but OK) and promised that someone would call me that afternoon to sort it out. 7pm, I had an support ticket email asking me to describe the problem. At this point, I’m starting to get a little frustrated, but I provide the same information as previously tweeted and wait. And wait. And wait a bit more.

I had a response on Monday which was basically “Oh well. We can give you a discount next time”. Bear in mind that this is fresh food. Is it really suitable that it took 4 days for any sort of resolution? I don’t think so. I called Monday lunchtime to cancel the subscription, and after 5 minutes of “Well, we’re usually pretty quick to respond to problems” (yeah, that’s helpful to tell me) and “Our product is amazing, are you sure”, I was finally able to cancel.

I wish I could recommend this because I really love the concept of Hello Fresh, but I just can’t. Save your money and eat out instead.

Posted in Recipes, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments