CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY!

I've been dreaming of having the 'perfect' blog for a long time.

A few months ago, I worked with the lovely Felicity over at Persuit of Felicity Designs to create my dream blog. We emailed back and forth about what I had in mind for my little home on the Internet; from headers, to backgrounds, to sidebar titles to post titles, to fonts, and whether my ideas would be possible. They were, and within a week The Blonde had undergone a beautiful facelift as Felicity brought my design ideas to the screen. A couple of months later, I tweaked things slightly with her, and now I have a layout I am entirely happy with - clean, simple, and incorporating my favourite colour scheme of the moment as I am loving all things coral!

It was only really after the transformation of the image of my blog that I felt proud to start sharing the link on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, but I still knew that in a world where the blogging standards are so high, that my pretty little page still wouldn't cut the mustard with the (lack of) quality of the pictures I was posting from my iPhone. 

Not only that, but I was writing every post on my iPad via Blogsy (a great little app if you are blogging on the move), as I didn't have a laptop of my own. I had my work laptop, but I couldn't change the Arabic settings so that every time I wrote a post from here, or went back in to edit a post I'd uploaded via Blogsy, it would move all of my text to the right hand side, and flip it around (Arabic is written from right to left). Not ideal, as I couldn't access all of the functions available through Blogger.

With that in mind, I decided to treat myself to some tools to really help me make the very best of my blog, and make my favourite hobby something I can be really proud of.

Last week, my mum took a trip round the M25 in England to meet up with one of my lovely football pundits from work, Clive Allen, who very kindly agreed to bring my presents out to Doha (along with a couple of Christmas presents my mum snuck into his hand luggage!) and this morning I met with him at the Grand Hyatt to collect my beautiful new toys.

I am now the incredibly happy owner of a beautiful MacBook Air, and a Panasonic Lumix TZ60.

I've wanted a laptop of my own for so long (my pink Dell didn't survive much beyond uni), and the MacBook Air was the obvious choice for me, as a complete Apple addict. I would always have laptop envy seeing Matt using his, and even my parents recently purchased one, so I wanted to be part of the gang too! Now I have a place to upload my pictures, and can write and edit my posts via Blogger like a normal person.

With regards to the camera, I had toyed with the idea of purchasing the Lumix GF5 as recommended by Rosie, however my brother did a bit of research and recommended the TZ60 based on my needs from a camera. My mum actually purchased this for herself first, so I got to road test this when she was over in Doha in October. It takes lovely photos, and has a hugely powerful zoom. I just wish I'd had the chance to purchase this before Sri Lanka, so i could have captured all of the beautiful sights!

So here we are. I'm currently typing from my shiny new MacBook, and slowly getting to grips with both of my new pieces of kit. I can't wait to get out and about in Doha and take some decent quality photos!