BloggingME: Bloggers Workshop at the Four Seasons Doha

Saturday 31st January marked a day that I was particularly excited about.

A few weeks before, Harriet had suggested that we attend the BloggingME workshop, a workshop for new and existing bloggers to learn tips and tricks about blogging whilst mingling with other Doha based bloggers. We immediately booked our places!

Held at the gorgeous Four Seasons hotel, and hosted by the fabulous Kirsty Rice and Sarah Derrig, it transpired to be a brilliant day, filled with laughter, good food, lovely company and David Beckham's bed, all whilst being entirely educational.

When we arrived, it was clear to see that our hostesses, in collaboration with the fabulous PR manager from the Four Seasons, Mia, had gone all out for the workshop.

Each place was set with FS headed note paper and a pen, with a beautiful complimentary FS Moleskine notebook for each attendee. We were each handed a beautiful fruit concoction, which we sipped whilst mingling with our fellow bloggers either side of us.

Then began the presentation!

Whilst I wouldn't consider myself a newbie to blogging, 2015 is my year for self-improvement and I fully welcomed all of the advice given by experienced bloggers Kirsty and Sarah, to help to improve my little space on the Internet and make it the very best it can be.

The course was extremely thorough, discussing the different types of platforms available to new bloggers, tips to create graphics, tips for designing your blog (if anybody is interested, I worked with the very lovely Felicity on my blog design), post construction, timing of publishing, how to increase traffic to your blog by utilising social media, and much, much more - it is safe to say I walked away with an abundance of newfound knowledge.

We took a short break for lunch, where we made a beeline for the sweets!

Having sampled the amazing 'chocolate cellar' at the Four Season's Friday brunch before, I knew that we would be in for a treat with this little lot, and we certainly weren't disappointed! Chocolate orange macarons, need I say more?

Back in the workshop, we continued with the remainder of the presentation, but not before we had a chance to be a little bit silly with the props.

Who doesn't love a good prop!?

At the end of the presentation, we were taken on a very special tour of one of the Four Seasons luxurious suites. To our absolute delight, we were told that David Beckham had stayed in the very suite we were viewing just weeks before when he came to Doha for the mens tennis. Cue some very excited ladies!

It would be wrong to not embrace the chance to (almost) hop in to bed with Beckham!

FYI this wasn't my outfit for the whole of the workshop - we were so very kindly each gifted one of these luxurious Four Seasons dressing gowns, embroidered with our initials, by the lovely Mia.

As if we hadn't already been spoilt enough, our final treat of the day was to enjoy a social gathering on the Il Teatro terrace, where Chef Marco Arlotti cooked up a storm whilst we chatted, sipped bubbles, and snapped photos.

Harriet, as per usual, looked stunning!

An absolutely fabulous day from start to finish! I feel like I walked away with a mind full of new ideas, as well as having met some really great people, with some brilliant new blogs to read! There was a wonderful sense of community, which is probably quite rare to find as in most countries the blogging community is already so vast that it would be impossible to gather everybody together in a collective. In Doha, the blogging community is still relatively new (but most certainly growing!) so it was a great chance to mingle with like-minded people, and to feel part of something so exciting.

To crown everything off, today the winner was announced for the competition to win a one night stay in David Beckhams bed the incredible Four Seasons suite that we viewed...and somehow I managed to win it! I am absolutely over the moon. Not only do I never, ever win anything, but after a year and a half of booking my sporting analysts in to the Four Seasons and hearing their tales of how amazing it is, I can finally experience it for myself! So excited!

A very special thanks to Kirsty, Sarah, Mia, and the Four Seasons staff for such a brilliant day.

Image courtesy of the Four Seasons, shot by the talented Joe Agdeppa

ONE AND A HALF YEARS IN THE DESERT!

If you had said to me at the start of 2013, that in 8 months time I would be boarding a one way flight to Doha, I would have firstly said 'where on earth is Doha?!', before quickly telling you that there is no way that I would ever, ever move there.

It is now the 1st February 2015, and it has been exactly one year and a half since I boarded that very one way flight to the previously unheard of city of Doha, Qatar.

I find it very hard to put into words, or even articulate how it feels to have been living in my adopted country for a year and a half. In some respects, it has flown by. At exactly the same time, it feels like I have lived here forever. Without a doubt, the most monumental and hardest moments of my life seemed to have happened all in the space of my relatively short time living abroad, so whichever way I look at it, it has been one heck of a roller coaster ride.

I never in a million years thought I would still be here after a year and a half. In those weeks in the run up to my departure date from the UK, I remember countless conversations with my parents that went along the lines of 'give it a few months - if you don't like it, you can come home' (if only then we had known about the trials of obtaining the dreaded exit permit!), and I remember saying 'I'll give it until Christmas and see how I feel'.

I have just celebrated my second Christmas in the desert, so it just goes to show how important it is to give something a real chance. I have felt like packing my suitcase and jumping on a flight back to the UK countless times in the past year and a half, but I am incredibly proud of myself to know that I didn't give up and go home, even when things have been as hard as they have been.

As I reach this milestone of a year and a half in the desert, I have to ask myself if I ever regret my decision to move here, and I would have to say that ultimately I don't. I absolutely can't bare the thought that time spent here is precious time not spent with my loved ones back home, but in terms of my development as a person, and the life experience I have gained from the move, I would find it hard to regret something that has shaped me in so many ways.

I look forward to embracing the rest of my time in the Doha bubble, and seeing what the next few months bring :)

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!