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Don’t do it for me. Do it for The Kids!

By Mum's the Word on September 27, 2012 in Competitions, Personal

Right, readers, listen here. I need a favour. Well, actually a friend of mine needs a favour and I’m calling on YOU to help me! Before I tell you what I want, I want to remind you for a few things:

I regularly put up AMAZING competitions to win high end prizes like window cleaners and fanny tighteners, just for your delight.
I SELFLESSLY provide you with hilarious commentary on my lack of mothering/housewifery skills, how fat and unfit I am and the aforementioned fanny that needs tightening.
I NEVER canvas for votes in the MADs/BiBs/A. N. Other blogging awards

So bear all of this in mind.

My friend would like you to vote for his employers in the Music Industry Association Awards. The company is called Professional Music Technology (locally known as PMT – if that isn’t a reason to vote for them, I don’t know what is!) and they want to win MIA Multiple Retailer of the Year award. The employee who manages to get the most votes for the company will win a £50 prize and given the fact that Alex has 3 kids to provide for and as parents, we ALL know how expensive that can be, especially as one of his kids is a mini-giant and needs new shoes about every ten minutes, and you really want to help him out, RIGHT?!

Look, if none of this moves you just know that Alex is one of the nicest people I know and really deserves to win, especially as he let me blog about his wedding. In case you missed it above, HERE is the link. We want PMT to win MIA Multiple Retailer of the Year award. Geddit? Oh, and proceeds from the awards go to Music for All, which is a super charity.

GO!

Comments { 19 }

Mental Health Awareness Week

By Mum's the Word on May 21, 2012 in Mental Health, Opinion, Personal

Today I learned through Jo Middleton’s blog Slummy Single Mummy that today is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week. We’re all aware that ‘mental health’ or mental health issues exist, so what does this really mean? Raising awareness for something that we all already know about?

But, how much do you really know, and how much of it is an assumption?

If I said to you that someone was a paranoid schizophrenic, you may assume that said person was dangerous to be around. Did you know that, actually, people with paranoid schizophrenia are actually extremely unlikely to be violent to either themselves or others?

If I told you that I knew a person with severe post-natal depression or even post-natal post traumatic stress disorder, you’d probably assume, through no fault of your own, that I was talking about a woman. Did you know that it’s estimated that up to 25% of new dads experience some form of PND or PTSD?

Did you know that, despite certain terms being bandied about and used as common language, true cases of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder actually only account for between 2-7% of the population, whilst people with bipolar are around 0.9% and 2.1% of the adult population?

For me, Mental Health Week is not about making us aware that metal health problems exist, it’s about educating ourselves, smashing the stigma and the stereotypes and trying harder to be compassionate to others. It’s so easy to label people, put them into a box and write them off as ‘mental’ or ‘mad’, but have you ever stopped to think what it’s like to live with these afflictions? NO-ONE would choose to live with these illnesses, people who seriously self-harm don’t do it for attention. I guarantee you, the people who self-harm because they are mentally compelled to are the ones you’d never know about, not the silly school girls comparing chicken scratches on their arms.

Take the time to educate yourselves and perhaps suicide rates, which are higher in the UK than anywhere else in the EU, would drop.

Or don’t. It’s up to you. Just know that no-one is immune to mental illness and knowing how to help someone you love could make all the difference.

Comments { 5 }

Knowing Myself (Or ‘Help Me, PLEASE!’)

By Mum's the Word on May 13, 2012 in Cybher, Opinion, Personal, Photos, Style, The Internet

After yesterdays session at Cybher with Peggy Poyser about revamping your blog for under £50, I’ve started with gusto to try and make my blog exactly what I want it to be. One of Peggy’s tips was to work out exactly what it is your blog should say to other people, then create a colour scheme to compliment it. (That was the general gist, she obviously put it a lot better than that…)

Great, brilliant, a point to start from.

Except, I can’t work out what the hell it is that I’m trying to say or who I even am.

Sure, I guess I could be called a mummy blogger, after all, I am a mummy and I am a blogger. But a pastel colour scheme with cute cartoons over it is so not me. I may not know myself but I do know I’m just not that… insipid. So if I’m not going from the mummy blogger angle, I need to look a bit deeper at what appeals to me.

Animal print.

If there’s one prevailing pattern that I tend to choose for bloody everything, it’s leopard print. I just love it. So a few days ago, Husband created me a banner for my site, complete with leopard print background and funky lettering. I loved it, but Husband made the very good point that ‘Mum’s the Word’ written over a furry leopard print background made my blog look a bit like a landing page for plushophiles (if you don’t know what that is and have to look it up, do so with caution and at a decent distance from children or relatives with a weak heart).

During the session, Peggy showed us a series of swatches of colour and asked us to identify what type of blog each swatch represented. We all got the answers right and Peggy’s point was perfectly made. But I don’t really know what my readers get from coming and reading my random musings? What is it you expect from Mum’s the Word? I’m asking for help here, people! If you have any ideas at all, let me know. I have a Pinterest board set up for brainstorming and if you see anything that makes you think “Ooh, that’s so Jayne”, be it a colour, pattern, font – anything, tweet me, Email me, link me up on Facebook. Help me make Mum’s the Word a beautiful place to be!