It’s September 11th, 2001 and 38 planes across the world have been instructed to make emergency landings at Gander International Airport due to breaking news that a terrorist attack has hit the city of New York; taking down the twin towers and killing unknown numbers of people.
The town of Newfoundland, Canada hear of the news on the TV and radio and decide to come together as a community to host temporary accommodation and shelter for those stranded halfway on their journey by air.
The town goes from 7,000 to 16,000 people over night and there’s hardly any room to fit everyone, so the local community sees itself opening up primary schools and halls to shelter everyone. The town also miraculously manage to get together enough food to feed 16,000 hungry mouths for 5 days. There’s also a cat, dog and a rare pregnant chimpanzee that was on board one flight, kindly cared for and not forgotten by a citizen of the community.
The story is about friendship, hospitality and the magnitude of kindness. A brilliant journey of different races, genders and sexualities coming together as one to get through a tough 5 days.
The story is about friendship, hospitality and the magnitude of kindness. A brilliant journey of different races, genders and sexualities coming together as one to get through a tough 5 days.
Some travellers had family members that were caught up in the traumatic events in New York City, and so you begin to understand how the events affected not only the thousands that died, but the families affected by those they lost or lost contact with over the 5 days.
Come From Away is a brilliant show exploring the events of 9/11 outside of New York City, which will make you experience all kinds of different emotions. You will cry, smile and laugh out loud. It’s no wonder that it sold out on broadway! I highly recommend it!
Come From Away is available to book now through London Box Office. Ticket prices start from £11.90
Disclaimer: Gifted press tickets in return for review purposes.
Come From Away is a brilliant show exploring the events of 9/11 outside of New York City, which will make you experience all kinds of different emotions. You will cry, smile and laugh out loud. It’s no wonder that it sold out on broadway! I highly recommend it!
Come From Away is available to book now through London Box Office. Ticket prices start from £11.90
Disclaimer: Gifted press tickets in return for review purposes.
1- SPD
Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction is a condition that unfortunately hit me around the 16 week mark and has progressively got worse since. It started with an ache between my legs and then the pain in my lower back started; with my tailbone clicking out of place every time I walk or go from standing to walking.It has now affecting my pelvis, with my pelvic area clicking really loudly when I move suddenly. This makes it extremely painful to turn over in bed, get up off the sofa and getting out of a car is also a challenge.
I was referred through work to a physiotherapy session recently and discussed my symptoms. I was told to do certain exercises to help with the pain and discomfort. However, reaching down to my toes is extremely painful when standing back up and the thought of planking against a wall (as advised) does not appeal to me very much. My midwife has said physio is not something that can really help with SPD - especially as exercises can cause more pain. I really hope it goes away after I give birth!
2- LACK OF MATERNITY CLOTHING ON THE HIGH STREET
This has really frustrated me throughout my pregnancy so far. I stopped wearing non-maternity jeans when I was around 9-10 weeks pregnant, as I bloated pretty quickly. I have found it really difficult finding any good maternity jeans on the high street, so resulted to stocking up on many pairs of leggings to see me throughout the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.I have popped into some of the big name stores and enquired about their maternity range and have always been told the same thing: "Our maternity range is available online only". High street stores - do you know how annoying and inconvenient this is?
They say you should buy maternity wear in the same size you was pre-pregnancy, but I have found this to be rather inaccurate. Having bought several pairs of maternity jeans online, even a size 16 doesn't fit me and I have always been a size 12!
There's also a lack of diversity with maternity clothing. You're lucky if you find anything else than leggings, stripy tops and black, grey and white vests in maternity ranges. I am so used to having a varied wardrobe of skirts, trousers and dresses, but find it is quite hard to find any maternity dresses that aren't frumpy and make me look like I'm wearing a sack.
Fortunately, American brands like Pink Blush have a super wide range of maternity clothing for the modern mother; fitting your ever growing bump and making you feel super stylish at the same time. Trying to steer away from my everyday look of leggings and a baggy tee, I looked at their range of maternity dresses and fell in love with the Navy Floral Bell Sleeve Maternity Dress.
It fits perfectly on me and allows me to feel a little bit 'me' again on the days I feel like feeling a little more glam.
Dress - Gifted* AD
3- UNWANTED COMMENTS ON BUMP SIZE
This has been the main cause of tears and feeling like a sump wrestler most days. I cannot tell you how sick and tired I am of people commenting on the size of my bump. I have had people calling me 'fatty' when greeting me, as some sort of light hearted joke to them. Others have very often asked if I am having twins or even worse, TELL ME I am having twins and some simply say "I can't believe how big you are for XX weeks".
I am carrying a perfectly healthy baby boy and unborn babies grow a bit more everyday. My bump may look a little bigger than some girls who carry smaller, but there's many bumps out there on the larger side, which can be down to carrying extra water. It doesn't necessarily mean the baby is going to 2 stone when it comes out!
I find these kinds of people REALLY rude.
4- HOW CRAZY HORMONES BECOME
I've found myself crying at birth videos, but also at more deemed pathetic things - such as dinner not tasting great or a lack of ice-cream in the house. My boyfriend is somehow dealing with my erratic moods and deserves a gold medal.
5- LONDON COMMUTERS IGNORE BABY ON BOARD BADGES
I cannot tell you how many times I have commuted to or from work and been ignored by fellow commuters. I travel 4 hours per day, which puts an awful strain on my back now that I have SPD and am approaching my 3rd trimester.
People tell me that you should ask for a seat - especially the priority ones you get on the tube. However, I have experienced asking people if they mind giving up their seat and being refused and ignored for the rest of the long journey.
I understand most people scroll through their phones or the daily newspaper in the mornings or on their way home from work, but being pregnant really does make me much more aware of my surroundings. I will definitely be regularly looking up from my book or phone when I am not pregnant and looking to see if there's anyone struggling who would benefit from having my seat. It's called being nice.
6- OTHER MUMS THINK THEY KNOW BEST
Baby boy is my first child and I like most first time mums, will be guessing my way through motherhood. It has become increasingly irritating how other mums feel the need to tell me what I should be doing - rather telling me off than giving simple and friendly mum to mum advice.
I remember eating coleslaw and being told by someone with children "You shouldn't eat coleslaw, it's bad for the baby". I ended up feeling super anxious for the rest of the day and so asked my midwife about it - who told me it is FINE to eat shop bought coleslaw.
I have been told many other things that I simply now smile at and ignore.
If I want to put together a god damn birth plan with the risk of it not going ahead on the day, then I will. Leave me to do what I want to do!
8- HOW PREPARED YOU HAVE TO BE WITH ANTENATAL APPOINTMENTS
I have found this quite overwhelming and have felt quite anxious before meeting with my midwife for most of my appointments so far. Expecting your first baby is jumping into the deep end itself; let alone remembering to have important blood tests by certain weeks and asking for certain things when you get to the appointment.
I am quite organised, so write everything down - but I do find it quite overbearing. When and if I have a second child, I will know what to expect with antenatal appointments, but it can be quite a lot to remember when you're expecting your first baby!
9- TWO NHS SCANS ARE NOT ENOUGH
You only get offered two NHS scans during your pregnancy - the first at 12 weeks and a second at 20 weeks. It feels like you're waiting forever in-between both scans and once your 20 week scan is over, you don't see your baby again until birth (unless there's complications, of course).
We have ended up booking two private scans too, so have been lucky to see baby boy 4 times already. We also have a private 4D scan booked for next month, so that we can see our baby one last time before the final count down to due date.
I have heard that some NHS trusts are trialling out a routine scan in-between 20 weeks and due date, which I think is an excellent idea, as it gives parents-to-be peace of mind!
10- FEELING ANXIOUS
I spent the first 20 weeks feeling really anxious. However, I'm now done worrying what people think of me, worrying about people who are no longer in my life for whatever reason and just general conflicts. I don't care if my sick days at work are increasing due to the pain I am going through right now. I don't care if I have a day of eating cakes all day will result in a bit of extra baby weight. I don't care if the house looks a bit untidy than normal.
All I care about is my baby, my partner, my health and welfare and becoming a family of three.
Disclaimer: This post contains gifted brand items. All words, opinions and photographs are my own.
Valentine's day is upon us! Whether you're spending it with your partner, your girls or your self; it's a good excuse to treat your tastebuds to something naughty. Valentine's day is usually about roses, kisses and flowers. However, I much prefer Valentine's when it involves cake and a lot of it!
Mr Kipling have released their brand new limited edition range of Valentine's inspired cakes to celebrate the season of love. Obviously, bump and I couldn't wait to explore the range and tuck into a cake or three. #MrKiplingLoveSeason
I was pleased to see the addition of the super scrumptious Mr Kipling Cakes - fondant fancies, or should I say; I fancy you. Like tradition, you will find a mix of yellow, chocolate and pink square cakes in a box of 6 waiting for you. Utterly delicious.
Introducing Love At First Slice, these chocolate slices are enjoyed best with a cup of tea and a box set on the TV. In the range, you will also find their siblings - You're Simply The Zest lemon slices and You're Heavenly angel slices. They were all demolished quicker than you can say CAKE.
Bump particularly enjoyed the There's No One Batter Than You mini battenbergs and of course, the classic Apple Pies - or should I say, You're The Apple of My Pie.
My personal all time favourite are the Vienesse Whirls - or You Mean The Whirl To Me flower whirls. Jam and cream are sandwiched between two flower shaped shortbread biscuits and melt in the mouth. Ooooooft. Fancy.
The entire limited edition range is now available in most supermarkets and some will still be available until Mother's Day. Whether it's you or a loved one, sit back and enjoy an exceedingly good cake.
Even better, I have the opportunity for one lucky person to win a hamper of Mr Kipling goodies. These will be a mixed box of different ranges and not necessarily the Valentine's range.
Disclaimer: Campaign in collaboration with Mr Kipling. All content is my own.
We was recently invited over to a steakhouse restaurant called Bar + Block, located a 5 minute walk from Aldgate East tube station or a 12 minute walk from London Liverpool Street.
Bar + Block shares its restaurant with the hotel next door, so is very big inside and goes way back to accommodate for all customers. It has an industrial and cosy interior with many booths available to sit in; as well as plenty of seating available on wooden tables with velvet tub chairs. Warmly lit and individual lamps on the booths made it very convenient for photos.
We was handed menus and some popcorn to nibble on which tasted salty. However, we later found out (because we asked) that the popcorn had beef flavouring on it. I do think this should have been disclaimed when it was brought over to us incase either of us was vegetarian or vegan.
For starters, we ordered a selection of 'nibbles' and starters from the extensive menu which has plenty to offer for diners. I was particularly intrigued to try the Crispy Gnocchi Bites (£3.25). These arrived in a generous sized portion for a 'nibble' and tasted ok, but did become quite bland after two or three. It would be great to see them presented with a tomato salsa to dip or Bolognese sauce to dip into.
Ricky ordered the Salt & Pepper Squid (£6.50), which again was a generous size portion. Crispy with chilli and garlic and arriving with a lemon wedge and a pot of lemon and garlic mayo. They were quite satisfying and thoroughly enjoyed.
I was also intrigued to try the vegan Trio of Dips (£4.50). I particularly love Moroccan food, so do love these sorts of food. The trio contains a home made houmous, mixed tomato salsa, carrot and harissa and some toasted tortillas. The texture of the houmous was thick and lumpy - almost porridge like. It tasted fresh and was topped off even more with the carrot and harissa dip. You could really taste the coriander and all three dips tasted delicious when dipped into with the toasted tortillas.
We thought it would be silly to visit a steakhouse and not order steak for main. Therefore, we decided to choose different steaks each on the menu and compare them both - aswell as compare them to other steaks we love to order. Bar + Block's classic cuts come from British cattle reared across South America. They are marinated for 28 days and hand cut on site, so you can literally request how big you want your steak to be!
Within a few minutes of finishing our starters, our table was cleared by Adrian and he asked if he could bring out the mains - rather than asking if we was ready for mains. We said okay, but agreed that we both felt very rushed to finish one course and start another. It is much more comfortable when a table is cleared within a reasonable time and the next course brought out 10-15 minutes after the previous dish.
I always ask for beef to be cooked Medium when ordering steaks or burgers, but was unsure about it when it arrived a little pink than I have normally seen when ordering steak. It was so soft and succulent though, so did cut off the bone nicely with hardly an effort needed. All in all, it did taste really nice, but I did have to leave some bits that were just a little too pink for my liking.
I was also unsure how marinated the steak would be and I would have been gutted if it was dry, so I did order a peppercorn sauce. Unfortunately, this was stone cold when it arrived and had gathered a film on top of the sauce where it was so cold. I believe this was because our mains had been sitting n the kitchen for a while - resulting in us being asked if the mains could be brought out.
Ricky ordered the above 14oz Tira de Ancho steak (£26.95), which looked super scrumptious upon presentation. Also marinated in garlic and chilli, it also came with a side pot of a chilli sauce called Chimuchurri which Ricky said was very hot (but a good hot!)
Unlike me, Ricky was fine with how his steak was cooked and tends to eat it medium-rare, so his was quite pink but just how he liked it.
We both agreed that the steaks were nice and it was a joy to be able to cut and enjoy a steak without having to have a battle with it and a steak knife. Whilst we agreed that the chips were fluffy and delicious, we did agree that we felt the steak menu is slightly overpriced for what it is. If I am spending minimum £25 on a steak, then I would want the peppercorn sauce to be piping hot and cooked to how I asked it to be.
We ordered dessert and hoped it would make up for a half enjoyed main.
Being pregnant, I am only able to eat certain desserts and was pleased to see a few different options on the menu. Cheesecake is my ultimate favourite dessert, so was very excited to see a Lemon cheesecake on offer. However, I have to ensure the ingredients used are pregnancy safe i.e pasteurised milk. I didn't want to risk it, so asked the waiter if he knew if it was pregnancy safe or not as I am unable to consume unpasturised milk. He was unsure, so asked the manager to come over. The manager came over with a folder of ingredients in all of Bar + Block dishes and came to the cheesecake on a list. However, was still unable to tell me whether it contained unpasturised or pasteurised milk or not.
He did offer to check the cheesecake packaging (suggesting it was frozen), so in the end to be on the safe side, I ordered the Salted Toffee Apple Crumble (£5.95), which was served with vanilla ice-cream. This ended up being delicious and I am glad I ordered it over the cheesecake in the end. The crumble was hot and the ice-cream really complimented the toffee apple perfectly.
Ricky went for his all-time favourite - the Triple Chocolate Brownie and ice-cream (£5.95). This looked slightly more 'home made' compared to other brownies I have seen before and was beautifully presented with the ice-cream scoop sitting on a mountain slab of brownie and dazzled in chocolate sauce.
It took a while to get Adrian's attention to thank Bar + Block for a nice meal. It did seem he was avoiding us after he took our dessert plates away; often catching my eye but then looking away and walking away.
The desserts were delicious I will admit and fairly priced. However, I wasn't impressed by the service at Bar + Block and did feel the steak menu was over priced, with little care for little things such as stone cold sauces that compliment a steak usually.
Due to these reasons, I would not go out of my way to visit Bar + Block again. However, if I was in the area and hungry, I would probably drop by for a lunch or dinner - maybe avoiding the steak menu next time!
Disclaimer: A complimentary meal was offered in exchange for an honest review. All words, opinions and photographs are my own.
Click Consult are a SEO and PPC Search Marketing company that are a great example of a company you can hire to do all of the below for you. Something I would probably do if I ran my own brand or big business. However, running a blog and educating myself on SEO over the years means that I am able to keep up with ensuring my blog is running smoothly.
Here are 5 things you should be doing to make your blog or website SEO friendly.
1) Purchase your own domain and look after it properly
It always looks much more professional when you click onto a website or blog and you can clearly see it has its own domain and branding. Google tends to trust websites that have their own domains, compared to website names that are have a free blog name attached to the URL. So, if you can essentially start off small and gain the trust of the world's biggest search engine, then you're already off to a great start.
I purchased and have always renewed my domain through 123-Reg and have never had any problems. I think it costs me around £30 to renew my domain every year which is super cheap compared to some domain hosts. There's also the opportunity to purchase hosting if you want to own your whole blog 100%.
Looking after your domain is so important. There's lots to keep up with when owning your own domain. Firstly, you need to naturally build your DA (Domain Authority) scoring. This can be done by ensuring your SEO is 100% top notch (pretty much just reading all of these tips and following them really!).
I highly suggest scanning your blog regularly for broken links and fixing or removing them. A broken link is literally what it says. For example, if I linked to a Topshop dress in a fashion post, chances are it will no longer be available in a years's time, so the link you used will need to be removed or changed as the link is now broken. A broken link does nothing for your blog and just makes it look messy and untrustworthy. Remove or change them!
2) Get a clean cut, SEO friendly blog theme
The next thing I would highly suggest is spending a day or two working on the look of your blog and ensuring it's as SEO friendly as possible. A clean cut theme/blog layout is essential for this, with clean coding and ensuring it responds fast when loading pages, jumping from page to page etc. Ensure you test all your links too as sometimes they can work slower if they are coded incorrectly or use un-necessary added coding. Little things like making sure your blog is mobile responsive does massive things for your blog too.
I highly recommend sourcing blog themes from Etsy, as the majority of the sellers on there are web designers. I have purchased many different themes on there over the years and have never had any problems. They have a wide range of different Blogger and Wordpress themes and there's some designers who offers custom blog themes if you have a higher budget.
If you are unsure on how to do something that involves design or coding, then Google really is your best friend. I have taught myself so much over the years simply from reading an online tutorial.
3) Gain natural backlinks to your blog
This is one of them confusing terms that you probably won't understand unless you are familiar with blogging or SEO itself. A backlink is when another website links to your website from their website. It generates natural click throughs from one website to yours and therefore looks natural and not fake. Backlinks are essential to gain the trust of Google and help you to climb the ladder of pages on search engines. You could guest post on another website for example and get them to link back to your site.
You can pretty much cheat yourself through this industry these days, but I suggest sourcing backlinks naturally and not purchasing a bunch of fake ones. Google is quite a clever tool and is well onto those websites that are cheating their way onto the ladder.
Making sure your anchor texts and keywords match up nicely will help Google recognise your website as natural. For example, if you're writing a post about dog beds for labradors then you might want to use the anchor text 'dog beds for large breed dogs' and use keywords such as 'pets', 'dog beds' and 'large breed dogs'.
4) Create original and engaging content
This one is a pretty big tip of mine and one that can be difficult for content creators. Blogging and the social media industries have become over saturated and nowadays, everyone wants to be a blogger. It can be tricky to think of original and engaging ideas for your blog when chances are, it's been done before.
However, if you're able to think outside of the box, then you will do well with your posts. If I have an idea for a certain post, I will often have a Google around for bloggers who have written the same or similar posts. That way, I know what to avoid (or completely avoid!) so that I can ensure my blog doesn't look like spam to Google.
5) Add captions and title/ALT text captions to images
Firstly, it already looks so much more original if you are taking and using your own photography for your blog. It can be easy to source stock images (which we are all guilty of using from time to time), but if you make the effort to use your own photographs majority of the time, your blog already looks so much more original and appealing to look around.
It is important to add title and ALT text captions to your images (again - search for a tutorial online to learn how, although it's an added feature here that you can use on Blogger). This ensures your images are essentially traced and makes it difficult for them to lose their credit. Also, when people search for certain images, it will help Google link the image to your website and hopefully you will gain some new readers out of it.!
There we have it! 5 things you can start doing to improve the SEO on your blog or website. I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Just leave them below! :-)
Disclaimer: In collaboration with Click. All words are my own.
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