Babi a Fi

I love Pinterest, and have been a casual user for years. I really want to start using Pinterest more as an extension of my blog though - here's a guide to Pinterest for Bloggers which will hopefully encourage me to practice what I preach! What is Pinterest? Pinterest is an image sharing website which lets users upload or simply save images ('pins') to different folders ('boards'). It was launched just six years ago, in 2010, but quickly became the dominant social media network for aspirational living - they don't call all those beautifully styled interior shots 'Pinterest Perfect' for nothing! Why should I be using Pinterest? Pinterest has over 70 million users worldwide; about 3 million of those are UK based, pinning some 3 million images per day. The most popular searches are for recipes, crafts and tutorials but people can - and do - search for anything and everything on the site. So, no matter what you write about, Pinterest has the pote

It's been another week of feeling 'bleh'. I wrote a post for Monday about how Marianna's traumatic birth has put me off having another baby. I've been dwelling on it a lot lately which I suppose is just another sign of feeling down and depressed. Hopefully next week will see me getting my act together! Anthony and Marianna. ☆ READING:  I've been reading - and colouring - Fashion from Head to Toe . ☆ WRITING:   The beginner's guide to Domain Authority . ☆ WATCHING:   The Frankenstein Chronicles . ☆ LISTENING:   You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon. I love that song! ☆ WEARING:  You can see some of my fashion fails in this week's Friday Frivolity post . :) ☆ EATING: I've been drinking lots of tea this week. ☆ REVIEWING:  Anthony reviewed (read: drank) a bottle of Moet & Chandon champagne . I've been working on my social media this week. I spent an evening 'branding' all my Pinte

Colouring-in is not just for kids! Here are 5 reasons why you're never too old to pick up a pencil... 5. Everyone's At It: The colouring-in craze has exploded over the last few years. Three of Amazon USA's top 10 selling books last year were colouring books, and they make up 17% of book sales in Brazil. Nobody wants to be a sheep and just follow the herd but, if you fancy it, millions of other adults have already gone and set a precedent. 4. There's So Much Choice: The inevitable effect of all this interest in adult colouring books is that, well, everyone is cashing in on the genre. You don't have to make do with knock-off cartoon characters printed on Z-grade paper anymore; these days you can colour everything from the solar system to your own Tarot deck. Hannah bought me this one for Christmas. :) 3. It's A Stress Buster: The research into this is actually pretty sketchy (geddit?) but the Guardian says it, so it must be true. 2. It's Fu

This week's host theme is fashion flubs, something I'm all too familiar with. I've had more than my fair share of fashion disasters. Though, to be fair, outfits most people would consider fashion fails I'm really proud of! I mean, even at a young age I was into imaginative accessorising: And I've always had a passion for vintage fashion: Showing some stocking top while dressed 1920s style for a vintage fair. There are a few fashion rules I try to follow, all the same, like avoiding 'cheese string' bikinis: But, generally, I don't worry too much because it's all about your state of mind: Now on to the link-up! :D The Hosts: Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Google + // Instagram //  Bloglovin' Jessica is an amazingly funny and smart blogger from Wales who writes on a whole range of topics -- from entertaining vintage nostalgia, to technology tutorials, to book reviews, to raising her adorable munc

Anthony had so much fun reviewing the BEMO Premium Beard Oil he wanted to give it another go. At least, this was the excuse he gave me when I asked him why he had opened the stupidly expensive bottle of champagne... I love champagne, however its been a long time since I had the money to buy a decent bottle of the stuff. So when my darling Jessica won a bottle of Moet & Chandon Ice Imperial through one of her endless numerous competitions I was all too happy to liberate the bottle from her clutches. As with any expensive bottle of wine (currently retailing at £50.99 on amazon) I decided to wait for the right occasion to pop the cork. After I began rereading Sideways by Rex Pickett (a tale of two friends on the stag do from hell in California wine country) my taste buds were clamouring for wines that my bank balance would weep at. After looking at the selection of wines available in my dwindling stock of vino that litters the shelves of my man cave, I found a questionable p

Ever since we moved in to our current place I've been meaning to get myself a desk. I mean, you can work anywhere these days, thanks to wifi and laptops, but there's something about having a self contained workstation which always makes me more productive. We have the space too - the house is a three bed so the spare room is currently home to my Sindy houses, an ancient Billy bookcase, and a neverending supply of wet washing. Seriously. All the room ever seems to be used for is drying laundry. But that's about to change! Next month I'm going to splurge at my interiors store of choice - IKEA - and create my own little office nook! MICKE Corner Workstation . (£125) I love that the back panels are magnetic so you can use them as a noticeboard. HEJSAN Magazine File . (£1.50)  Roberts Revival DAB Radio in grey. I won this last week from Glasswells and it is beautiful! TJENA Storage Box . (£3) You can never have too many TJENA boxes. MICKE Drawer Unit . (

Once I began to take blogging seriously I kept coming across the mysterious term 'DA'. It didn't stand for District Attorney , or Deviant Art , or even Domineering Aardvarks. What it actually stood for was 'Domain Authority'. So what is Domain Authority? Domain Authority predicts how well websites rank on search engines, and comes in the form of a score between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the better the website will rank. Examples of websites with a DA of 100 include Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Page Authority or PA, on the other hand, scores a specific page on the website. Does my blog have Domain Authority? The basic answer is: yes. The full answer is slightly more complicated. For your blog to have its own Domain Authority, it has to have its own domain. My domain is babiafi.co.uk, for instance. If your blog address is a subdomain, like babiafi.blogspot.uk, its DA will be 'shared' with the host domain. When I had that blogspot ad

"You'll change your mind before long," is what everyone tells me. Perhaps I will. I can't see into the future, after all. But right now, I have no intention of having another baby - no matter how many times people ask me when the next one will be, or how many times they tell me Marianna will be lonely if I don't lie back and think of England. (Well, Wales, let's be realistic here!) It's not that I don't like babies. I wasn't entirely sure I did before I had one, but hormones and experience have worked their magic and transformed reluctant indifference to fawning delight. It's not even that I don't like the idea of another baby. I had a brother and, vicious brawls aside, we got on wonderfully. We shared secrets, and kept each other company, and commiserated every time the other had a telling off to deal with. If the science in Junior was real, I wouldn't have a problem with adding to our family. Danny DeVito and Arnie

It was half-term this week so there wasn't that much on at work - no seminar, and the only proper meetings I went to were planning committee on Tuesday and Cwmbran Community Council on Wednesday. The fate of the playschemes was decided at the latter; you can read more about it HERE . On Thursday we went on a community litter pick , and then we had Labour branch AGM. I didn't want to be secretary anymore because it's a hassle with so many members not being on email - you either have to find the time to deliver agendas, or the money to post them. Anthony's going to do it now instead! :D ☆ READING:  Cracked Online. ☆ WRITING:   A beginner's guide to Klout . ☆ WATCHING:   Porridge . I love that show! ☆ LISTENING:  Very High and Mighty - a song from Rainbow about Bungle getting above himself. I feel like I've heard it about 4000 times this week. ☆ WEARING:  Make up for the first time in ages! ☆ EATING: Anthony made

On Friday we all helped out at a big community litter pick in Northville. I blogged about the first one we did, back last summer , and you could see the big boost in engagement since then - there were about four or five times as many people this week! A group of lads from Itec Cwmbran came to lend a hand, one of Torfaen Council's waste management officer brought a load of leaflets and recycling wheels along, and Bron Afon helped organise the skips and cover the publicity side of things. It's so fab that there is a community group driving this because, as you can imagine, if a councillor suggests a litter pick the only response is: ' I pay my council tax, why doesn't the council do it!?! ' I've written before about the realities of council tax  but, basically, the council isn't your mum. Torfaen CBC does a basic street cleanse every fortnight - picking up some 1600 tonnes of litter a year - but they're not going to be there every time some lazy sod

I'm super excited to announce that I'm joining the lovely gang from Friday Frivolity as a host! This is an awesome linky which is all about the fun, the fab and the frivolous. With that in mind I want to talk about crime. Knife crime. Poor ol' Blighty is overrun with it. It's happening on our beaches: It's happening in our homes: It's even happening in our fancy restaurants: Okay, you got me. I'm actually contributing to this week's linky host post theme - wild animals. I just saw this gif of a crab with a knife and couldn't resist building on it... An InLinkz Link-up