And in the words of that dood off Crimewatch…DON’T HAVE NIGHTMARES!

Some domains I have purchased I think are cool:

LoveAllBlogs.com , Blog4Charity.com, TheCraftWall.com , BakeYummy.com, i-tots.com, MumReviews.com, MyFirstPhotoBlog.com, CanadianBloggersNetwork.com, TouchMyFunny.com, KidsCreate.it, ThisIswhereYouCanFind.me

Some are not:

FussyFingers.com – my thinking was for a fussy kids eating or craft site my hopes were quashed when people told me that it sounds like a porn site url.

Youwonthaveanypudding.com – When you read it as You Won’t Have Any Pudding it makes sense but as a url it’s a bit faffy. I still like it though, it oozes grumpiness.

Musodadisabanana.com - An on-line ode to my blogging buddy and good friend Musodad, it was bought out of sheer sarcasm.

This morning I went mad, literally crazy in the coconut over a url and an idea for a site. It was a daft idea – I know – but fun I thought. It’s times like that, in the throes of excitement that I message friends – namely the long suffering Emily from A Mummy Too, Helen from ActuallyMummy and Jenny from Cheetahs in my Shoes. The message almost always begins with…

“I have had an idea… now open your mind…”

And there usually follows all manner of fevered excitement from me, more often than not followed by the sensible, clear headed thinking of SANE people.

This morning I wrote this – these actual words in a message on Facebook:

“ Yo yo yo … open your mind … OPEN IT! … is it open yet?

So… you say to people … take a photo of your cup of tea … and add it to a site … so a site with lots of photos of cups of tea … from around the world … pointless … but fun … Its Just My Cup Of Tea or as I like to call it itsjustmycupoftea.com … HAVE I GONE MAD?”

I still like the idea. It’s a sound idea. If you are nuts.

I fear this is it, the pinnacle of domain insanity and general random ideas.

Must. Sleep. More.

I bet a few of you have some random domains squirrelled away… come on  - do share!

Here’s my whole stash – it gives a chilling insight into my mind:

mammasaurus.co.uk

minisaurus.co.uk

vlogasaurus.com

touchmyfunny.com

bakeyummy.com

myfirstphotoblog.com

thecraftwall.com

loveallblogs.com

lovenewblogs.com

lovedadblogs.com

lovemummyblogs.com

lovetravelblogs.com

lovemusicblogs.com

lovebeautyblogs.com

lovevideoblogs.com

lovecookeryblogs.com

lovecraftblogs.com

lovephotoblogs.com

i-tots.com

mumreviews.com

happiermothers.com

lovefunnyblogs.com

lovebookblogs.com

lovespecialneedsblogs.com

canadianbloggersnetwork.com

fussyfingers.com

musodadisabanana.com

youwonthaveanypudding.com

notherealmum.com

ipad-tots.com

lovetravelblogs.com

blogitforbabies.org

kidscreate.it

bloggersonly.com

do-you-blog.com

thisiswhereyoucanfind.me

itsjustmycupoftea.com

*annnnnd breathe*

If you see any domains there that make you think ‘ooo’ then holler at me – I’m up for some collaborative projects

Last year I lost 3 stone. This year I have put 2 stone of it back on again. I’m not happy about it.

Weight is a personal to an individual, to me, having had an eating disorder in the past, it’s a very delicate subject indeed. I want to lose some weight but I want to do it in a healthy way and not risk slipping back into old purging habits and so Flabtronic is born.

My very good friend and one half of the double act that is ‘ActualSaurus’, Helen from Actually Mummy is on a diet at the moment. She’s using Weight Watchers , Mutu thingy and Slimpod to help her. It’s working for her and she’s looking super dooper but that kind of systematic approach isn’t for me. And so we are going to use our combined desire in weight and friendly banter to spur each other on in the form of Flabatronic.

Now Helen is using her chosen diet plan but I am bit more of a sceptical madam. I see diet plans that work for people but I would like to think that actually all a person needs to do is eat less crap, drink less booze and exercise more – and I don’t need a faffy podcast before bed to help me with that.

My chosen common sense plan is:

No crisps, cake, biscuits, cheese or bread.

No booze – except 3 tins of gin a week.

Run 2k every evening.

I’ll be weighing in every Wednesday and taking a photo (yuk) of my tummy tum tum which at the end I’m going to stop animate together, like some ladies do with their pregnancy belly – only *hopefully* in reverse. I do apologise for anyone freaked out by such photographs, it’s actually bloody hard for me to look at them, let alone put them on here, but my being so open about this I am hoping that it’ll spur me on to get my arse into gear – literally.

“However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file”

Here follows an email conversation from today:

To me:

Hi Annie,

How are you?

I want to introduce you to [witheld], our Network Publishing Manager who is cc’d in this email. From now on [witheld] will be taking care of sending you the content/posts for your website www.mammasaurus.com and arranging for any other requirements you may need.

Just to confirm, the price per article is £70.

Please keep me up-to-date with any questions or concerns you have,

From me:

Good afternoon ladies,

I can understand your concerns, however there only becomes an issue with followed links if you disclose them as ‘sponsored’ or ‘ advertorial’, what we suggest is disclosing articles as ‘guest post’ or ‘This post is supported by…’

Please let me know if you’d like to discuss further.

And my response:

I am going to start sexy time blog.

The use of the phrase ‘sexy time blog’ will tell you that I haven’t a bloody clue or that I am indeed a bundle of repressed sexual energy. Of course I am far too aloof to disclose which of those is correct and so instead I will refer you to a drawing of mine  from a couple of years ago…

Yup those are cock mushrooms ...

At Cybher I had the chance to spend a bit of time with a lady that I have been nattering to on-line a bit for a while, someone whom I admire a jolly lot. The lady is Ruby, who writes at The Erotic Notebook, is also the founder of Eroticon 2012, the UK’s first  conference for sex bloggers and erotica writers.  She is also a parent, feminist, craft blogger, blogger ,woman with lots of ideas and a jolly good laugh. Ruby spoke at Cybher along with Lori Smith from Rarely wears Lipstick and I have to say it was my favourite session of the day for many reasons.

I hold my hands up and admit that if you had said ‘sex blogging’ to me a week ago I would have instantly assumed people blogging about their encounters or making up fictional encounters mainly catering to an audience of randy men and women looking for some, quite literal, light relief. Turns out in fact sex blogging is a broad umbrella term for all kinds of men and women who blog about topics from sex education, feminism, erotic fiction, personal experiences and more. The women I met at the weekend who are sex bloggers, are strong, inspirational women and some of that strength may have rubbed off on me.

I am going to start to write about sex. Initially I thought that ‘I am a strong (ish) woman and I can stand up and say that this is what I want to write about’ openly, I even thought that it may be liberating to write, occasionally, on this blog about sex. Some parent bloggers have sections on craft or cookery so why not have a section on sex? On a practical level though my mother reads this blog, my children too, my husband and his co-workers on occasion too and the reality is that I know that they just wouldn’t feel comfortable reading about that on here. Yes, it’s my blog, my space but ultimately I have to think about other people as well as myself. I feel a trip to GoDaddy coming on to hunt out a good domain name – and I love a good hunt for domains – I am still happy following registering myfirstphotoblog.com a few nights back for a mere fiver.

So I ask you kind folk – have you a suggestion of a name for this new blog of mine and indeed a pen name that I can give myself?

More gum than a packet full of bubblegum yomping Gummi Bears, I am an animal lover and let’s be honest ,as this photo shows – a sexy beast! It’s a bit early this week as a few of us are off at Cybher tomozzle!

When I started off the blogging community was awash with ‘what happened at Cybermummy. Sadly before my time. Next the community was buzzing about the MAD Awards. I recall Tweeting out at the time ‘What is all this MADs stuff about?’, to me it was another mysterious thing that everyone seemed to be nattering on about but I had not the foggiest clue about the who, what, when, where, whys.

Now in a bizarre turn of events I have heard that I have been shortlisted in The Mad Awards 2012.

*Insert stunned face here*

*Now insert excitable giggle here*

As bloggers we all love a bit of recognition be it in the form of a comment or a full blown scattering of gold plated rose petals at their feet and so when I heard my mind was literally blown. I have to say a big thank you (said with a slight grimace and a cheeky chappy wink) to Emily from A Mummy Too and Helen from Actually Mummy for tweeting and texting me at 1am to let me know that the shortlists were out.

The shortlists are full of some super bloggers I love and a few that I haven’t yet come across (rectifying that shortly) and yes it’s clichéd but it’s a real honour to be in amongst such a high standard of blogging banditos.

I have been shortlisted as Mammasaurus in ‘Best MAD New Blog’, ‘Most Helpful MAD Blog’ and ‘Most Innovative MAD Blog’.

Love All Blogs is shortlisted in ‘Most Innovative MAD Blog’ too.

There are some great blogs in those categories and I know that votes are precious and there’s no way that I would ask you to vote for me in each of those categories. But…

I really, really, REALLY love Love All Blogs, it’s something that I have put the majority of my energies in to and so if you would like to show me some support in the MADs please consider voting for me as Love All Blogs in Most Innovative MAD Blog.

I won’t tell you porky pies, I’m not a super technical minded bod. I’m learning as I go along. The whole javascript programming that pings off blog entries to Google App Engine which then in turn auto posts to Love All Blogs is not something that I did myself. I had the idea and then badgered my first husband to help me make it happen. I’m a pest like that.

I’m overwhelmed and happy and simply thanks for everyone who nominated me to reach the shortlists and good luck to everyone!

If you would like to vote – for myself or any other blogger then you can do so by clicking here.

Meh, I’ve been without gin – tinned or otherwise all week so maybe that’s to blame for my recent overly critical assassination of perfectly fine  things that I really dislike. Today it’s the turn of the SEO-friendly-obviously-chosen-to-appear-in-google-searches-blog-post-titles.

All I am going to say is that for me personally if ‘Top tips to burn fat by eating lard’ lands in my inbox from an email subscription to another blog I will promptly yawn and ‘trash’ without reading. On the other hand if a post entitled ‘BOOM BOOM BOOM and let me hear you say WAY-O’ drops in I will be all over it like a rash.

Blog post titles which appear (intentionally or not) to be all set up for pure SEO benefit I cannot help but find, well…boring. I would rather try to draw in and engage the readers who like me for me and treasure them rather than spending time and energy on trying to bring traffic to my blog that won’t materialise into a solid long-term readership. Page views are not the  be all and end all.

And apologies to anyone who this unintentionally may offend – I’m not sniping at any one particularly. I am merely gabbling on. I appreciate there are benefits to creating good SEO content. Oh and bumfluff.

I caught a thread on Facebook about who’s wearing what which I must admit freaked me out a teeny bit as you know me folks – jeans and t-shirt it is. I’m not one for glamour, you know this.

So here’s my wannabe outfit for Cybher, what I would wear in my happiest dreams, an outfit that keeps it as real as real can be. Ladies and gent I give to you – my every day blogging attire:

Let me talk you through it… spotty PJ bottoms, wolf t-shirt, big-ass cardy, converse.

Slummy-blog-chic anyone?