I’ve been himming and hawing about whether I should write this post or not - the last time I opened my mouth to stand up for girl bloggers (choosing of categories for the las Irish Blog Awards) I was shouted down quite vociferously!

But I think I can get away with this one…. K8 recently awarded me a “Rockin’ Girl Blogger” award!

It’s a meme that’s been doing the rounds and when you receive the award then you get to award it to the best girl bloggers of your choice. As K8 describes it:

It’s a sort of… pass the pink idea, sort of like a little dig of appreciation to your fellow girlie bloggers.

With that in mind, I took a run through my blogroll to see who I should award one to and the results are in. Being typically me, I didn’t stick to just 5 girlies, as I had 6 very deserving people that I couldn’t choose between…

Grannymar - how could I not? The woman who barely knew anything about blogging a year ago now has her own domain and is entertaining people with her wisdom and wit day after day…

Beaut.ie - the girls only came onto the scene late last year but they’ve revolutionised beauty blogging in Ireland and thoroughly deserve ‘yet another’ award!

Red Mum - Mother, Photographer and great drinking buddie, her column paints a true picture of life with a teenager while her photos display the many facets of Dublin life.

The Humble Housewife / Frugal Tiger - Deborah dispenses both delicious recipes and thoughtful money saving tips - an essential in today’s costly Ireland.

Maman Poulet - Recently moved to a nice spanky clean new home, the pilot of the mothership casts her acid tongue over Irish politics and anything else that catches her fancy.

Mary Gilmartin - The ultimate girl geek, the languages that she knows certainly aren’t the worldly ones that you and I speak! Follow her path to learning Japanese and other tidbits that cross her path over at her ‘Crossing the Net as I Work’ blog.

It’s been another week without posts, mainly because I was working on moving Mum’s blog over to a self-hosted platform and transferring her from Blogger to WordPress. The main reason was her love of podcasting - while there are a lot of services out there that offer free podcast hosting, such as Evoca, they have limited numbers of minutes available. Mum has filled up several free accounts, so we needed to move her to a permanent home.

After doing a bit of research, and seeing the WordPress plugin that Grandad has been using, I decided that a move to WordPress was going to be in order if this was all to work. Luckily, the latest version of WordPress (2.2) has be written to cope with the import from ‘New’ Blogger accounts, so the transfer was pretty painless in the end.

I’ve selected a nice summery clean theme for Mum, which her visitors seem to like, but she’s not so sure herself. Still, since there are so many themes available out there, it will be easy to switch her over to another one if she changes her mind. The new Widgets area in the latest install makes it easy to rearrange the Sidebar info, be that over the one or two sidebars that you have in your chosen theme.

Mum’s using Audacity to record her Podcasts, and I’ve provided her with a bunch of tutorials so that hopefully she will take the next step and be able to edit her recordings if it’s needed. At the moment her podcasts (while interesting) are straight read-throughs of blog posts. I like this, as it adds feeling and additional elements to the post and you feel like it’s a memory being told just for you.

The podcasts are then being exported as mp3 files and loaded to my hosting account. There’s a great little plugin for WordPress that I found called simply ‘Audio Player’ that allows the mp3 to be called with a simple tag. I wanted to keep things simple for Mum and have as few steps in the process as possible, especially since I only had a few hours to teach her the new method. She seems to be quite comfortable with it and we’ve had a few podcasts already this week.

Not one to be outdone by his mother-in-law, George spent yesterday evening playing with his theme and upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. He’s made a few changes, mainly to his sidebars, but has had some issues that he’s been unable to resolve, which mean that sometimes the sidebars appear and sometimes not. Hopefully as he posts some more, NOT using the Rich Text Editor, these will resolve themselves.

If you’re not familiar with the letters and numbers above, they are US movie classifications.

Via the Limerick Blogger this week is a little service from Mingle2 (a dating service I believe) that looks at your blog, website or My Space page and then gives it an appropriate rating based on the words used within.

My site easily came up as a ‘G’ rating, but I think there’s more fun to be had here… Who do you think would get the worse rating - Mr Mulley for his liberal use of the word cunt recently or Mr Twenty Major for his consistent use of all swear words?

Mr Mulley

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* gay (2x)
* dead (1x)

Twenty Major

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* fucking (6x)
* cocaine (4x)
* cunt (3x)
* dangerous (2x)
* sexy (1x)

Yup, looks like Ireland’s most foul-mouthed blogger runs away with yet another title, Use of the most swear words in a blog!

What about those paragons among us? Are they as clean as they seem?

Grannymar

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* pain (3x)
* breast (2x)

I know my mother had trouble encouraging me to breastfeed, but was I that much of a pain?

However the funniest one that I found had to be the Humble Housewife… Parents are now warned!

Humble Housewife

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* knife (2x)
* crack (1x)

So apparently cooking terms are now PG-rated - who’s have believed it?

Hmmm, I wonder if posting this post will cause my blog to slide downwards from it’s clean ‘G’ rating?

Oh God, I’ve been meaning and promising to post this for ages, and now that the wedding is out of the way I no longer have an excuse!

Our wedding was originally planned for 120 people, but as a lot of them were from overseas we ended up with 85 at the ceremony and meal. But anyhow, it was still kept to under €10k, which in today’s world is something of a miracle. I can’t guarantee that you can do the same for your wedding, but here are a few tips that might help (and a few geek notes along the way…)

Firstly, find out who in your friends and family you can tap for expertise. Send out a general call to all you know asking for advice, recommendations and suggestions for service providers. To that end, here are my top ten money saving tips!

1. I was able to ask my mother (grannymar) who is an excellent seamstress to make my wedding outfit, and as you can see - she did me proud!
2. My cousin, RichardM, is a wedding photographer. I didn’t want too many formal shots or any ’staged funny’ shots, so going to someone I was comfortable with was a great help, I could be completely clear with him. Most important advice here, have a clear list of any family/friends shots you really want and make sure they know they are needed. Give a copy of this list to the photographer, bestman and chief bridesmaid so that they can locate people in advance and therefore avoid stress for yourself.
3. My aunt is a florist so I was able to get my bouquet from her. Research in advance what styles and colours you would like and have an idea about the size - I went for side plate size (photos will follow soon), but what I hadn’t realised was just how heavy the bouquet would be by the end of holding it for an hour of photos.
4. Ask around and see if anyone knows a D.J. or band and compare rates. Try to see the band/D.J. at a previous gig if possible and give them any requests at least two weeks in advance. Having both a D.J. and band will push the costs up to well over €1000, we went with D.J. only and it was €350 for the night - a massive saving. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the music and the floor was crowded all night.
5. Make your own invitations. We went with plain card and designed and decorated our own, but you can also buy packs that come with invite, menu, placecards etc. Try and find out if anyone you know does calligraphy, always looks best on the placecards.
6. Take the headache out of doing your seating plan and managing your RSVP by using simpleseating.com it automatically takes people who you mark as not coming off the table assignment and displays everything in a nice visual manner. Also makes it easy to share your seating plan with your wedding planner / mother / groom wherever you are.
7. Check our the corkage charges at the reception venue. We found that it was cheaper to bring our own wine and let them open as many bottles as needed. I actually went to Lidl during one of their wine sales and picked up 24 white and 24 red and they went down a storm. Even if it doesn’t save you any money, it gives you more flexibility in your wine choice. We also brought soft drinks for the children and non-drinkers, hotels will normally not charge corkage on these.
8. Serve your wedding cake as your dessert. We cut the cake before dinner and then it was plated and served to the guests as dessert, which resulted in a saving of €1.50 per person to us! It may seem small, but all the little savings soon add up!
9. Decorate with helium ballons instead of flowers. Part of our hotel reception package included them putting flowers on all the tables, but I wasn’t sure about them fitting in with my colour scheme. I contacted a local party equipment firm (and availed of my work discount of 10%) and they decorated the function room for me for €250. This included a bunch of 4 on each of the tables, a small double arch over the cake table and a large twisty arch (solid ballons, no gaps) with flowers and netting behind the top table. I then completed the look by printing up my own menus, and designing my own favours (tall, solid bottomed shot glasses with little wedding themed stickers on them, filled with mini-eggs - because I hate sugared almonds!) and scattering little hearts in purple & silver over the tables (these were my colours).
10. Our biggest saving overall for the reception was doing buffet food instead of serving to the tables. We saved over €20 per person by doing this and no-one complained at all, in fact some people were seen to head up for second and even third helpings! People were able to pick and choose what they wanted from the hot and cold food selections, and they still served the top table so that the parents didn’t need to get up.

Get wedding insurance! Due to illness in George’s family, we were considering having to move the wedding date (luckily we didn’t have to). In the case of anything going wrong you’ll be incredibly glad that you bought the insurance. Shop around online and you can pick up coverage for a €20k wedding for as little as €200.Now for the geeky stuff as promised!

We used WeddingWishlist.ie to put together a nice little wedding website with the ceremony and reception info, accommodation, maps and our wedding registry. The choice of shops to choose from for the wedding is limited, but the cool thing is that you can also set up ‘Couple Funds’ which your guests can contribute to. We did this for our honeymoon hotels, grand prix tickets and our ‘new flooring funds’ for our new house.

Finally, on my blog I used a nice little applet from whenismywedding.com to count down the days to the wedding date - handy so that you can keep a track of just how many days you have left to panic!

I hope that this info is of use to some of you out there, and if you have any questions then just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them!

First, background: Over the last few years grannymar has been worried by the introduction of water charges/rates in Northern Ireland in 07/08. The plan was not to install water meters and she would have ended up being charged as much as a family of four!

Today she sent a mail with some good news, sourced from the BBC:

Proposed new water charges will not be introduced in 2007-2008, First Minister Ian Paisley has said.
The £75m cost of the move will be paid for from extra funds negotiated from Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The decision was taken as the new power-sharing executive met for the first time at Stormont in Belfast.

Mr Paisley said the executive had decided to conduct a review to address financing water and sewerage services, to be completed by the autumn.

He said not imposing the charges would save the average Northern Ireland household £100 in the year ahead.
(snip for length)

There was a wonderful image that ran alongside the article, I have to say that growing up in Northern Ireland I never thought that I would EVER see anything like this…

Gerry over at UnLaoised also had a good image of the new Assembly members today - it made me laugh and reminded me of the (slightly) sick sense of humour that we have in NI…

Every time I drive home to see grannymar, on the run into Belfast you pass the infamous Milltown Cemetery on the left (where Michael Stone killed 3 people and injured 60 during an IRA in 1988). What always makes me grin however, is that on the opposite side of the road in an industrial estate fringing the motorway is a business called Armatile - an obvious play on the Armalite weapons manufacturer, whose guns have figured heavily in the history of NI… but then no matter how bleak it got, we could always poke fun at ourselves.

Still, it’s good that those dark days seem to be pretty much behind us now…

Bonus link: The Armalite and the ballot box strategy

My mum, grannymar, has uploaded a wonderful couple of emotional podcasts over at her site.

She talks about ‘Our John’ and the joys and struggles that he encountered during his turbulent life. I cried, a lot, while listening to these.

For me, this is why I wanted to get her into blogging/podcasting in the first place. Having lost my father to cancer when I was 19 years old and never knowing my paternal grandparents, I want to ensure that any future children of mine get a chance to hear the stories I heard sitting on my parents knees… I don’t trust myself to get all the details correct, so with Mum recording them they will be faithfully retold in the future for generations to come.

Firstly, and most importantly the photos are up here (even though I didn’t manage to get any of Tom dancing, and missed that as I had to leave early…). There’s even a photo of TwentyMajor in there, but I’m not saying which one!

A great night was had by all, even if Grannymar didn’t win. It was great to catch up with old friends and new alike and see the fantastic and fabulous of the Irish Blogosphere.

Kudos should go mainly to Bernie Goldbach for winning and then immediately giving away to Damien his award for Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere, the standing ovation that Damien got was certainly well deserved. Bock the Robber and his entourage won the award for best-dressed men, while the girls of beaut.ie won best dressed females - but in fairness, who else could that have gone to???

I was delighted to see Conor win Best Blog Post for his hilarious vasectomy story, and he and the wife profited from having a night away from the kids! We twittered back and forth all evening, so it was good to have the updates, even if he was only sitting 5 rows down from me! Hope the hangover isn’t too bad today Conor!

Finally, big thanks to all the organisers and especially Suzy, who live blogged the results of all the awards from the back of the room. A full list of all the winners can be found here.

See you there again next year!

It’s your last chance to vote in the Irish Blog Awards! Voting closes at 5pm today (Ireland time).

I’ve been nominated in the Best Newcomer category, but more importantly - Grannymar (my Mum) has been nominated for Best Podcaster and also for Best Podcast for ‘The Favour’ on her blog ‘Oldbones’.

So please head over and vote for Oldbones in the Best Podcast and Best Podcaster categories - she really deserves it!!!

Click the image below to take you to the voting page…

As I’ve said in a few other posts, I was attending meetings in the Phoenix area of Arizona last week. Although we were in solid meetings all day from 8am - 5pm (and sometimes later), I was still able to get out and about seeing old friends and shopping.

I have a huge amount of thoughts and observations on AZ, but I can’t be bothered to type them all, so I’m going to do something that Mum has been bugging me to do for ages, and throw together a podcast, it should be up later this week.
Talking of Mum, I called her when I landed back in Heathrow - with the 7-hour time difference and her having ‘thrown out’ her back last week, I just never got a chance to talk to her while I was away. Practically the first words out of her mouth were “I got two nominations, and you only got one!”. She was, of course, talking about the Irish Blog Awards, the shortlists for which had been announced while I was flying back over the Atlantic.

It seems that someone out there likes what I do, as I’ve been nominated in the Best Newcomer category, while Mum managed to rake in nominations for both Best Podcaster and best Podcast (for ‘The Favour‘ - her FIRST EVER podcast!). Voting is now on until Friday 16th Feb and then the top 5 (?) in each category go forward before the panel of judges.

So go forth and vote for ellybabes for Best Newcomer!

There’s a lot of strong competition in the category, but I’d love to even make it to the final five on the shortlist and have an excuse to go to the awards ceremony…

And while you’re there, you may as well pop in a vote for oldbones in the Best Podcast and Best Podcaster cetegories!

I seem to have not really suffered with Jetlag this time, which is unusual for me, but I’m very glad that I didn’t, as the next few weeks will be very busy - there’s only 17 weeks until ‘the wedding’ apparently and I still have to squeeze in work trips to Israel and Vietnam before then, nevermind planning the whole wedding thing!!!

When I was talking to Martine at the weekend she was speaking about the heatwave that France is facing at this time… it’s not as bad as the one during 2003, but still pretty severe all the same… I was thinking today about the differences in language and how we describe this period of year:

In the English speaking world it’s called the “Dog Days of Summer” - not because of dogs lying around quietly trying to find some shade to relax in as the word suggests visually, but rather because it is during this time frame that the sun rises and sets at the same time as Sirius - the largest and brightest star in the Canis (dog in latin) Major constellation. In French, the word canicule, from the latin canis, designates this hottest period of the year. I love the pronounciation of that word - ‘heatwave’, ‘dog days’ sound soft and inviting, but canicule is a much harsher word, evoking the hardship it brings to France… It also makes me think of a grumbling Scottish person who ‘canny cool’ down…

Thoughts go out to Mum, who had a bit of a tumble in the garden and is now sporting a spiffy cast on her right arm…

and if that wasn’t enough to deal with, she then woke up the morning after to find this little friend in her bed…

What I’m reading today:
* Still plugging through the back posts on Petite Anglaise, i only wish there were more hours in the day to spend here…
* Wired’s Guide to making the most of your digital life
* Summer recipes on Martha Stewart - may as well BBQ this weekend if the weather is good…

What I’m listening to today:
* George’s mad picks on Pandora, he says he’s in love with it - should I be worried?
* My Italian course from Linguaphone, purchased cheap thanks to the Daily Mail (useful for once!).