An Exciting Thing Happened . . .

An exciting thing happened! I had an article published in Thrive magazine, and I’ve been bursting to share this milestone with you.

I had posted something I was quite proud of, back in January, when things were still dark and I was just starting my relationship with my brother’s camera. It’s a pretty imposing camera, used to fantastic effect by an award winning wildlife photographer, and now in the nervous and inexperienced hands of his devastated sister. I wanted to respect the camera and do something he might have been proud of. The photos in this post are the first purposeful images I took with it and I was really pleased with the results.

At the time I was taking part in the totally inspiring e-course, Blog with Pip. The super-friendly and super-talented Pip Lincolne, of Meet me at Mikes, encourages good blogging manners and relationship building by commenting and taking part on blogs you admire, as an organic way of building an audience for your own blog. There’s no paying for Facebook ‘likes’ or employing people to artificially inflate reader numbers in Pip-world – friendliness and old-fashioned good manners are the way to go.

So, when I saw an Instagram call-out to food bloggers to submit their work to the UK’s Thrive Magazine, I thought, in the spirit of the new, bolder me, “Why not!” I nervously emailed them a link to the post, and a hint that I was planning a follow-up post with a meal plan. I was thrilled when they replied that they loved it and wanted me to email over a link to the follow-up too.

OK, panic stations. I had planned the follow-up post, but it was still in my head. I tried to buy some time by emailing a few questions to Thrive, but I didn’t get a response straight away – busy people I suppose. My first thoughts were, of course, self doubt – maybe they had lost interest/something better had come along/they were just being polite. I decided to just get my head down and do it for myself regardless. I had originally planned the post for The Urban Nest anyway, and I didn’t want to get side-tracked by this.

A mammoth week of fine-tuning, cooking, styling and photographing followed. My family patiently waited to eat whilst I fiddled with aperture and ISO settings each evening. It was a huge amount of work, but came together pretty well. I was pleased, and posted the article 7 Days of Dinners on The Urban Nest, just as intended. I emailed the link to Thrive and waited.

Success! Thrive has published 7 Days of Dinners in their print and online Spring edition, has fully credited me and included links to the original article in the blog and my social media. It seems there are nice people out there in media land. A huge thank you to Thrive, for giving me a chance.

I might even dare to do some more now. What do you think?

If you’d like to check out Thrive here are their details:
Web: www.thrivemagazine.co.uk
Facebook: ThriveFeelAlive
Instagram: @thrivemagazine
Twitter: @thrivefeelalive