Goldfish Bowls to Puddles

Hi everyone, I know I've been quiet lately, but I have a good excuse, I promise. I've been sick and didn't have the inclination to blog. Last Saturday felt like I had an entire large goldfish bowl, glooping it's way around my head, resulting in constant post-nasal drip and nose blowing and watery eyes. By Sunday, it had shrunk into a medium size goldfish bowl. The rest of this week I have been taking it easy which has helped. I'm now down to a teeny-tinny puddle and able to breathe through both nostrils again, yay!

I'm still busy finishing off the last Namibia post, so keep an eye out for that. It's also my birthday month. My parents and grandparents are coming to visit Cape Town over the time of my birthday so I'm looking forward to having them here!

In the mean-time here's a little pic of how my head felt on Saturday...Has anyone else felt like this recently? 

Blogging - Behind the Scenes

Every now and then, I get asked how I find time to write regularly on my blog. This is one of those things that everyone who blogs has to deal with and figure out. As a new blogger, I just wrote and posted when I felt like it. I had a lot more time to myself when I started out, since I lived alone in Benoni and I was able to spend a lot of my evenings preparing posts. Since moving to Cape Town, it's been a bit more of a juggling act, but I've found that the most useful thing is to have some sort of plan (ideally written down somewhere). 

My blog plan involves trying to create and publish 8 blog posts per month (about twice a week). Sometimes I post more often than twice a week and sometimes I post less often. But usually, around the end of one month, or the beginning of the next, I sit down and try to brainstorm a list of 8 blog post ideas that I can share throughout the next month. I like the idea of having a total number of posts per month as it gives me a flexibility to choose what I want to post and when, as well as a tangible goal that I can look back on to see if I have accomplished it or not.

Many of the blogs I follow advocate having some sort of focus for your blog. Having a focus may at first seem limiting, but it can definitely help you to come up with good content and thus make you more inclined to find time to write. I'm still trying to figure this one out. At the beginning of this year, I started thinking about where I want to focus my blog. I have so many areas of interest that I don't really know what to include or exclude, but that's another story.

In terms of actually creating my posts, I find that free evenings and free weekends I spend a lot of time preparing for posts, getting the right pictures together, and actually writing a skeleton post that I flesh out a bit before putting on the final touches and posting. Sometimes I'll re-write a sentence or a paragraph multiple times in order to get it to read correctly. I have also found that I spend a lot more time these days editing my pictures and making them look good before I upload them to a post - looking back over my posts I like to think that the quality of my images has improved over time as I've learnt a bit more about photography and editing pictures! Knowing when I'm going to be busy allows me to plan in advance and prepare some blog posts in advance so that all I need to do is press "Publish" on the day which is a really useful trick.

Over April I didn't get around to creating a blog plan and it definitely felt as though I didn't have a plan last month. Luckily I was able to sit down last weekend and I wrote down a blog plan for May, that consists mainly of posts about our recent trip to Namibia (you can catch up on that here, here, here and here and as soon as I'm finished editing pictures, more posts will be up). Maybe I'll be proactive and even try and start my blog plan for June!

What are your best blogging tips?

Namibia Travels: Part 4

Welcome to my Namibia Travels series! If you've just joined me, you can catch up on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before making your way through today's post.

Day 5 and 6:
We woke up to a still-mizzy campsite. This called for some coffee and rusks with Frosty's folks, as well as his aunt and uncle (who very kindly let us gatecrash a night in their campsite with them at Tiger Reef) before we started packing up camp.

Luckily we didn't have too much to pack up and all too soon, 4 people's worth of camping gear was packed into my little car, we were bidding farewell to Frosty's aunt and uncle and we went on to explore Swakop a bit more before setting off on the road again. Since the weather wasn't ideal, we took a quick stroll along a promanade with a restaurant right at the end in the middle of the ocean. On our way back to the car, we encountered a very persistent and clever salesman who somehow conned convinced us to buy some carved pine nuts (on which he engraved our names amongst the pre-engraved animals while he was chatting to us). 

Restaurant in the middle of the ocean.
I love this picture - when I edited in black and white it turned out really nicely!

Another shot of the restaurant in the middle of the ocean at Spitzkoppe.

Black and white picture 

View of the land from the sea (restaurant) - the picture doesn't do the colours in the sky justice!

Before we left Swakop, we were told that Café Anton was the place to go and get coffee and Apfelstrudel. It had the most incredible looking pastries lined up on it's counters and it was just the thing to complement a cool day out on the Namibian Coast. 

On our way back to Okahandja, where we would be staying the night with a different aunt and uncle of Frosty's, we stopped off at Spitzkoppe. I wasn't exactly sure of what to expect, but a tiny pool of water surrounded by green grass in the middle of a bunch of rocks wasn't part of that expectation! We spent a lovely morning and part of the afternoon scrambling up rocks and finding a shady spot to have a picnic lunch. After arriving in Okahandja, we spent a lovely evening ensconced around a warm fire and chatting with Frosty's family. Other than our overnight stay at Savanna Guest Farm, this was the only other night when we didn't have to pitch a tent in the evening and then take it down the next morning!  

My socks, all clean after having mayo all over them the previous day.
I loved the reflections in this pic.

The entrance to Spitzkoppe.

Pretty yellow desert flower

Pretty pink desert flowers

Black and white picture with Frosty in the background

Another desert flower - this time orangey/peach.

Curly plant with white flowers on it.

We found a few lizard friends - here's one of them. Don't you love the colours?

One of the pools at Spitzkoppe. Can you see Frosty doing his thing
(climbing to the top of the rocks) way in the distance?

Another pic of the pool - there were even fish and tadpoles inside!

Playing around with twig and mountain pictures

View from the rocks we found to climb in Spitzkoppe

And the view in the other direction - look how small the pool
looks from this view point!

Frosty and I playing around

View from the very top of the rocks.

Another lizard friend

And this guy, who we found in a tree!

Orange berries - I loved the contrast between the orange and green.

We found a great picnic spot in the shade of a big rock.

This little bird kept coming back to admire it's reflection in my car window.

Sun bird feeding (I think maybe the Dusky Sunbird)

Somewhere on the road between Spitzkoppe and Okahandja

Sunset on the road

Beautiful tree outside Frosty's aunt and uncle's place 

I may have fallen slightly in love with this clever collie! 

Procrastination List

So, now that I've hit the 1 year mark with Practical Cookie, I seem to have hit a rut in terms of my blogging. I thought instead of trying to think up new posts, I would share what I do when I'm procrastinating trying to think up new posts:

• Trying my best to finish this course from Udacity (a site which offers free and paid courses on a variety of topics). I'm on to the final strait but every time I think I've solved the problem, the automatic markers returns my code with a message saying that my code doesn't work for a certain code case. I've been stuck on this for about a week and just want to get it working so I can start my next course!
• Getting completely and utterly lost in the world of words (aka reading).
• Preparing for and getting ready to finish off the HCD course that we started a while back as a team building exercise for EWB-WC.
• Sleeping. Or else thinking about sleeping.
• Cooking because I'm going away this weekend with a bunch of people and I'm sorting out dinner for Friday night.
• Watching cool plays (like Oklahoma at the ArtScape Theatre) and going out to dinner with visiting friends and cooking dinner for other friends.

Hopefully I'll have an epiphany be back to more consistent posting soon!

Practical Cookie Turns 1!

It's been a year since Practical Cookie first started. This is a major milestone. And when I mean major, I mean that I tried blogging in high school and stopped. I tried blogging in varsity and stopped. I tried blogging again in varsity and stopped again. Finally, when I was bored in the evenings in Benoni and Bokburg, I took to blogging as a way of keeping myself busy.

Now that I've moved back to Cape Town I'm no longer bored, however I find myself spending more and more time thinking about posts to share with you. Sometimes I don't post as often as I hope, but at the beginning of this year, I decided to try and post twice a week (or 8 times a month) and I think I've been sticking to that goal, more or less.

I've been told it's good to take stock every now and then, to assess where you've come from and where you're going. My 1 year of blogging seems as good a time as any to do this, so here's my list.

• Learnt: I had missed writing, until I started writing again. I like sharing my thoughts, pictures, recipes, random ramblings.
• Achieved: blogging more or less consistently for a whole year!
• Enjoy: planning my posts, sharing the places I've been, trying to figure out what path I want to take Practical Cookie.
• Future: Try to blog twice a week, do a bit more blog planning and have a few blog posts "on tap" at any one time.

My Practical Cookie mascot that I designed earlier this year!

I hope that you've enjoyed the journey as much as I have! If you want to keep up with my posts, feel free to go and like my Facebook page. Or follow me on Instagram.

A New Look!

Everyone, I'm sure by now you've realised that Practical Cookie has had a bit of a makeover. Welcome to the new look Practical Cookie. I now even have my own mascot!

For a while now, I've been mulling over how I can make Practical Cookie better and today I had an epiphany while trying to come up with logo designs - here's my initial sketch that I did of Practical Cookie (she's a Gingerbread girl) holding a paintbrush and hammer.

Creative AND hands-on

 And just in case you've missed it, here's the final Practical Cookie mascot!

I first took a picture of her, using my phone. Then I used GIMP (a free image editing platform) to edit and tweak her a bit, until my final product came to fruition below.

I'm really excited about my new look blog. What do you think?

Bloglovin - Lunch Hour Reading

It's been a crazy week for me and I haven't had much time to do any blogging. So while I get back into the swing of things, check out some of these sites for some different blogs and interesting information.

My favourite blogger is launching her own website, so you can take a look here. And definitely check out her cards - original, funny and appealing on so many levels! This letter to blogspot made me a little sad, but at the same time, so incredibly excited to follow the next steps!

Blogging takes a lot of time - so it's incredibly admirable that Mrs D is attempting to do this - head over to her blog to see why and while learning about her first memories, think about your own first memories.

Amble over to Picking Up Stompies to read some short and sweet posts if you only have a few minutes of reading time.

I have lots to share with you, so keep your eyes peeled for some new posts from me!

Blogs I Enjoy

When I was younger I often enjoyed reading the books written in a diary-style, where you would have a first person account of someone else's life. A peek into their world, their thoughts, their lives. A blog is something like that and you can find the most interesting things when browsing the net.

How great is this MnM mug? I got it as a gift from a friend and love to use it
when I've had a bad day!

Here are some of the blogs that I've been enjoying - a few were the inspiration for my own blog. Others are ones that I found after I started blogging. And a few are blogs of people that I know personally and just love reading. So find a few minutes to put aside, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, and enjoy clicking through this list of blogs. And, for those that are proudly South African, you'll be happy to know that most of these blogs are written by people with some or other link to South Africa (usually because they're South African).

IndieBerries

This blog is one of the reasons I started blogging - IndieBerries and I hail from the same small town and went to the same junior school and high school. I was a tiny little second-former when she was in matric, but I always remember her as being one of the more approachable and friendly matrics. Her cartoons are incredible - go and read some now!

Midlands Musings

The author of Midlands Musings often write emotional, raw pieces that aren't afraid of telling it like it is and making you think. I was at first interested because the Midlands is still the place that I think of when I think of Home. But I continued following her for her honest posts and powerful words. Enjoy!

Mrs D Plus 3

I found this blog (and the one above and the one below) through IndieBerries. Pretty most of my cousins are married with kids and I think of them whenever I read this blog. She offers up great practical advice and her family adventures will keep you glued to your screen for hours.

Little Miss Medic

An account of the trials and tribulations of being a doctor. She is based in Cape Town and the stories on this blog are often hilarious - sometimes you really have to wonder how some people's minds work. Every now and then her posts are splattered with some doctor-type humour, so if you have a queasy stomach, keep an eye out for those posts! 

InsideMegsCloset

Probably the most fashionable engineer you will ever meet. I should know, since I lived with this lovely lady for two years during varsity and raided her closet on numerous occasions when preparing for a night out! You can follow her adventures in the UK and her sewing stories right here. She also has a clothing range called Jemimah - I haven't had the chance to get anything yet, but now that I'm back in Cape Town it's only a matter of time!

PickingUpStompies

Everyone loves to eavesdrop and this blog gives a great account of what you can learn when you keep your ears open. There are some absolute gems in here. And, since it could be a stompie from anywhere - the posts are always varied and interesting.

TheYesProject

The concept of The Yes Project is something that I love. "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" is the caption at the top of the page. Karaoke, blind dates, swapping blogs with PickingUpStompies and rock climbing - there's always something out there that you can do for the first time, don't be afraid and just say "yes".

Hamba Africa

If you love motorcycles and travel adventures and Africa, then I would definitely recommend this blog. I had the privilege of working with the author last year as part of a committee, and we also went to junior school together (I was a few years behind him). There are some amazing articles and accounts that really make you proud to live in such a beautiful part of the world and his descriptions of the places make you want to go there yourself!