Blog Awards Finals: It's all over for another year

Last Saturday night was the Blog Awards Final. I know, I’m as relieved as you are that it’s all over. I didn’t win in either of the categories that I was nominated in. The tumbleweed can start growing again all uover the blog and I can forget that people read it. During awards judging season it sort of feels like there’s extra pressure to redesign and make things pretty, to write very regularly and to produce amazing content. You all noticed, right?

I’m not a fan of being judged in general so there was a sort of stress brought on between the thoughts that blog was always being assessed and the constant begging for votes to stay in the top ten of the best blogpost category.

I did as much as I could, and tried to remember that this whole blogging thing is a hobby, so I didn’t make too many radical changes.

It was a real honour to be shortlisted, and a lovely surprise to be a finalist in the best Parenting blog category, the first time that this category has been in the awards. It was won by Lisa of Mama.ie who is the founder of the Irish Parenting Bloggers group.

The night itself was fantastic fun, kicking off with a prosecco toast in our room with my roommate for the night, lovely Lucy who writes Learnermama.com. The first official event was photos, then a beer reception from Vanguard Beer. Next we took our seats for the awards ceremony, with ’80s theme dress optional (I opted out), with awards being presented between the courses and there were spot prizes and interval music too.

The Irish Parenting Bloggers were very well represented- and we had great fun at our table with my roomie Learner Mama and Office Mum, Where Wishes Come From, Mr & Mrs Put the Kettle On, Life on Hushabye Farm, Mr & Mrs Dairyfreekids and Dr How from Science Wows.

(I started trying to link all the Irish Parenting Bloggers that were there but there were so many I was afraid I’ve leave someone out, but you can find everyone over here on the Irish Parenting Bloggers site)

Believe it or not there were even non-parenting bloggers there and I had a catch up with Fiona Dillon and it was lovely to meet An Cailin Rua for the first time.

Desserts were sponsored by Glenisk and were based on cocktails and served in shotglasses, we had to tweet our favourites- mine was Irish Coffee.

We had such a good night, so many laughs with a great gang of gals, singing (screeching), dancing, throwing shapes and gossiping. And drinking. I felt like I was laughing all night. Good times.

And with all good times come, goodie bags, ours had little gifts from all the sponsors, my favourites being the Glenisk yogurt vouchers, mug from Lifestyle that sadly didn’t make it home, the slinkies that the kids fought over, the bag itself from Zazzle, very nice popcorn from “propercorn” and a family pass for Airfield Farm. I was less excited by the bodyspray and the Weightwatchers booklet and pen, but sure different strokes for different folks. And it is a clicky pen, I love clicky pens. We also got finalist certificates, but I forgot to collect my best blogpost one. (Beating myself into a dress won that category).

The organisers Amanda and Lorna put in a huge amount of effort, it’s a mammoth task to set up everything from the nominations right through to the event itself. You can check out all the winners here.

On a personal note I want to thank everyone for their tolerance support during my months of badgering for votes. I harassed family, friends, work colleagues, followers on both twitter and Facebook, and all of their friends too. Sorry about that. My family plagued their friends and my Dad, well, my Dad got slightly obsessed, he took the whole thing very seriously he said it reminded him of electioneering in the ’80s- he watched the numbers go up and assessed the competition, and gave me updates and encouragement to keep at it when I was tired of it all. Cheers Dad.

Until next year, cringe.

Here are some blurry photos to give you a sense of the night. My battery died so thanks to Laura, Lisa, Lucy, Olivia, Sadhbh or whoever else’s photos that I “borrowed”.