It's Christmas Eve!!! I can't ruddy believe it. This month has gone so fast, that I almost feel like Bernard and his watch have been around playing and paused time on the 1st of December, then pressed go again and it's now the 24th. Okay that made absolutely no sense, but hopefully you get what I mean.

What I'm trying to say is: where has this month gone?

I don't even know if I feel Christmassy you know, how bad is that? I feel a bit bad, because I never actually did much in December. Our festive weekend got cancelled due to snow, I've not visited a Christmas market, and I feel like my Christmas spirit has been a bit non existent this year which makes me feel a bit sad. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I'm just putting too much pressure on myself to feel all festive? Who knows.

Anyways, I'm waffling on as per usual. So today is the second to last day of blogmas, and I was thinking 'hmm what should I do for today's post?' I was going to do a standard post about what I look forward to over Christmas, or some kind of Christmas Eve memory post, but I thought you know what, let's do something else and I thought that I'd do a post all about my favourite bloggers and Instagrammers in 2017.

I'm not sure if I'll end up blogging over the Christmas break, I'm of course incredibly fortunate to be able to take a break over Christmas, and I'm thinking I may hide my laptop and have a few days away from being online.  So I thought that I'd do a bit of a round up now of my fave bloggers, I also thought if you can't share the love on Christmas Eve then when can you?

Bloggers :

I still love reading blogs, and writing posts is still one of my favourite things to do. Here are some of my favourite bloggers from the year who's posts I never miss.

Sophie's Make Up: I think I've mentioned Sophie before, but I want to mention her again, as her blog is one of my faves. I love her photogprahy, and her flat lays are actual flatlay goals. She also seems so sweet too!

Apartment Number 4 : I love Victoria's blog for home decor inspo, her weekly newsletter is always a weekly highlight too! Her post on the book The Secret recently, really inspired me, and I bought the book to read over Christmas. It's been a long time since a blog post really inspired me, and I always love seeing her new posts.

WearDaisyWent : OMG Daisy's blog has the dreamiest of blog photography. I swoon over every single post!

Mariannan: I've been reading Marianna's blog for years, and it remains one of my faves. I love her short personal posts, and this is something I want to do more of in 2018. I think I'll always read and love Marianna's blog, I think I've been following her for about 7 years now!

Lust Living : I'm going to warn you now, that reading Olivia's blog will give you total house envy. Her interior taste is amazing and I would happily pay for her to come decorate my house. She's also started YouTube too recently which made me so happy!

The Little Plum: Chloe's blog has really gone from strength to strength this year, and that's cause her blog is so different to many others out there ATM. She's made me feel inspired to start writing real posts again, I feel like I've got lost in a sea of Pinterest and trying to be brand friendly, whilst Chloe nails it. She does personal but is also still brand friendly, I think I want to be more like Chloe in 2018. One of her latest posts on YouTube had me nodding my head along for the most part, and when a blog makes you do that, you know it's a good un!

The Skinny Confidential : Lauyrn's blog is everything I want from a blog, it's real, no bullshit, but also still really aesthetically pleasing. I love Lauryn and her podcasts and I never miss a post from her. The only thing is, I want everything she recommends so not great for my bank balance!

Instagrammers :

What She Did : I met Beth this year at a blogging event in Essex, where we realised we lived 10 mins away from each other! Crazy! I've gotten to know Beth over the year, and I'm always so inspired by her work ethic. She is one of the most creative and hardworking bloggers I know, and she does everything from her phone. I genuinely think she's some kind of superhero. Her make up looks are insane, and you must go follow her.

WeAreTwinset: I want you to say hello to my fashion idols of 2017. Sarah and Philippa are absolutely gorgeous and so stylish. They nail that simple but stylish look, and wear a lot of high street which I love! I usually find myself scrolling through their feed when I need outfit inspo!

Jess C Hamilton : Jess is one of the biggest babes around and her Instagram is full of the most amazing pictures. She is like something from Pinterest and she has the most creative ideas for photos. I literally save every single photo of hers!

YouTubers :

Hello October : Suzie has been one of my faves for many years, and this year that has continued. I rarely miss one of her videos, and I love her whole vibe. I've also been loving her more lifestyle/home content that she's been doing this year!

Lydia Elise Millen: You'll probably all know Lydia and follow her already, but she has been one of my faves this year. I love her vlogs, and her wedding content has been really interesting (and also made me want to actually get into wedding planning mode!) I can't wait to see more vlogs about her wedding as it looked beautiful!

Fashion Slave : I love Sophie's videos and her Instagram too, she wears the most amazing outfits, has the most heart eye worthy hair and her hauls make me want to spend!

I could probably go on all day, but these are the girls who have inspired me this year with their posts, videos and photos. I would love to know who your fave bloggers have been this year?

I will pop up a quick Christmas post tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled for that, but I hope you all have a lovely Christmas Eve!

Up until this year, Pinterest was just somewhere that I spent a lot of time planning my dream home, wedding and wardrobe. However, it's so much more than that, in fact, I very recently realised that Pinterest is now used as a search engine and we should be using it as a platform to help our blogs.

I started to take Pinterest a bit more seriously at the beginning of this year, and it's had a pretty huge impact. I've been feeling frustrated over the past year or so as my blog traffic is down, I don't know if it's cause people seem to be reading less blogs these days, favouring content on apps like Instagram and Snapchat, or whether we're just too busy for blogs these days. I did realise, that my self promotion of my blog wasn't at it's best, and from doing a lot of research, I learnt that Pinterest was a good app to focus on. I decided to focus on it for a couple of months and see if anything improved, and I have to say it did. I also liked how Pinterest didn't seem like an app where I had to shout 'HEY LOOK AT MY BLOG' cause I'm not very good at shouting out about myself.

So today, I thought I'd share how you use Pinterest to help your blog, and how it doesn't need to take loads of time or effort, but can lead to increased blog traffic and new followers too! Without further a do, let's get started and show you the difference between me using Pinterest properly.

So let's compare between last September (2016) and the past 30 days (2017) and from looking at my analytics, there is a huge difference in the numbers, which has been really helping my blog out.


'UK / Beauty & Lifestyle Blogger. Read my blog for : Beauty, Lifestyle, Blogging & Photography Tips, Flatlays and Outfit Posts. IG: @dizzybrunette3'

It's sometimes very easy to forget the 'behind the scenes' when it comes to blogging and social media. Even though I blog, and post on Instagram and know full well that sometimes, not all is what it seems with what you post online, I do sometimes forget this. I've sat and felt rubbish when looking at my Instagram feed, or found myself on someones blog wondering how their pictures are always so perfect and their writing is so funny and witty. Sometimes, it'll leave me feeling about as funny and attractive as a chicken pot noodle.

So, I've been having one of those weeks recently, one of my unmotivated weeks, and I've been sat comparing myself to every other blogger out there. It's no fun, and I'm sure we've all been there. So today, I thought I'd share some of my behind the scenes. Over the past few months, when I've taken my blog pictures, I've taken a couple of pictures of my surroundings to show that although pictures like flatlays may look perfect, they show a small snippet of what's really going on.

Flatlay 1

Let's start with this picture I took back in January. This flatlay is one of my most popular pictures, the final picture has had over 2.3k repins on Pinterest, which boggles my mind a bit. However, look to the side and there's Henry's trainers, and I took this on a wallpaper sample from eBay, not some fancy floorboards. To get my hands in the shot, I had to climb under my tripod like I was GI Jane, and crouch down, I got about two successful shots without my head in!



Next we're going to throw things back to Christmas. I took this Christmas present wrapping photo on a Friday afternoon, which was very grey and cold. I also wasn't feeling 100%, so I was in my pyjamas and wrapped these presents whilst watching Nativity (not the worst afternoon I've had!) I am the worst person at wrapping presents (ask any of my family) so I had to try really hard to make these look presentable and not like a 2 year old had wrapped them! I was pretty pleased with the post though, and rewarded myself with a baileys hot chocolate after taking these!

The Final Result: 

Flatlay #4 

Flatlay #5

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I just want to warn you right this second, that this is probably going to be one of my rant-y posts. I've been thinking of writing a post like this for the past week, and well this morning, I am sitting at my laptop waiting for someone to come and change our electric meters and I think now is finally the time to have a little finger vomit.

So just what am I going to be ranting about today? Well, I want to talk about blogging. I mean not just blogging in general, I want to speak out about how hard it is these days for bloggers to catch a break. It may seem like I'm throwing my toys out of the pram, which I guess I am in some retrospect, but to be honest, I'm frustrated and annoyed, and I'm not just frustrated for myself, I'm frustrated for everyone who has a blog, who works hard on it. I'm annoyed for all of us bloggers, and here's why.

You see that some platforms, have been making it increasingly difficult for bloggers to have their content seen. I've been a bit meh about the whole Instagram algorithm, which yes does annoy me but I've realised there is probably not much we can do.

Last year, Instagram changed the way you see content on your feed, so instead of seeing posts in chronological order, they changed the algorithm meaning that you see content based on the chances of you liking it and and your relationship with the person who has posted it. Because of the change, it has made it increasingly difficult for your pictures to be seen, with lots of people reporting that their engagement is down, because people are missing out on so much in their feed.

This has brought new pressure on, to ensure your photos are on point so that people interact with them so there's a better chance of people seeing them in their feed. I kinda thought that because it seemed like 99% of Instagram users seemed to hate this new change, that Instagram would change it back at some point. However, I am starting to doubt that this will ever happen.

It's frustrating yes, but I've always been like a bit like 'well what can I do?' It is, what it is.

However, the one thing that has really enraged me, and the one thing that has lead to me writing this post, is about something that I found out about last week.

Bloglovin.

Now, if you're a blogger, chances are, you probably know already what I'm going to say about the blog platform Bloglovin. However, if you don't, here is a quick overview.

So basically, Bloglovin is a blog reading platform, or well it used to be, it was a place to read blog posts, you could follow your fave blogs, save posts to almost folders so you could go back to them, and a couple of years ago, it was a really great platform.

I still use it pretty much every day, as I see it as the easiest way to catch up with blogs, however I am starting to limit my usage on the platform, after I found out that Bloglovin were essentially stealing bloggers page views.

Say what?? I know right?

For the past year or so, I have had a feeling that something wasn't quite right with Bloglovin, as my blog traffic has been low, really low. It's been making me feel very worried, frustrated and upset that I seem to have more followers than ever but my views are down. I couldn't quite work it out.

However, it's starting to make perfect sense and I am so mad.

So here is what has been happening, first of all is the Bloglovin frame, which if you read blogs on Bloglovin, you may have noticed yourself. It's essentially a frame which navigates you from blog to blog whilst reading posts. This frame means that your post is read on Bloglovin, rather than the reader clicking onto your blog. Now you can disable the frame from being on your posts, (post here on how to do this) and this is something I've made sure to disable.

However, this has been a problem for a while, but something came out last week which was a lot more worrying. It was found out whilst looking at a blog post html, that Bloglovin are setting canonical. Don't worry, I don't know what that meant either, but basically, it's a code that tells search engines where the content is from. Okay, so what's the problem with that then you may ask?

Well the big problem is that Bloglovin, are saying that THEY are the source. So they are telling the likes of Google that they own that content, not you. Now Google doesn't like duplicates, so Google would then possibly penalise your blog, which means that Bloglovin would come up higher in search engine searches, rather than you. This could have a huge effect on your blog traffic, and new followers finding your blog.

As you can see it's pretty worrying right?

As you can imagine, when this was revealed on Twitter, all hell broke loose. It suddenly explained why people's page views were down, and it ended up with many people angrily tweeting Bloglovin to remove their blog from their site.

Bloglovin replied the next day and apologised for this mistake and have now changed the code so this won't happen anymore. They basically had to do this, cause it's super shady and does inflict copyright law.

However, there is still something going on I am sure, as looking at my analytics, the views do not add up. Using yesterday as an example, my latest post on Bloglovin has had over 400 views, but my analytics show 6 page views from Bloglovin.

How does that add up?

I am getting more and more annoyed about the situation, as my blog is my job and I feel like this platform is stealing my views. My views are down which means when brands want to work with me, it may harm my possibility of getting jobs, and it makes me so angry that someone else seems to benefiting from my hard work.

I've been biting my tongue about this, because to be honest with you, I've had this weird idolisation with Bloglovin over the past couple of years. I use Bloglovin every day, and loved the platform for reading blogs. I loved the popular pages, and when I first started full time blogging, the popular pages really helped me to build a following and helped my posts to be seen. I was incredibly grateful for this.

Bloglovin, used to be great at helping bloggers out. The popular pages were always full of different bloggers, and I found so many great blogs to read on those pages. They would also do a regular newsletter with blog post recommendations and I used to always hope that one day my blog would be on that newsletter.

However, over the past few months, the site doesn't seem to be as pro blogger anymore. They started their own blogs called The Bloglovin Edit, where they post about beauty, lifestyle, food, etc... and these days those great newsletters are full of recommendations to their own posts.

I've just looked at the past few newsletters and to be fair, they are getting better at recommending other blogs, but still, there are always a few links to their own blog. And the newsletters are always promoting the same people. I know this is just how the world works, people with loads of followers are going to be promoted more, but I think it's a shame, as those newsletters used to be more diverse.

I've almost been scared to say that I'm annoyed, cause I was worried I'd perhaps be blacklisted but you know what I don't even care anymore. Why am I idolising some platform when they obviously don't have a lot of respect for bloggers. The site seems to have turned into making money a priority.

You can now also blog directly from the site which I wouldn't recommend anyone to do, and I just think that the old Bloglovin that was a great platform to find new blogs and read your faves has gone. It's about promoting themselves, getting traffic (probably yours) and shouting out their favourites.

I am done.

I'm not going to say that I'm going to take my blog from the site, or stop using it, but I am making a more conscious effort to read blogs, through going to their blog directly or reading through a link on Twitter. I'm going to stop depending so much on Bloglovin because it hasn't paid off for me.

I'm annoyed that I've allowed myself to feel so down and disheartened about my blog, I feel a bit stupid, but I wanted to speak out, for 1. in case you didn't know what was going on and 2. to be honest with you guys.

You know, people seem to think that blogging is easy, but it isn't. It takes so much time and effort to create blog content, and it's really frustrating for something like this to happen.

Although Bloglovin claim the issue has been fixed, I'm not so sure. I think when payday hits, I'll be moving my blog over to Wordpress as you can control things such as codes a lot easier and I think this will hopefully mean I can start to build my page views up again.

I would love to know your thoughts on the subject, I just feel really frustrated, and when it's already so hard to get your blog noticed, it really annoys me that these platforms are making it increasingly harder for your content to be seen. It shouldn't have to be this hard.

Don't let this get you down though about your blog, if anything, it's made me want to work even harder on my blog.

Are you up to date with the news on Bloglovin? Are you changing the way you read blogs?

Useful posts to read:
Are Bloglovin Stealing Your Page Views?
The Problem With Bloglovin
Could Bloglovin Be Doing A Disservice To Your Blog?

Disclaimer- I hope this doesn't make me sound like a spoilt brat cause I want my blog to always be promoted, I'm just annoyed as Bloglovin used to promote a diverse range of blogs, and although it's great for bloggers to be featured at all, it would be nice I think for some other blogs to get a look in to make things a little more fair.

I never really know how to feel about blogging advice posts. I mean don't get me wrong, I have written some myself in the past, but I sometimes find it weird how common they are. when I think back to what the world of blogging was like when I launched my blog in 2010.

Blogging has completely revolved since then, back a few years ago, people blogged as a hobby and it was about things that people loved. There was no money or free samples involved, it passed the time for many of us whilst we were at school/college/uni/work. For me, blogging was always an escape. It helped me battle through homesickness, loneliness and the stress of my final years at uni.

However, over the past few years, the popularity of blogs have grown. People realised that blogs have power and influence, then suddenly things started to change. Brands were interested in blogs, events started being planned for bloggers to attend, PR samples were being given out and before we knew it, blogging could soon become a full time job.

I've been umming and ahhing whether to do one of these 'new year resolution' posts that I've seen pop up over the past couple of days on my bloglovin feed. However, after a break away from blogging over Christmas, my head has been urging me to write a post and well I thought if I write about my blog resolutions maybe it'll be good for me to look at when I no doubt get into a slump at some point during the year.

But first of all, before I start waffling on, first things first, how was your Christmas? Did you have a nice new year? I can't believe how fast the Christmas period went, it feels like a few days ago when I shut down my laptop, popped on my out of office and spent the afternoon watching Nativity. However, I looked at my emails and realised that was 11 days ago! 11 DAYS! How has that gone so fast? Genuinely feel like I've been robbed haha. But as I thought last night, when I worked in retail, I was lucky to get a 2 day break, so I won't moan as I'm lucky to have given myself so long off as I know a lot people barely or don't even get a Christmas break at all!

But anyways, Christmas was lovely although it zoomed by, I don't particularly feel very well rested (does anyone else's head just not let them relax?) I spent the majority of my days off with my head in a notebook making plans for my blog this year, but it has been nice not checking my emails all the time.

So I always love the feeling of a new year, technically it's just another day, when I was little, I used to struggle to understand the new year. I thought it should feel 'different' but you never do. But I always like that the 1st of January brings a new beginning, a fresh chapter, I always visualise the new year as the opening of a new notebook and I like that.

I was ready for a bit of a fresh start, and although I could have decided that a fresh start, was in order on the 17th December, I felt like January was a good place to start.

2016 was a bit of a filler year for me, I feel like not a lot happened. I mean we bought a house and moved so that was huge but that was the only big thing we did really, Henry started a new job, and we were busy with house stuff. However, in 2016, I lacked motivation and inspiration, I struggled with our move back home and to be honest felt really lonely for the majority of the year. I was very stressed with house stuff, but I am feeling a lot better overall these days ( I feel coming off the pill majorly helped) and I'm ready to pull my socks up and work really hard this year.

So here are my 2017 Blog Resolutions, feel free to tell me yours in the comments, and if we write them down, maybe we'll actually stick to them ;)

So in general, I want to be happy with my blog. I want to feel really proud of it, and love making content for it. But I feel for this to happen, I need to make a few changes;

• Have A Blog Re Design: I've never really been happy with my blog design, I've never been good at HTML or understood that kinda thing. So I've always gone for pretty basic and cheap templates, and just been like meh. However, I realise that I want my blog to have a refresh, I want to have a template that really suits the photos I take (no more slider cutting out half of the photos) and maybe I'll have to save for a few months, but that will give me loads of time to gather ideas and find out what I really want. 

• Have A Re Brand: I feel like 2017 is the year that I have a bit of a re brand on my blog/social channels. I've never liked my blog name, and although I most definitely am a Dizzybrunette, I feel like I've almost outgrown the name. I just feel like I don't relate to it anymore, and I've been umming and ahhhing for years about changing it, but I feel this year could be the year to do it. I have thought of a new name which I like ( I just need to ask my friends and family for their opinions) and I feel it would fit in with the theme of my blog. I think having a fresh start would do wonders for my motivation and I think it would suit all the things I have planned. 

• Blog About More Stuff: I started my blog as a beauty blog, and over the years, I've brought new subjects onto here. I love writing about a whole host of things, and this year I want to add more to my blog. This is the year that I'll be wedding planning so I want to include wedding content, and if I travel, I want to blog about it. I'm thinking of having a schedule of different subjects for different days but I'm excited about branching out a little. 

• Continue To Better My Photos: 2016 was definitely the year that I improved my photography. I actually learnt about my camera and took time to plan my photos. I genuinely love taking photos and planning them, I want to continue to do this. 

• Stop Caring About Numbers: For so long, I have been obsessed by numbers, constantly checking my analytics, follower counts and likes. Then feeling disheartened when the number isn't what I want. I have decided to stop letting numbers on a screen define me. I want to focus on content, and concentrate on doing what I love. I have to stop letting these numbers affect how I feel, it's silly.  Although it's important to have some knowledge of how you're doing, it's not the be all and end all, and I hope that in 2017, brands realise that smaller blogs and youtubers have a great engagement rate too. 

• Be Better With Time Management: I am so bad at time management, I love to procrastinate, and often I'll sit down to do a job and get distracted. I want to be more productive and use my days better. I have an idea of how to do this and if it works, I'll let you guys know. But here's to hopefully getting my arse into gear! 

• Stop Focusing On Too Many Things: I am fed up of trying to be on all social media channels, you often see articles or I'll get emails telling me that the key to success is posting content on all the social platforms. I went to Nuremberg in December, and I had my blog camera in one hand, my vlogging camera in the other, and I was trying to get my phone out at the same time to snapchat. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by everything and realised I was zapping away my enjoyment cause I was like 'I need to take blog photos, vlog, snapchat, instagram, tweet, post on Instagram stories...' and I was like 'ENOUGH!' I've realised that I'd rather be good at a couple of things, than okay at a few things. I can't do everything and that is OKAY. I am going to focus on the things I really love, and improve on some other things. It's okay to not be on every social platform, and I think me and my health is more important than wearing myself out trying to do everything. I have had enough of listening to everyone else and their opinion, in 2017 I am doing what I want to do, and if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. But I'm giving it a go, and I'm stopping doing stuff that I don't like/enjoy. 

• Being More Business Minded: Whilst, I'm stopping focusing so much on numbers, I do need to get better at this whole business thing. I need to be more organised with things such as sorting my receipts and expenses. I also need to remember that it's okay to say no, and speak up when I'm not happy. It's okay to voice concerns and to maybe educate myself a little to do with business stuff. I want to channel the likes of Rachel Zane from Suits and Lorelei Gilmore from Gilmore Girls and be a sassy, independent woman like them, rather than being a wet lettuce all the time. 

I don't know about you, but recently I have been struggling to get my act together when it comes to blogging. Maybe it's the weather? The grey dull days don't exactly spark creativity do they? Anyways, I thought that I'd maybe compile one big post of all my blogging posts that I've posted over the last couple of years. I might go read a few myself and try and spark some creativity again! Hopefully this may help you too if you too are struggling with blogging right now :)




Getting Out Of Blogging Slumps:

5 Ways To Get Out Of A Blogging Slump
What To Do When You're In A Blogging Slump
5 Things To Do When You Run Out Of Ideas For Your Blog
Dear Fellow Blogger, It's Okay If...
Reasons You're A Better Blogger Than You Think
The Best Things About Blogging
What To Do When You Have A Blogging Identity Crisis

Blog Photos:

How To Master The Flat Lay
Little Ways To Make Your Blog Photos Better
12 Tips For Taking Blog Photos
25 Blog Prop Photo Ideas

Reflecting On Blogging:

Things I've Learnt In 5 Years Of Blogging 
Tips For Bloggers Q&A 

Blogging Help:

My Favourite Posts For Blogging Help 
Winter/Christmas Themed Blog Resources
Useful Apps For Blogging 
Ways To Be More Organised With Your Blog 
Blogging Jargon Explained
Blogging On A Budget
30 Blog Post Ideas When You're On A Budget
Blogging And Working Full Time

Free Blog Stuff:

10 Free Pretty Fonts
8 Free Fonts You Need In Your Life

I hope these are useful and let me know if there's any other blogging posts you'd like to see on my blog :)

If you have any blogging help posts on your blog, post a link in the comments :)