Fruits of the womb // week 25

I truly cannot believe it’s week 25 already! We are in the middle of the second trimester and I started to sleep less and less, and I keep tossing and turning during the night, trying to find a comfortable position every time I turn.  When pregnant with Olivia I didn’t have any problems sleeping on my left side (as highly recommended just so women get stressed out even more with do’s and don’ts!). With this baby boy the only comfortable position seems to be sleeping on my back, which apparently is not good for the baby. But no matter how much I’m trying, I found myself back in that position every morning.
This week the baby is supposed to be the weight of an average rutabaga (aka swede in UK), about 700g, and is roughly 34 cm long from head to heel. 

14/52

It’s week 14 and we are making the most from our week spending time outdoor as mush as possible!
This is you enjoying taking pictures at the RHS Garden Wisley.
Olivia: Spring is taking its toll on her sleep patterns. She started to drop the afternoon nap, but still doesn’t seem to be tired enough to go to bed early in the evening. But she woke up at 9am on Sunday morning after going to bed at 10.30pm the night before!
Linking up with Jody from Practising Simplicity.

Fruits of the womb // week 24

It’s 24 weeks and the baby is the size of a ear of corn. He is now almost 30 cm long and has gained about 100g since last week, weighting a total of approximately 600g. As it’s still April, I did find it impossible to find fresh sweetcorn, so I went for two large courgettes!

I have been feeling the baby’s movements a lot this week, especially as soon as I lay down in bed in the evening. I guess I’m not giving him the attention he needs during the day, and trying to make up for it at night time, when everything is quiet and more relaxing.

Sketchbook #1 // blossoms

March has all been about blossoms! The trees are full of delicate flowers, whites, pinks and reds dominate over the greens of the new leaves and everything seems to be awakening from the long winter sleep. This is another of my favourite botanical subjects, but for this subject I went for a more illustrative technique using a black ink pen besides my watercolours.

My main source of inspiration has been this book, but I also enjoyed flicking through my many botanical art books. And that is one of the reasons why I’m very tempted to tackle a proper botanical painting of a branch of cherry blossoms or prune for my April’s project, but not sure I will have enough time to get it done!
Looking forward to illustrate birds or butterflies this month (I still haven’t made a decision), either way it will be a real challenge.

My Personal Blogging Editorial Calendar

It has only been this year that I started to blog more regularly and started planning in advance my blog’s posts. The switch happened after reading an article from Kam of Campfire Chic in her ‘better blogging’ archive (this one). Before then, I never really thought myself as a blogger, and still don’t to be honest, but reality is I have been blogging since 2009 and that makes me a blogger. I don’t want to start talking about the reasons why I blog, that is a possible subject for another post, but I started to enjoy the weekly tasks, the coming up with a topic and, most of all, the record of things I have been building up during the past five years.

My editorial calendar is very simple and flexible. Since I’m using the Moleskine 12-month diaries this year, I have downloaded one of their free templates (the weekly notebook alternative template in pocket size, here). I have printed out 13 pages to cover the 52 weeks in a year and folded each in 3 pieces to nicely fit at the back of each monthly diary.

The tedious part was writing down the month/week/day on each page, but I did that while watching some tv and didn’t take too long after all.

Since my planning is more or less on a weekly basis, I tend to shift things around very often, especially is something comes up at the last minute and I want to blog about it. For this reason I use post-it notes, the index ones, as they perfectly fit in the space allocated for each day. I write down the topic and I stick it on the planner, and eventually move it around.

I was originally planning to use a colour coding system since I have some recurring topics I write about, like The Pick of the Month, the 52 project, and so on, but it wasn’t worth the effort so I just stuck to orange for the 52 project blog posts, which go live every (!) Monday and to green for all the posts that goes into my other blog SketchingIn Colour (Tuesdays and Thursdays only!).

So far this method has worked wonderfully for me; it gives me the flexibility and organisation I need to stick to my plans and gives me time to plan and schedule in advance, especially when I’m too busy or on holiday.

How do you plan your blog posts?