Oxford Comma

This week I was invited by my lovely friend Matt to visit him in Oxford for his college's guest ball. With the offer of (extremely fancy) food, drink, a catch up with friends, and dressing up, I decided I'd be stupid to refuse. Oxford is a pretty easy commute from Birmingham so I hopped on a train with my new tiny suitcase (I'm famous for over packing) ready for whatever Oxford wanted to throw at me.

As expected, Matt's college was gorgeous and he gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the campus, whilst I took hundreds of photographs and lived like a tourist. The college costs £14 (!!!) to look around, but is absolutely gorgeous so I would recommend it if you ever find yourself in Oxford with nothing to do!

 

I don't think it's possible to take a bad photo of that place, it's spectacular.

The dinner was black tie and boasted four courses as well as a champagne reception beforehand, so once Matt and I were done with wandering around the college's many beautiful corridors we suited up and headed to the hall where the dinner was being hosted.

Any hardcore Harry Potter fan recognise the stairs? Yep, I went two of the greatest education centres in Britain in one day, Hogwarts (well, the stairs) & Oxford. 

The meal was lovely and the company was even better. We thoroughly enjoyed giggling at how inept we were when it came to the copious amounts of cutlery and glasses we had been provided - apparently it's outside in for cutlery and the biggest glass is for water, who knew!

I also spotted Constantine Louloudis at the meal, which thoroughly excited me. Please say that at least one of my readers knows who is, because only one other person did.

After lots of giggles and all the food we could handle we strolled back through the perfectly manicured courtyard to Matt's room where we all socialised in the best way possible... With drinking games. A couple of glasses later and we were on our way to Wahoo. I would describe Wahoo as the hottest club in town, but that's mostly because I had to take a break from dancing step outside several times for fresh air.

Writing a Blog

This is probably the thing I get asked about the most. If you have a lot to say then a blog is the perfect way to say it. Yes, it takes work and a small amount of skill, but it can be super rewarding and if you're passionate about writing then blogging might be for you!

Bloglovin' is great for catching up on missed posts and your favourite blogs

YOUR PLATFORM: There are quite a few ways for you to get your words out there. Your blogging platform is the website you use to publish your blogs on. For example, the current platform I use is blogger, which is Google's blogging platform. However, there are quite a few different platforms out there, such as wordpress or tumblr. I've found that wordpress and blogger seem to be the 'big ones', but it just depends on your preferences as to what you want to use.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?: Naming your blog is one of the hardest things about setting a blog up. You could make it relevant to what you'll be writing about, or make it personal to yourself. Try not to expose too much personal data about yourself though - you might not want to make it you full name for example. If you want your blog to be anonymous then that's cool too, just rack your brain and pick a random name. Hopefully something people will remember!

YOUR DOMAIN: I have a purchased domain, which I got from godaddy.com. If you're just starting off with your blog, it's probably best to leave this for a while, because you could end up spending a fair amount of money on a website which you don't ever use! However, if you do choose to have your own domain you will have to, firstly, purchase a domain, and then install this on your platform. There are plenty of tutorials on the net to help you figure out how to do this.

This is my (quite boring) header, which was made on paint

YOUR LAYOUT: Most blogging platforms make it quite simple for you to change your layout up to personalise it to your tastes. You can usually add a header image, which will add character to your blog. Header images can easily be made on image editing software such as photoshop, or if you're not that fancy you could even have a go on microsoft paint!

WHAT TO WRITE?: There are plenty of beauty, fashion or lifestyles blogs on the net. If you want to write an eye-catching blog you'll have to search for innovative ways to attract readers. Try to think of original ideas and write about what you're passionate about. Think about your target audience - what would they want to read? What would they be interested in?

HOW TO GET READERS: In order to get people to read your blog you have to publicise that it's there. That might mean sharing it on social media such as facebook and twitter, or commenting on posts from similar blogs so that they can then click back to your blog. Another great website is bloglovin.com which will notify people when you post to your blog. Try not to spam people with your blog, it will most likely put them off and usually isn't appreciated. A much better way is to write things people are interested in and then will share to their friends.