Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Showcase Tasmania: Summer Kitchen Bakery

    I was down in Salamanca for the markets on Saturday, and it was recommended that I go and see the stall that Summer Kitchen Bakery run. Hiding at the very southern-most point of the markets, I found them in their caravan. We got to talking and I asked the lovely Maria if she would like to be part of Showcase Tasmania.

    I didn’t have my camera with me, or I would have taken a photo of the inside of the caravan. Firstly, the shelves of fresh bread – then the pies and pastries sitting up the front. Finally I would have photographed the crowd in front of the van, neatly lined up and waiting for a chance to buy some bread.

    I had been told that they baked the best bread in Southern Tasmania and so my standards were high when I walked away with a lovely heavy loaf of sprouted rye bread.

    Getting home later, I sliced it and wasn’t disappointed. Even with only butter, the flavour was amazing, soft and sharp and very very moreish. I was hungry by that point and so made myself a plate of odds and ends to nibble on.

    Including blueberries from Blueberry Boost and cheese from Grandvewe.

    It was delicious and so I kept eating it. Of course.

    But, I think the biggest critics of any food are my children. They’ve both got sensory issues surrounding food, which makes feeding them the most frustrating job in the world.

    Amy declared the bread delicious and ate most of her slice, with soup. Isaac is a tougher kid to please and I was shocked (pleasantly) when he ate his entire piece of bread and asked for another, to dip in his soup.

    I was impressed.

    Summer Kitchen Bakery don’t have a website, or facebook, but you can find them at the Salamanca Markets every week. If you’ve not tried their bread, you absolutely should and you can tell them that you heard about them on Showcase Tasmania if you like.

  • The juxtaposition of both happy and sad

    I got some amazing news today. Throw your hat in the air and shout kind of news, run around the house squealing, tell everyone in sight kind of news.

    (No, I am not pregnant.)

    It was amazing news. I poked Nathan until he woke up – lazy bones was napping on the couch – and told him. I rang my parents, and spoke to my father and told him the great news. Mum wasn’t home.

    I was so over the moon that I caught myself for a split second starting to dial the number for my grandmother.

    And then I burst into tears because she is dead and I can’t ring and tell her. Suddenly I wasn’t so excited, I was just bone crushingly sad.

    Death is hard. Death hits you at the strangest of times, when things are going well. You’ll be travelling along, and things will be just fucking perfect and then your brain will collapse in on itself and you’ll be left sobbing. Death is so final and I think that is the hardest part to live with.

    I cried for an hour and then I rang my mother and we celebrated and cried together, because that is what you do.

    Knowing that Nan would be excited and proud isn’t the same as ringing and speaking to her. Knowing that she would be cheering me on from the sidelines is nothing like sitting down and telling her about it. It’s just not the same.

    Things are going well for me. They’re going really really well. I got another couple of businesses to sign on to Showcase Tasmania, I’ve got a few more interested and in the process of confirming and deciding and (the biggest thing I suspect) it’s finally Not Winter anymore.

    I am happy. I am truly truly happy. And in the same breath, I am so terribly sad, because I am getting married in a month, my blog is doing well, things are happening for me and my grandmother is still too dead to share this with.

    And that is the problem right now.

    ***

    Ghosts and the possibility thereof aside, death is death. It’s final and I can’t change that.

    I should hopefully be able to share my news with you in the next week or so. I am really excited about this, but you know, pass the tissues. I’ll cry and dance at the same time.

  • The key to success is failure

    The key to success is failure. It sounds weird and like I’m going at things backwards, but this is one thing I have learned that holds true through everything.

    I was reading Shae’s post about her epiphany and I was struck by how similar her thought processes were to mine. It’s easier to pretend that you don’t care about your blog, than to put it all out there and run the risk of failing. After all, failure is something that we hate and something to be avoided.Empty House

    But is it really?

    Every time I have done something, on this blog or in real life, that has failed, I’ve learned something. Sometimes it’s small things like how fast to whisk in oil so that my mayonnaise doesn’t split. Sometimes it’s when to keep my mouth shut to prevent my family hating me for twelve months because of something I wrote. Every step forward I make has been inspired by a string of failures.

    This blog is no different and in fact it is the thing I fail at the most. I’ve never expected myself to be the perfect mother, or the perfect homemaker, but I did expect myself to be the perfect blogger. To be able to comment back every time, to read everyone and to write beautiful words that will resonate with everyone, every single time.

    Blogging doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that.

    My blog is becoming more successful. Showcase Tasmania is doing well, my subscriber numbers are slowly climbing and my traffic is sitting at a level I am comfortable with.

    To get here, I’ve had to fail numerous times. For every five pitches I send, four businesses ignore me. For every contact I make and click with, there is someone who thinks I’m an idiot. For every blog post that does well on traffic, there are two that don’t.

    Funnily enough, I’ve found that it is the small failures that I learn the most from. Working out what I did wrong and how to not do it again, I learn what I should have done instead. Sure, it’s trial and error a lot of the time, but that is life, isn’t it?

    Amy blowing thistle resized

    Failure is scary. No one wants to fail. We all want to be successful, all of the time.

    However, I’m not sure that you can have success, if you didn’t build it on the back of failure.

    And the only thing I can see that all successful people have in common is: They refused to give up and stop trying.

  • Showcase Tasmania: Blueberry Boost Tea

    The weekend before last, I was down at Salamanca Market collecting cheese from Grandvewe Cheesery. Frogpondsrock and I had just left the Grandvewe stall when it started to rain, heavily. With a hop, step and a jump, we leapt into a nearby tent stall to shelter from the rain.

    The tent belonged to Carl Sykes from Blueberry Boost Tea and he got the giggles at us, as we stood there drying off and reading the ingredients on the teabags he was selling. One thing led to another and I found myself trying his tea, before discussing Showcase Tasmania and asking if he would be interested in being part of it.

    Carl has a blueberry farm down at Oyster Cove in Tasmania and along with selling his blueberry tea, he also sells dried blueberries and blueberry jams. A fifth generation Tasmanian (ner ner, I’m eighth gen) he is passionate about Tasmania and Tasmanian products and we spent a while discussing what I do and why I’m doing it.

    I ended up with some blueberry tea to bring home and try, plus a few names of people to contact to see if they’d like to be a part of this. A worthwhile encounter all over!

    Blueberry Blend Tea is delicious and claims to help improve blood circulation, amongst other things. I can’t vouch for this specifically, but as someone who has a core body temperature similar to a lizard in winter, I will say that it is a delicious warming tea and I like it.

    I made Nathan try some and even he liked it. He’s not a huge fan of herbal tea, but I’ve caught him drinking it a few times now, which in my opinion is a great recommendation.

    Blueberry tea contains dried blueberries, blueberry leaves, spearmint, cinammon and raspberry leaves. I’ve found it is quite good at settling my stomach of a morning, as well as an excellent tea for right before bed.

    You can buy blueberry tea online here, or if you’re Tasmanian, you can visit Carl at the Salamanca Markets on a Saturday.

  • 6 Things I Learned at the #PBevent

    I’m sure by now that there are a multitude of recap posts from the Problogger Training Day, but hang in there because mine is going to be better than all of them. Probably.

    I learned a lot of things and had some other things that I knew already cemented into my brain properly. It was a great day and I was exhausted by the end of it, but the networking drinks and the possibility of ice-cream pepped me up enough to network. I don’t claim to have made any sense however, I was so exhausted I felt a little trippy.

    – Passion is everything.

    People want to hear about your passion. Sometimes they don’t care about what your topic is and instead hang around for the way you’re writing about it. Passion shines through and is incredibly important. You might not think that what you love is interesting to anyone, but usually it is.

    – Blogging from the heart, VS Blogging smart.

    You need to do both. There is no VS here. Successful blogs are built by people who manage to meld these two things together. People love personal touches, but you also need to be clever about how you interact and present yourself. Your blog needs soul in order for people to connect with you, but also technical cleverness (design, marketing, useability) for people to stay around.

    – People love storytellers.

    I keep telling everyone that we are all storytellers, but I’m not sure people believe me. People are storytellers, using different mediums to tell their stories. Readers LOVE stories and blogs that I read the most are the ones with the stories woven in and around the content. Maybe I don’t care about what you ate for breakfast, but if I’m drawn into your story, you can tell me about it and I’ll enjoy it. Even blogs filled with technical tips often have a story or two thrown in. Readers love it. Tell more stories.

    – You can do anything you set your mind to.

    Maybe I didn’t learn this specifically at the training day, but it seemed like it was a common theme. All of the speakers, all of the success stories – they all had an idea and then worked to make that idea reality. Very few people win lottery and are magically rich, even fewer people are instantly successful. Work out what you want and then work to make that happen. Keep trying until it happens.

    – Successful people build their own momentum.

    This feeds into the above tip. You’ve got to build your own momentum. You can’t keep hanging around waiting for a PR company to dump things in your lap. You have to work for opportunities and make them happen yourself. You want a first class trip to New York? Write yourself a proposal and start sending it to businesses that are a good fit with you. You have to make it happen yourself and stop expecting magic and fairy tale endings.

    Networking is the most important thing you can do for yourself.

    We all know that networking is important, but sometimes we forget just how important face-to-face meetings are. The networking and talking that you do at events is more likely to land you a job or sponsorship than 100 proposals sent out. It doesn’t mean you stop sending proposals, it just means that you have to go out and meet people too. Inevitably the old saying “It’s not what you know, but who you know” holds true.

    If you attended, what did you learn? If you didn’t, what is the most important piece of advice you would give another blogger?

    {photo credit Simon Pollock who is not only a great photographer, but incredibly funny as well}