2014: A year in review

I know I'm a little late with this - I've only just started feeling well enough to blog again - and that everyone and their dog has already done a round-up post, but forgive me. I love having a chance to look back over my year, and 2014 was a good one. I feel like I finally found my blogging groove: built a community around me, improved my photography, started doing outfit posts, became more explicitly feminist and political, wrote some pieces that I'm really bloody proud of. Here are my best bits of 2014...

January

The Boy and I went to Manchester and Liverpool to eat all the vegan food and admire the street art; I gave some advice for anyone considering going part-time at work; and I set myself a goal for 2014: Don't Worry, Be Happy. Hmm, not entirely sure how well I achieved that: I'm a worrier by nature.

February

For Valentines Day I talked about how miraculous it is that The Boy puts up with me; my shitty health finally got the better of me; and I did a scary thing and survived. Seriously, overcoming my social anxiety to meet up with other bloggers was the single best thing I did in 2014. Becks, Laura, Elle, Becca, Sarah and Elise turned out to not be scary at all - huh, funny that - but instead lovely, warm people whom I am happy to call my friends.

March

We spied some awesome pavement art by a local proto-Banksy, I shared my 10 wardrobe essentials, talked about why I've always been a feminist, and explained why I was joining the NUT teachers' strike. 

April

We went to Glasgow to visit The Boy's hometown and were greeted with beautiful blue skies as we mooched around the stunning cemetery. I also wrote one of my favourite ever posts: What came first, the music or the misery? Inspired by a quote from High Fidelity, it's incredibly personal but I'm super proud of it and think it's one of the best things I've written.

May

The sun finally shone and we went into the woods for a picnic. I did my first outfit post, embarked on a week of making and wrote about why I can sometimes be perceived as a 'bad' friend.

June

We celebrated my birthday with a weekend in Bristol (and took my favourite picture of us - I just love this photo!), my tattoo was finished and I wrote about how it had changed my body image, and I discussed how The Boy's veganism had changed my own dietary habits.

July

I took a break from baking my friend's wedding cake (extremely stressful: do not recommend) to take a trip to Cambridge, gave you all a tour of our new-look living room, which had been updated with some vintage and secondhand midcentury modern finds, and redecorated our kitchen on the hottest days of the year (also do not recommend).

August

Our summer holiday was a couple of days in the Netherlands followed by a short break in Copenhagen, after which I wrote a guide to vintage shopping in Amsterdam. And I published one of those pieces that you work on forever and never quite get right: I still don't feel I properly expressed what I wanted to in On Queerness: about being a queer girl dating a cis gender guy.

September

I started my spending ban (total saved so far: £800), wrote about memories of my incredible grandfather in When a Chair Is Not Just a Chair, and became the kind of person who goes to blogger meet-ups.

October

We spent a long weekend in Norfolk, and I wrote a series of posts about sponsored content, having big boobs, and posting half-naked pictures of myself online. Everyone was lovely about it, too, which was ace.

November

November brought some busy but rewarding weekends. The Boy and I started a new joint venture, The Hungry Vegan, a blog about being vegan and, well, hungry, offering recipes, reviews and rants. I also did something which would have been unfathomable to me a year previously: posted some extremely embarrassing pictures of myself in How Bad Outfit Photos Taught Me To Stop Fearing The Camera, and, in one of my most-viewed posts of 2014, gave you some ideas on how to have a conscious Christmas.

December

For all that 2014 was a pretty good year, the last three weeks of it weren't that great. First a flu virus, then bronchitis, completely floored me (I'm still not un-floored actually, more like dragging myself up from the ground slowly and painfully). As a result, blogging fell by the wayside somewhat, although I managed three makes: Christmas cards, an evergreen wreath, and a festive blackboard.