Love from, Florence Grace

On the 31st of July, 2014 I started a blog. I had no idea that two years later, my blog would have totally changed my life.  My little space on the internet has opened doors to me that I never even imagined would be on the horizon for me, let alone at my finger tips, creating jobs for me, building me up a career, making me new friends! I can't even imagine what I would be doing now if I hadn't started my blog. I'd probably still be at university, thinking I wanted to be a photographer but wishing all the while I was working as a radio presenter (something I have done, thanks to my blog). I still can't believe I've been doing this for two years- where has the time actually gone?! The last year hasn't been as busy for me as the previous one, as I started to work more hours so have had less time to attend events and opportunities, but I've still done a lot of exciting things, such as... Attending a fancy bloggers event at London Fashion...

Yes, it's true. I have been considering becoming a vegetarian. (Gasp, shock, horror I know!) I have been a meat eater for my entire life. It's how I was raised, I eat it almost every day, I adore bacon sandwiches and cheeseburgers, and I have never felt the urge to be a vegetarian. I have had to have a partial vegetarian diet in the past, due to the fact a guy I was dating and his family were vegetarian. I was over at his house almost every day sometimes, and it meant eating vegetable pizzas, having quorn mince instead of beef mince- and having lots and lots of cheese. Eventually, though, he started to eat meat and we didn't have to do this anymore.  Now I've started this new healthy eating 'phase', I am eating salad, fruit and vegetable's almost every day. I have some animal products, such as some ham in my wrap, or a hard boiled egg for protein, but I'm wondering if I could cut these out for good?  I don't think I'd m...

My apologies that today's post is  so  late, but I have only just got in from an amazing yet very long and draining day out to Brighton! Because it's late and I'm sure many of you won't want to read much at this time of night, I'm going to make this a very photo based post but let me chat a little bit about the day! I had never been to Brighton before but everyone  bigs it up and says how great it is, so I was beyond excited to go! My excitement only increased when in the morning I found out Sprinkle of Glitter was going to Brighton to see Zoella- although sadly, I didn't end up seeing them! Whilst Brighton really was a lovely place with some adorable shops in the Lanes, a fab pier filled with fairground rides and some excellent eateries, I don't think it's as special as everyone makes out. I still had a perfect day with my mum, sister and best friend Alec, don't get me wrong, and I'd definitely go back again- it's just different from...

I think there must  be something wrong with me, because this evening I had the urge to go for a run. Like, I actually wanted  to go running! How weird, right?  But you know, because I'm doing this whole get fit, get healthier thing, I made sure that I went. I got my work done, got into my Ivy Park gear and then went for it. I really, really went for it. Normally on my runs, I run and walk and run and walk and run and walk, using lamp posts as markers to stop and start at. However, today, I ran and walked and then ran. Yep, I only stopped once!  I ran faster than normal too, really pushing myself. I put on some really fast, upbeat music, focused on the horizon and really sprinted- I have always been more of a short distance runner than a long distance one and I find sprinting so much easier.  I also took a bottle of water along with me, something I don't normally do, and I'm wondering if keeping hydrated throughout the run actually helped m...

Back in April, I wrote a pretty gloomy post about how I'd discovered that the "views" stat on Google Blogger, the platform I use for my blog, were not accurate and that most of them were spam views or computer bot thingamajigs. I couldn't believe this. I believed I had well over 80,000 blog views until I had Google Analytics installed- an accurate statistics counter- and was told otherwise. It turned out that actually, I had only had around 4,000 page views. I couldn't believe it, that in 18 months, with so many people telling me they'd read my posts and shared them etc. that I could only have had 4,000 views instead of the 80,000 Blogger had told me. I also couldn't believe that Blogger was so inaccurate! It really put me off blogging, and made me feel like I would now never achieve my goal of reaching 100,000 blog views before the end of the year- something I had been lead to believe I'd achieve quite easily with Bloggers stats in mind.  ...

The world has become a truly horrible place.  We'd heard of terrorist attacks before, and we acknowledged that they happened, but since the end of 2015 with the first major publicised ISIS attack in Paris, the world seems to have gone into a turmoil. Incidents began happening monthly, weekly and, now, daily. Daily.  It's really beginning to make me feel uneasy.  I just don't understand how so many people can be so cruel. How can so many people kill other innocent people with such ease? Have they no conscience? Do they not lie awake at night, racked with guilt at the things they have done, with no real explanation as to why they've done it? Do they genuinely believe what they're doing is right?  When I go to bed each night, I genuinely wonder what I will wake up to tomorrow. Who will have been murdered, which country will have been ferociously attacked for no good reason? Who will we be grieving for? Because the grief seems to be never ending...

It's been one week since I started my new 'diet' of eating healthy foods that I actually enjoy...and boy am I enjoying it! Who would have though that I would ever enjoy eating healthy foods, and yet here I am, having eaten more fruit and vegetables in the last week than I have done in the last, I don't know, six years or so! Anyway, as it's been one week, I thought I'd share my food diary with you so you could see what's been going on... Monday. Breakfast: Bowl of Coco Pops, glass of water.  Lunch: 4 cream crackers with low fat margarine and ham, a handful of button mushrooms and some prawns with two glasses of water. Dinner: Pitta Pizzas (one pitta bread with tomato pizza base sauce, three slices of mozzarella and three slices of pepperoni), two spoonfuls of home made potato salad and some ordinary salad consisting of lettuce, pepper, spring onions and cucumber. No chips!  I also had one glass of a tropical fizzy drink from the fridge as ...

This post is going to be a bit of a weird one. I'm going to sound more millennial and social media obsessed than ever before, but I'm always honest on my blog, and this was something that I wanted to share with you guys, so. Today I'm going to tell you guys how social media is helping  my weight loss.  We all know just how addicted I am to social media. Not only is it my job to post on social media but I also love to update my social media every minute of every day! Not only does it help me to promote my blog and magazine, it helps me to make new friends, stay connected with old friends and creates a digital diary, so I can look back in a years time using things like TimeHop to see what I was doing a year ago, two years ago and so on.  My favourite social media site is Instagram , and it's Instagram that has been helping me to stay on track with my healthy eating and my get fit regime. Like many people, I'm obsessed with making my Instagram look prett...