The Way Forward for HollyGoesLightly in 2018

So, I’ve been writing and curating this blog since 2013 (woah I’m an oldie in this industry!) and I’ve loved the way it has grown and developed with me: the subject matter has changed and adapted as I have and my love of creating content has led me to introduce photography and videography alongside my writing.

I’ve played-around with what works here on HollyGoesLightly and the sort of posts I create. I’ve tackled different subject areas and have tried to bring in scheduling.

What I’ve learnt about myself is I’m a busy person and I write better when I’m feeling it and being spontaneous. When I try to structure my posts or set myself goals in terms of how much I post and when, I loose the drive. So I’m not going to do that anymore. BUT I am going to focus more on the subject areas I love to write about and the ones I think you like to read about.

So, I’ll be generally creating posts about the following things:

HollyGoesLightly in 2018…

Premium Family Travel and Experiences

We don’t spend a fortune on travel and experiences, but we do like to do things well. We were like this as a couple, before having kids and we both share that we don’t want to lose that, just because we’re now parents. So we like to discover places that still feel like they suit us as a couple, as well as us as a family. So I’ll be documenting those places and experiences, in case you find them useful too.

Image – HollyGoesLightly

Interiors and Home Renovation

Some of you will follow my blog purely for The House Project – which has documented the last year since we purchased our family home and embarked on an entire renovation. We’re 80% of the way through, but still have lots of finishing touches, decorating and furnishing to do, to put our mark on it. 2018 will see us focus on the outside too, so I’ll be blogging and vlogging updates regularly and hopefully working with some cool interiors-related brands too.

Image – HollyGoesLightly

Modern Parenting and Lifestyle

What do I mean by this? I didn’t know how else to phrase this really. But essentially, I feel like I’m a mum, but also still Holly – a 30-something who likes to eat, drink, travel and who runs her own growing business. So I tend to include elements of parenting in my posts (particularly on my instagram) and experiences I share with my daughter (particularly on #MummyFriday) and now growing bump. But, I don’t really go intro traditional elements of parenting or mummy-blogging. Instead I tend to focus around the lifestyle elements and how I can still maintain a sense of self, whilst being a mum and wife etc. I do occasionally touch on products or brands I stumble-across and love and things I think will genuinely be useful to other parents and parents to be, but it’s not all just about that. (Hoping that makes sense!).

Image – Anna Hardy

The Reality of Freelancing

This is an area that is still very new to me and in honesty, I’m totally #WingingIt! I started my own business having been made redundant on maternity leave and have grown it whilst juggling being a mum, overseeing a home renovation and only having technically 3-working days to do all of that. With another baby on the way and no maternity package like first time round, I’ve worked very hard on business development and growth of late. So I find that at the moment, a lot of my content is steering towards the reality of going self-employed or freelance and starting your own business. I think it’s easy for us to compare ourselves to others and presume everyone is doing amazingly well and rolling in dosh, but in reality, most of us are just working it all out and looking for flexibility and job-satisfaction. So that’s what I’ll be writing about in case it inspires or helps anyone else on a similar journey.

Image and Title Image – Georgie Glass

So there’s my areas of focus. It doesn’t mean that everything will fall exactly into those areas (for example, there’ll still be a lot of food-love and the occasional fashion/style post here and there), and I’m not sure how frequent each area will be…I imagine there’ll be times when I write more about one than the other, because that’s where I’m at in life. But I feel it’s better to be natural and go with the inspo.