16 things all bloggers know (or should know!)

Since I started blogging around two years ago (two years! Crazy! This month has gone SO FAST, etc) I’ve become weirdly accustomed to some very odd things which I think might seem odd to people in the real, non-blogging world.

Things like…

1.        Bananas are super popular and you can make anything out of them
Ice cream? Check. Pancakes? Obvs. Banana bread? Duh. Basically, if you can eat it, you can probably make it out of a banana, and then it will only contain 8 calories and your blogpost will get 18000 hits. Truth.  

2.       In an ideal world all interior décor would be white

Like, maybe with a bit of baby pink or dove grey as a contrast, but what you really want from a room is white wash floorboards and white walls and white curtains and white furniture. It’s all white, alright, and nobody ever trails mud through it or spills Ribena/red wine all over it, and you own no belongings because they would just completely ruin the mood. 
 

3.       Cath Kidston is an interior genius

Okay but if it isn’t white, it should have a pastel floral pattern, or pink and white spots. Yep, exactly like your Grandma used to have. Yep, the kind of stuff you’d have been teased for owning when you were 10. Nope, seriously, it’s cool now.

(Nan heaven right here)

4.       You can only serve food in heart shaped bowls or on wooden chopping boards etc

That crappy IKEA dinner set is NOT going to cut it, OK? If it isn’t served in some kind of fancy dish, is it even food? If we’re being fussy, you really need to put your Lucky Charms in their heart shaped bowl onto a wooden table. If it’s a white washed wooden table, EVEN BETTER. Never mind that you live in a tiny London flat, you must appear to live in a huge country farmhouse at all times, preferably complete with chickens laying fresh eggs (which you will eat poached on avacodo toast OBVIOUSLY).

5.       London nightlife is the only nightlife

OK, so you live in a huge country farmhouse with chickens, but you also live IN LONDON because London is the only place to go out worth blogging about. Restaurants in all other parts of the country are totally pointless and nobody cares, so don’t you forget it. Unless you’re in the Cotswolds, in which case a picture of your pub Sunday roast (prefs with roaring fire in shot) is borderline acceptable, because you’re escaping London, right?

6.       Your lips need to be better

About 95% of lipsticks reviewed on blogs will make your lips look like ‘your lips, but better.’ Because your lips are disgusting, okay? They need to be BETTER. Eurgh, get to MAC already.

7.       Food is either ‘clean’ or ‘filthy’

Basically, you can either eat quinoa with six types of kale and a weird vegan brownie made out of dates, or you can eat double cheeseburgers with cheesy chips and a strawberry milkshake. There is no in between. Your tuna and sweetcorn pasta is not welcome here. Oh, well, okay, as it’s in a heart shaped bowl, you can Instagram it – but seriously, at least make the pasta out of courgette next time, I mean, come on.

8.       Straws and jam jars will never go out of style

Pink drink in jam jar with pink and white straw = instant hits. You don’t know why you’re clicking on it – are you really going to make a raspberry and watermelon smoothie? – but you can’t stop yourself.

9.       Fashion is mostly kind of awful

OK, so most fashion bloggers look like a mixture of Twiggy and Mila Kunis and so anything would look good on them, even a bin bag…which is good, because is that actually what they’re wearing? Are fashionable clothes just a way for models to say ‘look, I’ve tried to look terrible, but I just can’t, because I’m so stunning,’ or are all fashion designers borderline mentalists? Because to me, flared sports trousers with weird lace up heels and a shearling jacket does not an outfit make. Plus everything they wear is either insanely unaffordable or only available if you live in California, so that’s useful. 

10.   ‘Sports-luxe’ is a thing

A thing that is said constantly whenever anyone is wearing anything that makes you think ‘did they come straight from the gym?’ And you will read it far more often than you might reasonably expect.

11.   Pancakes are important

Pancakes are like bananas. Big hits. You thought they were just for pancake day? Are you some kind of cretin? You can put anything on a pancake and it makes it cool. Sausages on a pancake? Cool. Ice cream? AWESOME. Banana ice cream on banana pancakes? YOU’RE BLOWING MY MIND HERE. BTW, banana pancakes taste EXACTLY like real pancakes – that is, provided you’ve never eaten a real pancake in your life, and you think they taste like eggy bananas.

12.   Packaging matters more than products

Everybody knows Alexa Chung’s book was probably a bit rubbish, but LOOK it’s pink and you can put a nail polish on it for a photo! Ditto, everything from Soap & Glory and Benefit. Some of these things are good, some of them are not, but who cares when they look so nice lined up on your shelves?!

13.   Rose gold jewellery is the only jewellery

When you were younger, you probably called this ‘bronze’, but somebody clever in marketing realised that sounded a bit rubbish so now it’s ‘rose gold’ and it’s like, literally the best thing ever, because it’s jewellery, and it’s a bit pink. 

14.   Alcohol is the devil

Weird thing about people’s blog lives: nobody seems to get drunk. It’s the Zoella effect – everybody is wholesome and healthy and seemingly spends their weekends cooking  brownies and cuddling up under blankets with puppies. Even though in reality, you’re spending Saturday night in Wetherspoons drinking wine on tap, the most alcoholic thing that can venture near your blog is maybe a glass of champagne on the table at a posh restaurant. Or a jazzy cocktail because OBVIOUSLY. But god forbid you put up photographs of you getting a bit messy, like, err, EVERYONE ELSE, because what is actually much better is pretending you’re a cross between a naïve ten year old and your Nan.

15.   Copper is the new in thing

Like, a bowl, made out of copper. Or a hanging…thing, made out of copper. You need it. No, I don’t know why. I don’t make the rules. In your post about copper, you have to put a little bit about how you’re ‘suddenly all about copper,’ tactfully neglecting to mention that so is absolutely everybody else. 

16.   Macarons

Or macaroons. Nobody seems clear. Whatever they’re called, you can’t escape them. They are beautiful. They also taste like wallpaper paste encased in paper; like, exactly how you would imagine papier mache might taste if you flavoured it with potpourri. So, enjoy that. 

17.   Blogging is mostly about blogging

’14 blog post ideas’; ‘How to attract readers to your blog’; ‘What I didn’t know about blogging but wish I had.’ The whole thing feeds itself, just bloggers writing about how to blog to bloggers who then write more posts on how to blog and eventually the world will eat itself and we’ll all be doomed, drowning in a sea of Cath Kidston quilts and rings in the shape of bows and Olivia Burton watches and soothing bath products and fucking pug puppies.

Okay, well…this list MIGHT not be entirely serious but give it a try – when Benefit are sending you to the Maldives you'll thank me!