I cant remember a busier week in the life of familiesrecommend. Our birthday celebration week has been not only great fun in putting together but has also generated a lot of reviews and recommendations for the site. A big thank you to all those who have contributed and well done to those who have won Tyne and Wear discover passes. The VIP Yorkshire passes have been drawn today and we will be sending off the details soon so it should not be long before you have them. Also, once again, a big thank you to all of the people who have submitted articles, passed on birthday wishes and provided prizes and offers for our users. The week would not have been the success it was without your help. All that is left to do now is clear up the virtual wrapping paper, eat the last of the virtual birthday cake and have a sit down….in an actual chair!
A big thank you to you all on birthday eve. No more sleeps!
With our 1st birthday fast approaching we felt that it was only right and proper that we mentioned and credited the people and organisations that have kindly supported our birthday celebration. We have had birthday messages, kind offers to pass on to our users and articles especially written for Familiesrecommend.The support that we have had in the form of e mails, tweets, texts and Facebook messages have been gratefully received and we cant thank you enough. We have even used an old form of communication that only people of a certain age will remember….The telephone. No matter how contact has been made, we really appreciate it. Thank you.
Our birthday celebration page can be found here
We have articles that have been especially written for Familiesrecommend from:
Michelle at Baby Dines Out
Cath and Shelley at Tyne and Wear Tourism
Heidi at Playpennies.com
We have birthday offers for our users that have been provided by:
Louise at Global Maternity
Laura at Rentabuggy
Suzanne at Kindermusik
Karen and Debbie at Musical Minis
Shelley and Cath at Tyne and Wear Tourism
Natalie at Yorkshire.com
Wendy at 1st Unique Gifts
Aggie at Creative Memories
Goodness Direct
Karen at Birthday Buddies
Ann at Education Takeaway
Additional useful information has also been provided by:
Golakes.co.uk
England’s Northwest
Yorkshire.com
Tyne and Wear Tourism
Visitthames.co.uk
Visitlincolnshire.com
Since Familiesrecommend was launched a year ago we have seen it grow and blossom with the great reviews and recommendations that our loyal users have submitted. The very idea of our site was to have a “blank canvas” to be filled with quality content rather than a site full of listings that people could contribute to. Looking back it was a big risk, but we feel that we have done it spot on right. The proof of this is in the way the site looks today. Thank you to all of our users who have taken the time to send in reviews and the surfers who have found us and acted upon them over the last 12 months. We could not have done it without you!
From bank holiday mentality to normality.
How quick we fall back into the usual grind having had an extra day off this week. I often feel that having fewer days in the week does not necessarily mean the week feels any shorter. It seems an age away that we were in the park messing about. Equally this weekend coming feels an age away too. That said, I know it really is just around the corner as we are putting the finishing touches to our 1st birthday celebration which runs from the 8th-16th May. Apart from some giveaways we have also have some special offers valid only in the birthday week for our users. We have also secured a few light articles that have been specially written for Familiesrecommend Don’t worry though. They are easy reading. One in particular that caught my eye and made me laugh out loud was the article from Baby Dines Out. I really related to that article and it made me laugh when I remembered our holiday last year. I am pleased that it is not just us! That is all I am going to say for the moment as they will be available to view in the next day or so.
Following on from that I intend to publish an honours list of people who have helped make our 1st birthday celebration as special as it is. Not only have we had help and support in the recent run up to the birthday but also right from the beginning. We really cant thank you enough and the most appropriate way to try and make a start is by naming you on this blog.
That’s it for now.
Lee
Volcanic ash, recession and airline strikes. A dream for British tourism
This week we have seen the single most important constraint on international travel with the eruption of a volcano in Iceland. Clearly this natural incident cannot be helped nor avoided and its consequences have been felt across many sectors. Air travel is getting the most press at the moment with people being stranded or unable to rearrange their holidays for a later date. Thinking this through a little further it does put familiesrecommend.co.uk in a very good position. All of a sudden, the “Staycation” has been enforced upon the nation in a bid to make the best of a bad situation. This simple term is the cornerstone of what tourism departments are pushing in a bid to get people to holiday at home. In a previous post I mentioned about how we were talking with Tourism Tyne and Wear and in particular Shelley Staines and Cath Hindle. They have been very kind in supplying us with passes that get you into various attractions in the North East. We will be giving these away in our birthday week celebration from 8th-16th May. The point is, this unrelated natural phenomenon in another country has paved the way in opening our eyes to what is actually going on next door to us. Add in a global recession and the threat of industrial action by BA and it really does become a cause for concern for Britons trying to go abroad this year. Free time is precious and so is hard earned cash. The way it stands at the minute, both could be easily wasted
Speaking of our birthday celebration. As mentioned, Tourism Tyne and Wear have kindly given us 50 passes to give away to our users during our birthday celebration week. They have been really supportive of our cause and I am looking forward to meeting with them soon. We also have other offers and incentives which will be available. We are still ironing out the last few details and will publish a definitive list of what will be on offer when we have it finalised.
Until the next time
Lee
News just in: David Cameron e mailed me via one of his people to say that they appreciated me bringing the details of the website to his attention. Got a reply anyway. Still waiting for Mr Brown and Mr Clegg
Where on earth do I start…Hmm. 1982 is as good a place as any.
Ideas regarding our up-coming 1st birthday party have been coming at a tremendous pace.
Never have so many ideas been seen in one place since Sir Clive Sinclair dreamt up his compact home computer with rubber keys which ran off a tape recorder. That particularly random mix was followed by a three wheel, seated suburban transport solution which he called the C5. Had he have given it one less wheel and invented it in 1885 he could have simply called it a bicycle. Still, you play the hand you are dealt. What he lacked in perception he made up for in vigour. He certainly was an ideas man and had he lots of them. His ZX Spectrum might have had less memory than my digital watch but I loved it. If I was able to run familiesrecommend off it today…I would. Tape recorder and all!
Well that is the Ashes to Ashes moment over with. Back to 2010. As you can gather, we have had lots of ideas and these are only as good as the people who make them a reality. I can honestly say that these ideas are brilliant. When we first thought about what we were going to do to celebrate our 1st birthday it was a bit of a struggle. We wanted to do something a little different. Give our loyal users something else that perhaps they would not normally have got from the site. From the start we always said that families, no matter how they are made up, are as important as each other. Different things might make them tick but essentially they all want a good experience and value from their time and money. Thinking this through a bit more we contacted various people and asked if they would write a small piece on the importance of family and how quality time was spent. Thinking that this would be met with apathy was a mistake. Loads of people have been in touch to say not only very nice things about our site but to gladly send us their articles. Once we have collated the entire list there will be an official roll call on this blog. I salute the lot of you silently for the moment!
The next idea was to see if any of the various people we had contacted had anything that they might like to offer our users in the way of a birthday celebration discount or freebie. Once again, apathy was not on the menu. Various people have come forward with their kind offers. Again, there will be a roll call when they have all been collated. For the moment, thank you so much. You know who you are and everybody else will soon.
To end this post I would like to share a moment of sheer opportunism with you. On Friday 9th May I was watching BBC Breakfast news. A news item came on that was being broadcast from Beamish Museum. It was reporting the rise in people holidaying in the UK. The reporter interviewed Cath Hindle who is from Tourism Tyne and Wear. When speaking about this subject she just about described what familiesrecommend is all about. In a moment of spontaneity I fired off an e mail to her expecting it to get lost in a probably busy inbox. Not the case. She passed it on to one of her colleagues, Shelley, who not only paid our site a great compliment but also agreed to provide us with an artice for us to publish for our birthday. We thought that was enough but then came more. They provided us with 50 Discover passes to give to our users as prizes through our week long birthday celebration. We have accepted this kind offer and can’t wait to give them away. More details on this will follow. Thank you so much. You have been great.
We are waiting on responses for a few more places and will bring news of them when we find out. Once we have the final deals on the table it will be reported here first.
Well thats it. I am off to see if I can get Manic Miner and Daley Thompsons decathalon for my laptop as sadly my ZX Spectrum is long gone. Pity.
1st birthday celebrations, Mad ramblings, Staycation | 
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