Hey there gorgeous. 
How are you? OK, I know, if you talk at the screen I can’t hear you. But leave a comment and tell me because I’d love to know!
Can I just say how excited I am today? Can you tell?! 
Not only is it my birthday (and I absolutely love, love, love birthdays!) but I get to finally go ‘ta-da’ on this place!
Yummy cake thanks to Maria Luisa Gutierrez.
You got me … that’s not my actual cake. Looks lush though doesn’t it?! I have the promise of a yummy cake made by my eldest daughter (but shhh! I’m not meant to know so don’t let on that I told you eh?) but I’ve not had it yet because it’s still stupidly early. I’ll put photos on twitter later so if you’re really keen, you’ll know where to look.
If you’ve been around on Facebook for the last week or so, you’ll have heard me dropping all kinds of hints about presents and party bags. When I sat down to actually make something for you though I hit a bit of a brick wall. Because I wanted it to be fun. And maybe kind of useful. All wrapped up in a big shiny blue bow (because blue’s my favourite colour don’t you know.)
Then on Thursday I got chatting to a lovely lady about Mail Chimp and hosting of all things and it was just then that the idea arrived. Totally her idea. I can’t take any credit.
She just told me what she needed and told me that she thought lots of others would like it too. When you’re chatting to someone who is like your dream client and she gives you insight like that, that’s too good an opportunity to ignore right?
The idea arrived on Thursday. I spent all day (and night!) Thursday putting the finishing touches to this place before starting the birthday celebrations a day early and bunking off to Cardiff with hubby for the day. (As an aside, it was fab! The Avengers was amazing!!) So the problem was, I couldn’t make said wonderful, much needed thing in time to give it to you today.
(The useful will be coming next week by the way. I’ll send it out via email first so if that sounds like something you’d like first dibs on, add your email address to the snazzy box at the end of this post or click here.)
There’s a little guy I dreamed up 11 or 12 years ago. His name is Minkle. People who’ve followed me around my various blogs over the last couple of years will have met him before. He’s my alter ego and he comes out to play any time words fail me. And now he gets a more comfy (and permanent!) home here at Pompoms Included.
Say hello to Minkle in his latest iteration.
Poor Minkle never had arms (unless the context of whatever daft adventure I landed him in called for them of course!) but now he finds himself sans legs too. But doesn’t he just look like a glorious smiley pompom now? So I couldn’t resist.
Pompoms Included is all about helping you be youier online. In a practical sense, that starts with your online look – your website, Twitter, Facebook and the like – but it includes empowering and cheering you on, hence the pompoms.
So when it came to presents, I was thinking about what I could give you that would remind you to be you. And dear Minkle came to my aid. (And my friend Sarah came up with the context. Thanks Sarah!)
It started with a Minkle cover for your Facebook profile and kind of escalated from there into a collection of covers, each with a different colour Minkle for you to choose from, depending on how you were feeling on any given day.
As you might expect given that it’s my birthday, sunshine yellow Minkle is happy Minkle. But he has eight friends and if you click on his picture you’ll go to the page where you get to see (and download) the whole lot of them. There’s also a little PDF with them all together, labelled with what ‘you’ they might represent.
I’d love to see which Minkle you’re choosing today so leave me a comment below and I can pop over to Facebook and see how you’re feeling.
If you have a website but the jargon kind of leaves you feeling a little bit out in the cold then you are going to love what I’m putting together. It’s going to be a living book (hat tip to Ev Bogue for the semantics) which will grow and develop over time. I can’t wait to show it to you!
And I guess that’s all for now except to say thank you again for being here on my big day. I hope you have a fabulous weekend and if you love Minkle and want to share him with your friends, please do. He loves people almost as much as I do!
