From Roses is 3

Today marks the day that I sat down in my old boyfriends kitchen and started From Roses. How 3 years have passed I'm not quite sure but it has and so much has happened it that time. I graduated from university with a First class degree in photography, I moved back to my home town, I worked in a school for 5 months, I got seriously sick, I went through an awful break up, my best friend kept me going, From Roses really started to grow, I spent time learning to love myself, I started to get better, I started my own business, I got an e-mail one evening from a boy I used to date in my teens and now we're blissfully (& slightly sickeningly) happy a year on, I started talking to Jen more and A Little Opulent was born, I became an editor to a magazine and really started on the career path I had dreamed about, I went through a few ups and downs and I think that leads us up until today. 

I don't think I've ever really talked about why I started this blog, I wanted somewhere that could basically be an online diary and I could upload all my work and talk about it but that kind of failed and it just progressed into something more beauty based. The first ever blog I read was Emma from Milkteef and that is because I had followed her on Tumblr for years and saw her make the progression over to blogger and thats where I started to discover more and more blogs. I love blogging, I love sitting down and thinking of ideas to post and how I can take the image to go with the post and then what I'm going to write. There are some incredibly inspiring girls out there creating amazing content that make me want to work harder with what I have here.  

Including GFC over 7000 people follow my blog, 7000!!! it blows my mind because when I started this I never ever thought it would amount of anything it was something I really loved doing and still do to this day. I will never be able to express how grateful I am that such a lovely lot of people support this little space every single day and support my ventures. Beauty blogging has a shitty rep for being a vicious place and yes sometimes it isn't nice and I've had nasty tweets written about me and things written about me that are pretty horrible but nothing will ever compare to all the positivity that does come from this community. I've met some amazing girls through my blog, this year I met Jen who is without a doubt is one of my favourite people in the world and when I get married will be standing next to me as a bridesmaid, crazy huh? We run A Little Opulent together, we started a business and we had never even met each other. I talk to her all day everyday and we see each other every few weeks, she is the only person who has come into my life in years who I consider a true friend. The fact that I get to run a business a long side somebody who is so wonderful and celebrate our successes with ALO together is one of the best feelings in the world. 

Last year when I was sick my blog almost became like my safe place, it gave me something to focus on when I didn't have much going on other than 3 hospital trips a week. During that time I went through a rough patch with people in life and I will never forget being told to 'give up From Roses it is silly and you need to focus on something worth while'. I'm pretty strong minded and I won't let anybody tell me something I love doing is a waste of time, I've really learnt a lot about people and good people support you no matter what they don't tear you down. I think this comes a cross into blogging too, some people won't want you to succeed because they aren't a nice but for that one person there is 30 awesome people and those are the ones to focus on. A few days ago I wrote about how much I had been doubting myself but when I put this post together and trawled through 550 posts to grab images I realised just how far I've come since the day I started. I've not sat and looked through my own work in a long time and by doing so it made me feel so exciting about blogging again. It made me fall in love with From Roses all over again as well as a little bit of re-design (always handy) and it made me so excited to see what I can do in this space.

So this is my little celebration for my blog and the three years we've had together. Some might probably think this a little strange but this space become such a huge part of my life and I'm very lucky that my job allows me to put so much time into this. I often wonder will I still be blogging in the future? What will happen to all these internet spaces in 20 years? Blogging is still incredibly young and I imagine it will be around for a long time yet and I'm really excited to see how it progresses. Finally, I've learnt several lessons over the past 3 years and here are some of them:

• Be the best version of you. 
• Not everybody will like you, that's ok.
• Your style will grow and become more defined as time goes on. 
• Blog because you love it, not for the freebies. 
• Don't be afraid of telling & showing people your space. 
• It is completely fine to get your grammar mixed up, you aren't writing a novel and it actually won't kill anybody contrary to popular belief. 
• You will meet amazing people along the way. 

Again, thank you so much for reading and continue to read.

This months gold sponsor is Živa who runs the blog Nothing Fancy Really, this months silver sponsors are Sarah from SarahLuvsFiona and Amy from A Little Boat Sailing, you can advertise with me here.