Get To Know Me Tag – Blogger Q&A – Blogtober 17

Eek! Its the 1st of October and this year I have decided to join in with #Blogtober17 which is run by HexMumBlog and involves posting a blog post every day in October. To help us all out Mandi has even come up with 31 prompts to give us all some inspiration. If you want to join in there is still time so nip over to her blog and check out all the prompts (you don’t have to do all 31 days, you can dip in and out if you want, no hard and fast rules, I just like the idea of challenging myself to complete 31 consecutive days!)

So day 1’s prompt was ‘All About You’ so I have decided to do a ‘Get To Know Me Tag’ and have chosen 10 random questions to answer so you can all…get to know me a little better.

1. Who are you? – I’m Chantele, 30 years old (just!) Married to Jon, also 30, for 7 years. We have a 1 year old called Elian and a 3 year old Cocker Spaniel called Opie. We live in South Wales and run 2 photography companies Cross-Jones Photography for our Wedding and Newborn Photography and Little Green Shed Studio for all our fun kids and family shoots.

2. Why do you blog? – In all honesty if I don’t have a creative writing outlet I go a little stir crazy. I started my very first blog back in 2009, it was called Daisy Dayz and it was mostly fashion based and I ran it for 6 years. In that time I won Welsh Lifestyle Blogger of the year (2012) which was a huge honour and a surprise. In 2014 though I started falling out of love with blogging about fashion and decided I needed to take a break from the blogging world, so took the massive decision to retire that blog and take 6 months away from blogging completely. But after about 3 months I missed writing so much that me and Jon made the decision to start this blog, but were far more thoughtful about the design of it so took a while working on the layout and graphics (which have since changed! lol) but we wanted it to be more open topic wise and more lifestyle based and in all honesty I am so much happier with it now.

3. What did you want to be when you were younger? – Well I went through a few phases, mainly a teacher (of RE!), an Author, a paediatric Physio (which is what my sister chose to do), then what (I thought) I had settled on which was a journalist. I have a journalism degree from Cardiff University but didn’t end up pursuing that career after University and instead we fell into the photography trade which we both adore.

4. Where did you get married and honeymoon? – We got married in our local church St Matthews, then had our reception in the Glyn Clydach Hotel. We went on the most amazing honeymoon to China where we spent a month on a group tour. We saw Shanghai, Xian, Beijing, The Great Wall and loads of other places. It was epic and we would love to go back again in the future.

5. What destination is at the top of your bucket list? – Me and Jon have spoken about this before and if money was no object and we didn’t have a little one at the moment we would love to visit Vietnam and Cambodia. After our honeymoon in Asia we would really love to explore more of it

6. What countries have you visited which is your favourite? – I would love to say I have visited loads as I have a real wanderlust to see more of the world but I just haven’t had a huge amount of opportunity to do it yet. But me and Jon have been to a few awesome places (and I travel to a few before we got together) so here that are: lots of the UK, especially Scotland as my aunt lives there, France (mostly Paris and the south of France), Germany (on a school holiday), Majorca, Barcelona, Benidorm, Copenhagen, California (Northern and San Fransisco), Kentucky, Vegas, China and Canada (Toronto Area) and we will be off to Venice in just 2 weeks time. It’s so hard to pick a favourite because we love different places for different reasons. I would love to return to China for the culture, Barcelona for the architecture and I want to explore more of the states as its just so huge and we only saw a tiny section.

7. What is your favourite food? – I would probably say Chinese food! I love Chinese food and if I am given the choice of what take-away we are having then I will 9 times out of 10 chose chinese.

9. Do you have any tattoos or piercing? – I only have my ears pierced on the bottom, I did have the top of one ear pierced when I was 14 but I left it heal up when I was about 19. I don’t have any tattoos yet (Jon has a few) but I have been considering one for a few years now, I am just yet to bite the bullet and do it!

9. What’s your favourite time of year/season? – I’m really not very good with heat, I burn to easily in the sun so I much rather the colder months, plus I love wrapping up in layers and cozy jumpers so Autumn/Winter is more me

10.  What can you not leave the house without? – I literally leave the house with just 2 items on a regular basis, my phone and my purse, sometimes not even my whole purse just my bank card, as long as I have them I am all good! My Car Key is also a good idea I suppose! lol!

Thanks for reading our first Blogtober post and please stick around for more!