GROW YOUR BLOG challenge 2014

For the second year, Vicky is hosting a "Grow your blog" party, Check out her blog at - 2 Bags full blog.

This is a campaign to get more people to read a wider variety of blogs, variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes...

For my new readers I will start by introducing myself:

Hi, my name is Sami, I have been living in Perth, Australia for the past 7 years.
I was born in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique, then moved to South Africa when I was 14 years old. 
I met and married my husband in Johannesburg, and shortly after I accompanied him to Braunschweig in Germany, where he was going to work on a project. We stayed for 6 years and both our children were born in Germany.  
In the early 90's we moved back to South Africa for a short while, then another move to Portugal, where we lived for 12 years.
My husband was then offered a good job in Perth, and another move was on the cards!
I hope we are done with moving for many many years now, as I love living here!!

I work part-time as a Practice Manager in a Medical clinic with 4 Doctors and 5 other receptionists, and I love my job, although it can be quite intense and stressful at times!

Perth city, seen from Kings Park Botanic gardens

I started my blog in June 2011, as a way to record my travels, crafts, recipes...and also to meet with other likewise bloggers.

I have been gluten intolerant for about 3 years, and recently started to follow the "Paleo" way, to help my husband lose weight and get rid of his newly diagnosed diabetes. The diet worked and we both try to eat this way now, although I am more disciplined than he is. This explains the fact that I now follow a few "Paleo" blogs.

I am on a quest to be more aware of the environment, use less chemicals on my body and house, so I make my own washing liquid for the washing machine, and use vinegar, baking soda and lemon for cleaning around the house, as well as making my own lovely soap. 
Try these recipes, they are easy, don't take long and you will feel so proud of yourself .

I enjoy crafts although I must say I am a bit of a procrastinator and haven't done much in way of crafting or painting for a while. 
My other interests are stamp collecting, postcard collecting (I joined Postcrossing a few months ago) and I also enjoy Genealogy.

I love to watch lifestyle shows, renovating shows, etc., which drives my husband crazy!!  
60 Minute makeovers?? No wonder I get cranky when the bathroom renovation takes 3 months!! I'm proud to say that in the last 5 years we have renovated our whole house, with hardly any help from respective handymen - a lot learned on the job!!!

I have 5 cats, only 2 of them are friendly and love to keep me company, the others are bit wild and scared of visitors. But I still love them to bits.

Twiggy

Fluffy

Baby

Shelley & Mommy

At the moment I have 56 followers, some lovely virtual and not so virtual friends spread around the world, but it would be nice to increase my regular readers.

I have actually met a few of my followers and/or bloggers that I follow, such as the lovely Carole from Piglet in Portugal, who was one of my first followers outside my family and who helped boost my readership, and who I met on a visit to Portugal last year.
Then there is Monica who also lives in Perth and blogs in Portuguese about her Perth experiences, Grace, has a daily blog about Perth, and Iris, who by coincidence lives in one of our former towns - Braunschweig - and who I met recently on her visit to Perth.
Celeste, also from Portugal, is a self published author, who also writes in Portuguese, posting poetry, articles about herbs and their benefits to your health, and she is an enthusiastic writer with over 500 posts in about 2 years.

One thing I find, is that although I have many people that read my posts every day, very few people apart from the regular 5 or 6 commentators leave comments. I don't know if the procedure is difficult or if people just can't be bothered. 
I miss that people comment and I always try to leave a comment if I visit a new blog, there is always a post that is interesting, has nice photos, is funny....
So make an effort and leave some kindness.

So hop along to 2Bagsfull -  with over 500 bloggers having registered you will for sure find one or two to your liking.

And of course I hope you "follow me" too and enjoy reading my blog.