Give A Brick has a lot to thank the blogging world for. It was thanks to developing the blog that we started getting this lovely place in front of your eye balls. And we have lots of lovely friends around here who also have their own blogs. One of these friends is Dave Doolin and today, Dave releases the latest (and most major) update of his amazing Blog Post Engineering. He’s quite shy really and so instead of trading on his name or personality, he’s decided to sell this awesome book the hard way and allow it to speak for itself.

What has this got to do with Give A Brick?

Good question. It is the tradition online to pay money to people when they tell other people about your stuff (provided those people listen to you and decide to buy). It’s called affiliate marketing and is a great way to earn a little extra cash for yourself (or your favourite charity).

Dave is offering 50% commission on this latest release. Seeing as I personally already love this book (you can watch my daft video on his sales page if you like. Just click here), I thought it would be remiss of me tell you about it. If you feel compelled to buy, wonderful. Give A Brick will get close on $10. Fabulous eh?

If you’d like to think about it then why not head over to my other place Heaven and El where you can read me wax lyrical about it. All the links on there go straight to the Give A Brick affiliate link too so have no worries But if you’re ready to buy, please click here. Thank you

Did you see my slab of concrete video yet? If not, you need to see that first otherwise what I’m about to say will make no sense!

It’s here:

OK, so you saw the big space opposite the slab of concrete where houses are going?

It’s the builder of those that I’m off to meet today.

He saw the big Give A Brick banner and wants to talk about donating bricks and other stuff. Cool eh?

Between you and me, I’m hoping he might like to send his people over to our place to build it when they have spare hands and time to kill but that might be wishful thinking.

Our prayer warrior Carol doesn’t think so. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime though, if you are so inclined, please have a chat with God about this on our behalf. Things always go a lot smoother when we let him in on the act

Thanks

UPDATE July 22nd

I’m back from meeting with Scott from Redrow and it was brilliant! His people had authorized him to ask us if we’d be willing to put a Redrow sign next to our giant Give A Brick banner on the end wall. In exchange, they want to (as a bare minimum) give us all the blocks for the rest of the project!

I mentioned very casually about them doing the remainder of the build either as a donation or at cost and guess what he said …

“Stranger things have happened!”

How cool a reply is that?! I’m taking the building specifications to him next week and we’re going to talk some more.

So, if you are the praying type, keep doing it. If you’re more into talking to the universe, please do that on our behalf too. I know the creator of the universe will be listening and we could use all the help and support we can get with this.

And that’s it for now. Oooh, I do have one more thing to show you. But that will have to wait for a new post all of it’s own. It’s too brilliant to tag on the end of this piece of exciting news. Watch this space

El x

Whooooooosh! That week went fast. One of the great things (for me anyway) about these weekend wraps is they show me how fast time is going. Why is that a good thing? Because it forces me to stay on my toes and keeping moving forward.

And what a week it’s been! On Monday, Give A Brick friend (I still remember the support he showed us when I pulled that stupid April Fool’s Day stunt) Matthew Needham, released (or pre-released? I think so ) his new workbook ‘How to achieve your dreams The Big Red Tomato way‘ (I think that’s the title ) I’d love to tell you to go and grab a copy but the doors are shut now until August. I’m gutted actually but don’t worry, as soon as it becomes available again, I’ll let you know

Wednesday saw us start the search for our experts. You can read more about the whole thing here but what I have to say right now is how excited I’ve been by the response. I’ve lost count but I think at least eight people have already committed to being involved. How cool is that?! What I’m still looking for is a couple of doctor type experts. Our lovely Dr Egg has agreed to help and I’ll be chatting with him over the weekend to see if he has any friends offline who might like to play. But if you know anyone, send them our way. Thanks

And finally, better late than never, late yesterday afternoon, I introduced another Friday Friend, Jennifer Jinright. You can follow her on Twitter (although she’s asleep as I type this so say hello very quietly!) and watch her video interview here. It was a lot of fun.

And that’s your lot. Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for being here

P.S. I’ve had an amazing week personally too. I found my thing and if you’d like to know more, I’ll tell you all about it over at my other haunt, Writing Smiles.

Is it the weekend already? Wow, this week has flown. It’s been an amazing week (truth be told it was amazing by the time I went to bed on Tuesday!) so grab your cuppa because here’s a round up of what you may have missed.

I am not a football fan. I audibly tolerate football because it’s one of my husband’s great passions but a fan I am not. Reading a suggestion from Robert Bravery that I should write a post about football to encourage traffic to the blog gave rise to a challenge. Monday’s post, How to survive the World Cup: loneliness cures for football widows was my reaction to that. It proved to be quite a popular post

Wednesday’s post was an appeal for help in preparation for Christmas. I recorded my Christmas video. It cause a little bit of a ripple (truth be told, I loved the ripple but I’m going for coy and innocent ) It’s resulted in donations (which wasn’t my intent) and made lots of people smile. Calling all artists & writers: Christmas with @TylinaVespart & doing a happy salsa thanks to @DanielleLaPorte is worth another look

Our Friday Friend post this week was a little different to normal, owing mainly to me forgetting to interview anyone I did my best and you can catch up with this week’s friends here.

And me being very, very brave? I went to London on Friday. It was amazing. But I’m not going to tell you about it here. I’ve written all about it over at my place, Writing Smiles. I’m told I must be brave and ask you to read it so here goes: “Please make time this weekend to read all about what I learnt in London. It’s called It can be scary, but that’s OK and I’d love to hear what you think. Thank you x ”

Have a fabulous weekend and thank you again to all my friends who have made this an awesome week in so many different ways.

Welcome to the weekend and our round up post of all that has been percolating here on the Give A Brick blog this week. I trust you’ve had a good week and have an even better weekend. Have you got yourself a nice hot cup of tea? Slippers on? Great! Let’s see what you might have missed.

One of the most exciting emails I had at the end of April was from Gary Vaynerchuk. He was replying to my questions about what he calls the best marketing strategy in the world, caring. Monday’s post was all about how this applies to Give A Brick. I’d love to hear what you think

Did you see our 1 Minute Motivator this week? It’s all about thankfulness and includes me sporting a pair of very tired eyes! Tired eyes aside, the underlying message is worth remembering.

And finally, on Friday you met Sadie. Sadie is one of my friends on the school yard. Her eldest and my eldest have been best friends since meithrin. Good job therefore that she and I find each other moderately entertaining She has a new business on EBay and as part of that, she is also very kindly selling items for Give A Brick. Check out her Ebay page and come and say hello over at her interview spot.

That’s your lot for this week. I look forward to hearing what you think.

P.S. I’m coming home today. It’s been a blast but I can’t wait to catch up xx

Hey there How’ve you been? Can you believe it’s the weekend already? What have you been up to? I celebrated my birthday this week so it’s been one of my favourite times Here’s a quick round up of the things you may have missed this week. Grab a cuppa then get comfy. It’s been a busy one

After teaching our UK friends how easy it is to Give A Brick for free while you shop, this week I took you shopping. The short video post showed you just how simple shopping online via The Giving Machine is. With just a couple of extra clicks, it really is possible to give to up to four of your favourite charities without it costing you a single penny. Cool eh?

As I’ve already alluded to, it was my birthday on Wednesday. I shared a fitness post with you which was written as part of Carlos Velez’s pre-writing challenge. (As an aside, he has a book coming out soon about the challenge. Keep a look out for that, it will be great.) I’m no fitness guru and this post should be enjoyed in light of that information. That’s all I’m saying, you’ll have to check it out for yourself

Do you ever use the ‘favourite’ option on Twitter to keep track of great quotes and interesting looking things that you need to save for later? I do and it was thanks to that feature that I was able to ask Ben Lumley from 6aliens.com to expand on a quote he sent out in a tweet a couple of months ago. Left to my feeble memory it would have been lost forever!

And finally, we had the opportunity to get to know Give A Brick friend Ayo Olaniyan a little better in our Friday Friend interview. It is thanks to Ayo’s kindness that you were able to watch the lovely Giving Machine videos. Do you remember my wish list? Ayo came up trumps when he donated a copy of Jing Pro. The Giving Machine Videos are just the start of some of the things we’ll be up to over the coming weeks and months. Thanks again Ayo

That’s your lots for this week. But tell me, what have you enjoyed reading this week? And no, it doesn’t have to be on here. Tell me where you’ve been exploring on the web this week.

Welcome to the weekend. I trust today finds you well and you’ve had a wonderful week. Go and grab yourself a lovely hot cup of tea and settle down to enjoy what you might have missed this week.

On Monday we had a post especially for our UK friends. The Giving Machine is a wonderful endeavour which we’re keen to tell everyone and anyone about. It really does allow you to give to your favourite charity at no extra cost to you. Can’t be bad

Wednesday saw a light hearted community post from Jenn Jinright with the top six signs that you might be addicted to social media. Thanks for the warning Jen

On Thursday, even I was surprised by my own blog, when sitting here in France Maria was able to finish something we had talked about before I went on holiday. Child abuse is still taboo and I am grateful to Maria for feeling able to open up with her thoughts on journey to justice – surviving abuse. As I said in my comments Maria, thank you for your bravery for sharing. I look forward to part two.

And of course, who could forget yesterday’s video interview with Carlos from Conscious Me? If you haven’t seen that yet, you really should check it out

What have been your highlights of this week? Feel free to tell us all about it in the comments below and have a great weekend

Here’s a funny thought. As you’re reading this, I’m on a boat headed to France. How bizarre is that?! (I don’t mean the thought of me on a boat, although given my dependence of travel sickness tablets, me and boats are a strange combination.) I just love that thanks to the wonders of technology, I can present this weekly round up to you whilst also beginning our family holiday.

Anyway, I digress. This week has brought you the much anticipated video of Dr Egg and his hair shaving adventure. Part of me can hardly believe the the deed is finally done. My mum doesn’t really like it just yet (and that’s saying something. You should have heard the things she said about his hair before he had it all shaved off!) However, it was all for a good cause the the resulting video post is worth a second look.

On Wednesday we encouraged you to stop living out of your past and to instead start moving forward and make your imagination a reality. This is part of our 1 Minute Motivator series. Always good for a pick me up first thing in the morning

And finally, just yesterday we had this week’s Friday Friend, clever-clogs accountant turned blogger, Matthew Needham from The Big Red Tomato Company. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read his interview, go on! You’ll be glad you did

And that’s your lot Have a wonderful weekend

Apologies in advance to all our wonderful International friends who don’t have access to their own aeroplane. This very short post is very local today. It’s a quick reminder that this Friday, May 14th, our very own Dr Egg is having all his hair shaved off for Give A Brick. I’m following the advice of Dave (Website in a weekend) Doolin and quickly publishing this while my three are finishing breakfast. I’ll come back later and add links to more about Dr Egg’s hair growing adventure and a load of other stuff. In the mean time though, I want to hit publish so that I can add this to Twitter’s Charity Tuesday stream. Sneaky eh?!

So, if you’re reading this in it’s bare, naked form, apologies. But if you’re reading this and you’re in Cardiff on Friday, this short post will have done its job. Come and see us at The Temple of Peace (the place where they film lots of Dr Who!) on Friday at 2pm.

P.S. I’m taking my lovely baby brother (OK, he’s a giant compared to me but he’s still my baby brother ) for lunch at about half twelve so if you want to join us, get in touch and I’ll tell you where we’re headed. Can’t promise to stretch to lunch for everyone but I might buy you a pint

P.P.S. If you have any media type friends, I’d love for us to get lots of wonderful coverage for Friday. Please send them in our direction. We have a press release and everything Thanks

It’s been a little while while since we published one of these weekend round up posts but since I had a few moments to spare and the inclination, I thought now was as good a time as ever. As per my announcement that I’d be cutting back the publishing schedule a little, we’ve only had three posts this week. All are very different and worthy of a look.

Lots of lovely people have volunteered their time to write posts for Give A Brick. If you’re one of those people, How to write a community post should be of interest. In fact, anyone who has a story to share or thoughts to express is always welcome here. It’s part of the mandate I talked about back in February. As well as using this space to share the vision of Give A Brick, I’d love it to become a place where people can share their thoughts in a way that might not fit their own site (if they have one) or for people who don’t currently write anywhere, this could be a brilliant way to start

Having told you that this space can be used to express yourself, why then have I chosen to revive my personal blog? As I told Dr Egg, there are some things in my head that really wouldn’t fit this space. Musings about buttons for example I’ve had a fun week getting my thoughts out in a space that is mine. I feel like I’ve finally found my online home. If you’re interested in the random ramblings of this Welsh mum of three, you’ll be very welcome over there too. That said, be prepared for a lot less sense that you find here

Our one minute motivator was given a face lift a couple of months ago. Wednesday saw that revised further as I introduced you to our first ever video one minute motivator. I’m hoping to get a few more of these prepared for publication before I head to the ferry in a fortnight’s time. I look forward to hearing what you think

And finally, we had our Friday Friend interview with Give A Brick treasurer Dr Egg. Having done two via IM, it was fun to do this in a video format. However, owing to length restrictions, I’ve had to cut out the quick fire round. And no, I still haven’t uploaded that as a separate video but I promise to get to it later today

Have a wonderful weekend and for those celebrating on Sunday (here in the UK, we did our mums back in March ) Happy Mother’s Day x