THANK YOU ALL - for your support over the last year!

I just wanted to pop on and let you know how much I appreciated your support over the last year here on my blog.

Next year we are changing our blog over to be more informational and also have some weekly DIY skincare and bath tips and pantry pampering recipes for you to try in the comfort of your own home anytime you like, so we hope that you will enjoy that and join along for some pampering fun!

We are re locating to Perth, Western Australia at the very begining of the New Year and it will be then that I re open my blog, so keep us bookmarked and if you have any suggestions or comments on what you would like to see on the blog next year, just drop us a line at info@bodelicious.com.au and I will work on that for you as well.

So for now I will sign off and wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Amanda
http://www.bodelicious.com.au/

BOWtique competition winner is....

Natalia - comment #8 - is the winner of the totally GORGEOUS zebra petitskirt from the BOWtique small business feature story this month! CONGRATULATIONS Natalia!

Please contact me through info@bodelicious.com.au and I will hook you up with the LOVELY Christie to see where to send your lovely gift.

I hope you all enjoyed reading all about how Christie and BOWtique started, she is a wonderful lady and fantastic to deal with. I recently purchased two skirts from her and her service and contact was wonderful and the skirts are a HUGE hit with my two older girls (10 and 12 years). I have no hesitation to recommend Christie and BOWtique to anyone looking for a high quality petitskirt of just about any age!

Thank you so much Christie for being our small business feature of the month...and remember you can find Christie at BOWtique on facebook HERE or on her stunning website HERE

Voting is now OPEN

Hello Everyone..

We made it into the finalists of the Business Mums Network Blog Awards - THANK YOU so much to all those who nominated us and got us into the top blogs.

Voting is now open to finally vote for us in these awards.

All you need to do is click on the link below and vote for Bodelicious-ramblings!

I would like to thank all of our supporters of our blog who have nominated and who will also now vote for us in these awards, it means a lot to us!

Click HERE to vote for Bodelicious-ramblings!

Business Mums Network Blog Awards

We are proud to announce that we have been nominated for the Business Mums Network Blog Awards.

Now that we are nominated we would like your help in voting for our blog for this award and by voting or nominating us you also go in the draw to win some fantastic prizes for yourself.

To read more about the awards and to vote for our blog click on the button below, and thank you for all your wonderful support!

Click to read more

Have an excellent day!

Amanda xo

BOWtique

Hello Everyone..

I know its been a while since I last had a small business feature run on the blog, its been a busy winter for us here! We are back on track again now though and I have had the pleasure of recently buying two petitskirts for my daughters from BOWtique and I was so impressed with them that I invited Christie to be our small business feature for the month.

Without any further ado..here is Christie's story in her own words..

I have always been business-minded. Whilst working fulltime, studying at Uni and running my own small business, I learnt how to juggle life and all that comes with it.

However, I must admit I had no idea what I was in for when I fell pregnant!

I had a grand idea, I would continue my life, as is, and baby would play in a play pen - how wrong would I be?

So, once baby came (7-weeks early) I realised that life had changed and there was no looking back.

With my degree behind me, a great partner in my hubby and all the support of my family, it was time to move on business-wise and focus on family.

I was a happy at home mum for about 6-months, when I realised I needed a little more to keep sane!

Dr Phil would only keep me entertained so far and I had a lot of creative energy (and little money as we had dropped to the one income).

I started to create pieces here and there for my now 6-month old daughter.

She was a baldy and I a novice sewer so it made sense to work on small bits to dress up an outfit and make cheaper bits look "expensive" (as Alex Perry would say)!

So big bows became an even bigger obsession and my perfect little model was selling them for me!

We would go to functions and people would ask where I got her hair accessories.

Soon, I was making them for everyone and by the time her first birthday rolled around, there was a business card in every kids goody bag to promote BOWtique!

I was happy with the direction, and soon the first bow became an online store - with real stockists!

From there, it has grown to more than 50 stockists in Australia and some overseas too!

It is truly a dream - one that enables me to work from home and enjoy my little girl and also keep my sanity too!

Through the "journey" not much has changed - I still aspire to create great, well-priced pieces for little ones.

Mums want their children to look fab, but it is so hard when lots of us are just on one (sometimes small) income.

So I am consious that I create affordable bits that can transform an outfit, enabling mums to create several looks from one thing by just adding a big flower, or some cute "bling for baldies" for your newborns!

I love what I do and I would not have it any other way.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I do spend time with ribbon and not my little girl if I have an Expo or a market to attend, but at the end of the day, having that creative outlet enables me to be a better mum.

Having the diversity to surround myself in work allows me to appreciate my beautiful daughter Addi (now going on 3) so much more!

So that is Christies story..what a journey she has had so far with her business 'BOWtique' I can highly recommend Christie's products as I recently purchased two of her gorgeous petitskirts for my daughters as I mentioned earlier.

They arrived super fast and it was a real pleasure to do business with Christie as well. My daughters LOVED their skirts and here is a picture of their skirts they were only too happy to model for me at short notice (I now need some shirts to wear with these for them and stockings).

The skirts are made extremely well and you can see the quality in them. So do yourself a favour and head on over to the BOWtique website with a cup of coffee and have a good look around. Its FULL of gorgeous things, only a limited number would fit in this small business feature! We are now eyeing off some of those gorgeous hair clips!

Christie has generously offered our lucky readers a chance to go into the draw to win one of the very gorgeous ZEBRA PETITSKIRTS like my daughter just got - large size. Its very easy to enter, just pop on over to her BOWtique website and have a look around there and come back here to the blog and leave a comment with what your favourite product was on her site. Anyone who leaves a comment on our blog is in with a chance to win, and the blog is open to all comments so head on over to her BOWtique site now and have a look around for your chance to win one of these beautiful skirts!

Christie also has a FANTASTIC facebook page and you can join it by clicking on this link!

Redraw winner announced!

Well I tried and tried to contact one of the winners from our last giveaway we had (for when we reached 700 friends on our page) but I didn't hear back from her at all despite posting them a message even on their facebook page..so we just had a REDRAW and the lucky winner is Zelda Napier!

Zelda..I have sent you a message to your facebook inbox. Please respond by the end of this week if you wish to have your prize sent to you! You have won some gorgeous Certified Organic Unrefined Shea Butter and some Traditional African Black Soap which is excellent for eczema and all sorts of things..well done!

Bulk African Black Soap in basket

Bulk Certified Organic Unrefined Shea Butter in basket

Amanda xo

THANK YOU!

We reached a mileston last week on our facebook page with reaching our 700th new friend or 'liker' there, so to say thank you for all your lovely support we are giving away three small gift sets to three randomly drawn people on our friends list!

Gift Set 1: 1 x 100gm Certified Organic Shea butter and 1 x 100gm African Black Soap

Gift Set 2: 1 x 5gm Chocolate Lip Balm and 1 x 200gm Chocolate Milk Bath

Gift Set 3: 1 x 55gm Winter Blues Buster Solid Lotion Bar and 1 x 125ml Winter Blues Buster Bath Oil

Here are the randomly generated numbers of the winners numbers, we will go and count them out very soon to bring you the actual names:

number 134   - Emielouise Perez
number 15     - Corline Ross
number 619   - Darlene Sollitt

I have sent each of you a message on Facebook inbox..will wait to hear back from you with your address's!

Thank you SO much for being a friend of ours on Facebook.

Amanda

Di..Licious Give Away Winner!

Thank you to all you wonderful supporters of our blog! Without your participation our give aways would NOT be able to happen, so a BIG THANK YOU to all those who entered!

After plugging in our comment numbers into the random number generator, we received the number 10 for our winning comment! So MELANIE GRACE - Come On Down! You are our lucky winner!

Please contact me at info@bodelicious.com.au and I will organise for your win to either be picked up by you OR if you are not local..for you to be sent the lolly bag! Congratulations!!

Di Licious - Cupcakes, Sweets n' Treats!

This weeks feature small business is Di..Licious and its run by a mother and daughter team right here in Ipswich.

Imagine, catching up with your friends for a quiet cuppa and a scrumptious cupcake..next to you your children are entertaining themselves in the kids corner and you hear their squeals of delight as they get their baby cupcake!

Well you can do exactly this, at Di..Licious - downstairs at the Old Flour Mill in Ipswich!

Over the last two years this quaint business has grown in leaps and bounds.

Originally Renee used to buy cupcakes from her mother Dianne for morning tea where she worked and they were always a huge hit with all the staff.

News of the fantastic cupcakes soon spread and the mother and daughter team started doing their local markets as well for a bit of fun and socialising and to share their delicious treats with others.

The cupcakes were so popular though that the business soon needed both Dianne and Renee there full time to bake and decorate their creations and get them out to people, so Renee gave up work to become her mothers partner in the cupcake business – they have not looked back since.

Today they have a gorgeous cozy store at the Old Flour Mill building at the top of Ipswich where they sell their yummy cakes and other assorted goodies from Tuesday to Saturday each week.

Di..Licious currently have 25 flavours of cupcakes that they create and those are: Lemon.licious, Turkish Delight, Choc Fudge, Choc Devils Food, Choc Coco.licious, Mint, Plain White Choc, Coconut Ice, Carrot, Passion Fruit, Banana Delight, Coffee, Mallow Madness, Oreo, Jaffa, Rocky Road, Toblerone, Strawberry, Plain Choc, Caramel, Bee.licious Honeycomb, Maltesers, Coconut Rough, Lamington Angels and Orange. They also sell assorted biscuits – like macadamia and white chocolate, chocolate chip, peanut and chocolate, cornflake biscuits, Itty Bitty Spotty Dotties and everyone’s favourite, melting moments.

They also have gluten free biscuits for those with special needs.

Di..Licious recently made up a special order of 1,000 cupcakes for Gatton University of Queensland for an event they were staging and they had great feedback and lots of fun getting those ready for them.

They can also create gorgeous cupcakes for weddings and baby showers, all you need to do is discuss your needs with them and pick out the cake flavour you want and how you want it to look.

Just organise it two weeks before they are needed, the rest is fuss free and fantastic quality.

You can even hire assorted cupcake stands from them to display your tastey treats on your special day. They have mixed small stands from $10.00 (plus deposit) right up to wedding cake stands which are only $50.00 to hire with a $100.00 refundable deposit.

What better way to display your stunning assortment of scrummy cupcakes?!

Biscuits can also be made to order for special events like the cupcakes can and a great time to have these on hand are for the biggest morning tea’s!

All orders are strictly pick up only unless you have pre arranged for them to be delivered.

If you want a special treat for your childs loot bags, then you can pick up a wide variety of lollies at the store as well..they also have pre made loot bags for busy mums.

They sell a range of different sized cup cakes from mini bite size’d ones for $2.00, regular sized cupcakes are $3.00, texas (large) cupcakes are $6.00, round cupcakes are $10.00 and giant cupcakes are $50.00, so there is DEFINATELY something for everyone!

We had one of our son’s 21st birthday this last weekend and of course we got these talented ladies to make up cupcakes for him. I could not believe how easy it was to organise. I was extremely happy with the cupcakes and the price was excellent so I was also able to get him a ‘round’ cupcake with his name and 21 on it with a special black and white cow made up on top. He LOVED his special cupcake and it was the centrepiece of the cupcake stand! (which I hired for a very reasonable cost)

The cupcakes were fabulous and exactly right, we had half vanilla and half chocolate cupcakes and half were white butter icing with little black stars on them with white 21’s on them and the other half had white butter icing with black chocolate ‘jaffa’ balls on top.

Because we have readers from all over Australia and beyond, Dianne and Renee from Di..Licious are offering as a treat for their giveaway for this feature the choice of either $10.00 of cupcakes from their shop if you are local OR if you are not local you can get a $10.00 lolly pack sent to you..so a great choice of excellent prizes!

To be in the draw all you have to do is go to the Di..Licious blog page and look up the cupcake flavours and post a comment here on our blog in the comments section at the end of this feature - and state which flavour of cupcake you think sounds best – now how easy is THAT??