The 22nd of January 2021 marked seven years since I start my blog. Seven whole years!!
Rather fittingly the topic chosen for this month’s travel link up is your blog ‘origin story’, how you chose the name of your blog and how it came to be. Mine all began after I started building a website for a freelance events management company that I was starting. As part of the website I started constructing a blog focussed on food, travel and other personal stories. I had been an avid reader of blogs myself for a really long time and I was excited to have my own. I was also inspired by my dad who had been blogging since 2011!
I found that I really enjoyed writing and decided to separate the blog off from the business and keep it as a hobby and diary of the restaurants I visited and travels that I went on. 
(This is the first photo that I ever used on my blog, it makes me laugh cos I would never publish something so fuzzy and dark with half a random person in it now!)
Before really starting the blog, I needed a good name. I was about to marry my ‘Mr Silver’ – and if you’ve ever wondering that is his real name – so based on this I made a list of ideas for the blog name. I had ‘Silver Spirit’, ‘Silver Service’ but then I thought ‘Silver Spoon’ it was my Eureka moment. I also remember Mr S coming home from work and me reading the list allowed to him. When I got to SilverSpoon he said, ‘that’s it, that’s the one’. I replied yes it’s the one I liked too. I summed up everything I wanted the blog to be about. I added the ‘London’ at the end because I thought it would add a base to my blog and give me something of a niche.
(Hotel room photos in the early days, not only is quality and lighting terrible but there’s a plastic carrier bag in shot)
Even though at the time it was 100% a hobby and I never expected to have readers even though I was hoping to have a few! I set the blog up on blogger with a basic template and started up loading content. I already had a few posts written from when I’d started the blog on the other website so I started uploading those first. I had a few restaurants reviews and hotels I’d been to recently plus I wrote up a recent trip to Thailand and our five week holiday in Australia from two years before in order to have something to get started with before ‘launching’ it on social media. The template was super basic and the photos were awful but it was my ‘baby’ and I was really proud of it.
My next step was polishing it up and I bought a really simple template from Etsy for about £16 and I found a designer (also on Etsy) to make me a logo. I was really pleased with it! I still use the same logo to this day. Now it was looking better I started up my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts to go along with the blog. Back then Instagram wasn’t that big and I really focussed on Twitter (I still regret that to this day lol) and my following grew really quickly.
(An early food photo, I imagine I probably thought this was quite good at the time! I didn’t even edit my photos then, not even brightening)
I channelled so much energy into my blog as I wasn’t getting very far with the events business and I was soon publishing six posts a week. I just loved writing so much. I couldn’t believe it when I started getting readers, mostly through make online friends and forging connections with people via comments on their blog and through social media. I started making new friends, some of whom are still very close friends to this day. Katie was the first blogger I met and we are still super close and message each other most days.
Not only did I blog about food and travel, I blogged about anything and everything going on in my life such as my hen do, wedding, birthdays, and more! At this point it was all my own travels etc and totally self-funded, I definitely wasn’t at the point of collaborations yet!
(Meeting Katie, my first blogger friend, we are still really good friends, seven years later!)
Another thing that started happening was invites, my first ever event was a tour around the new suite at The Kensington Hotel , a hotel brand who I have worked with now throughout my blogging career. I also had brands and restaurants getting in touch wanting to collaborate. When I first started my blog, I didn’t even know that this was ‘a thing’ but it was super exciting that companies were interested in appearing on my blog and this all happened in the first few months.
I could waffle on forever about the milestones in my time as a blogger but here are a few important moments and turning points for me in my blogging career:
1. Moving from my basic blogger blog to WordPress in 2015.
2. Upgrading from a small compact camera to a DSLR and attending photography work shops to help boost my skills.
3. My first ever press trip (this was to Paris in June 2015 with Renaissance Hotels).
4. Becoming a host on the Travel Link Up.
5. Starting to work on a paid basis with brands. I’d had a few paid paid bits and pieces but the biggest one was with Expedia in 2016.
6. Press coverage such as being on of the Evening Standard Instagrammers to follow, a front cover of Influence magazine and appearing on BBC Radio.
7. Winning a London Lifestyle Award.
It’s all a little quieter around here these day what with becoming a mum and now the pandemic. But I have no plans to stop blogging, it’s become one of my greatest passions!
