Happy Birthday to my blog: Five years old today!

Wow, what a year. When I look back a lot has happened in the last twelve months and my online diary is a great place to record all of my adventures.

This year the blog has opened doors and led to some wonderful opportunities. The highlight was quite possibly the Eat Drink Blog conference, but there have been some wonderful picnics, meet ups with other bloggers and invites to fabulous events too.

With the opportunities there has been some angst over the 'ethics' of the blog, but overall I'm comfortable with the balance being struck. I think whenever you've taken a 'freebie' some people are going to discount what you write. I know I do of others. However, I try to keep things balanced and events are a great way to catch up with friends, meet new people and sometimes money can't buy opportunities.

A large backlog of photos and posts, as well as an idea forming for a mini series, means there is likely to be a plenty more action to come on the blog over the next twelve months.

Top ten posts of the year:
1. Top Eats - one of the pages I added to the blog this year to help me remember some of my favourite places has proved popular.
2. Galtaji Rajasthan - Indian women in their brightly coloured sarees at Galtaji gets a lot of hits.
3. What does SOHO stand for? -still popular and informative. Now a regular in the top ten annual posts.
4. Cooking: Coconut and lime slice - a surprisingly popular post. People obviously love coconut and lime.
5. Habberfield: Ricotta cheesecake taste off - two very good cheesecakes get the recognition they deserve.
6. Garmin Forerunner 100 unboxing - tech reviews can be a real hit. Just a shame I don't know what I'm doing!
7. Restaurant Review: Café Sopra, Sydney CBD - considering how many restaurant reviews I do I'm surprised the most popular post only makes #7 on the list.
8. Restaurant Review: Porteno, Surry Hills - Porteno has over taken Billy Kwongs as my favourite restaurant in Sydney.
9. Restaurant Review: Revolver, Annandale - my favourite breakfast in Sydney, so pleased to see it on the list.
10. Cooking: Chicken and leek pie - another recipe which seems to have pulling power.

Top traffic sources:
My thanks to everyone who sends traffic my way. Blogging is a real community and I find most new blogs through other people's links. 

 Search engines provide the largest volume of traffic, but it is very special when someone gives you a link, mention or otherwise send traffic your way.


1. Urban Spoon - I wrestled with whether or not I should sign up to Urbanspoon, but they are now the biggest refers to the site.
2. Chocolatesuze -I think people must click through on my occasional comment's from Suze's very popular site.
3. The Adventures of Miss Piggy Eats -thanks to Mel (even if she did go to Aras without me!)

Thaks for reading and see you next year!