Reading · Not Lamb Anymore

Actual AI photo of me back in my heyday ;)

Dearest Blog,
We’ve had some good times together, you and me, haven’t we? I created you way back in 2011 when blogging was still a bit of a weird thing that people didn’t really “get”.
“So, what does it do?” they asked me. (I had no answer for that. What did they mean, “do”? Should it “do” something?)
“Does it make you money, then?” (To which I thought, how would it?)
“What’s it for, exactly?” (A bit of fun? To show off what I wore at work that very few people get to see? To showcase my underused photography and writing skills?)
That was many moons ago, and things have changed. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you recently, but I wasn’t sure how you and I could reconnect in a meaningful way in this new world (that’s not even called the blogosphere anymore, =sob=).
Now, my dear blog… we’re changing things up. Are you ready to go back to basics?
Your long-suffering editor,
Catherine x

Although I may have given away the punchline with that open letter to my fifteen-year-old blog, I might just explain how I got here.

(If you don’t want to hear, just skip right to the end — go to the heading “What I’m doing with the blog”. I won’t hold it against you. But you’ll miss some hilarious photos from back in the day if you scroll…)

Those were the days: the Summer of 2011. I’d been reading fashion blogs for a while, slavishly absorbing the street style in The Sartorialist, hoping to gain just a modicum of that level of cool. And one day I decided I’d bring my own blog into the world, no matter how inexperienced I was tech-wise, no matter how daunting the idea of writing and running a blog felt like at the time.

I was about to turn thirty-nine, and I wondered if anyone was interested in an ordinary British woman who was approaching forty and wearing kooky/weird/mismatched outfits to the office. There were a handful of older fashion bloggers in the US at the time, but I’d not found any in the UK, and I thought it was time one existed1.

And so, on my thirty-ninth birthday, Not Dressed As Lamb was born. It came quietly into the world, and I didn’t tell anyone. I published my first few outfit posts. They included just one full-length outfit photo. 50–100 words tops.

Oh, the days of dresses over skinny jeans! Stacked bracelets! Neon satchels! Towering wedge heels!

Until one day, I took a leap of faith and commented on someone else’s blog. That blogger, god love her, returned the favour and left me a comment. We became friends on Google Friend Connect (high five if you remember GFC!) — and thus began my foray into fashion blogging proper, where people were actually visiting my blog.

One month later, I thought I’d try something new; I wrote my first long-form post. I talked about fashion-related age-appropriateness. People liked it. I wrote more.

And more, and more, and more… until my blog was covering topics like ageing, health and beauty, personal stories, Gen X stuff — but still included a good chunk of my personal style.

I made it my full-time career, and while I was never one of the really big players (not by a long way!), I did alright with a few blogging award wins, big brand deals and a couple of TV adverts to boot.

Fast forward several years…

Let’s blame it on the pandemic, shall we?

It started before that… in 2017, to be precise:

All within the space of a couple of months, one brand failed to pay me, and another went bust (and failed to pay me). The third was my management company, where the owner/director did a runner, owing me thousands. Back then, brands paid my management company, and then they paid me, minus their commission. So the brands paid up for my work, but the talent agency didn’t pass that onto me.

So we got by for a couple of years, living off our savings, but then —

2020. I’m sure I don’t need to explain what happened there.

(Fashion) brands did pay for the first couple of years of the pandemic, but very soon they didn’t, offering up gifted items only as payment. I was also hit with a string of health problems, plus perimenopause, parents needing looking after, family issues, an unwell doggy, etc., etc., which made blogging and posting on Instagram the last thing I felt like doing.

I found Substack. I dabbled for a couple of years, but never really got to grips with it. It was at this time that my previously lucrative blogging career had all but dried up, and adding to my Things to Take Care Of list, my elderly parents’ health worsened, as did my own mental health.

My career was down the toilet.

(I’m really cutting a long story short here… if you’ve made it this far: please stick with it!)

Two years ago, I started writing a book. My debut novel. I had a great idea, and I ran with it. But it took so much longer than I could ever have anticipated, and I had to take on part-time work as a domestic cleaner to make ends meet.

I’ve recently lost both of my parents within ten months of each other, and it’s taken me about six months since then to feel a little more… emotionally stable, shall we say.

So here we are: August 2026. The book is finished and finally available to pre-order (I’m really playing down just how excited I am, because I’m at bursting point right about now).

It’s taken me a while, but I now feel that Substack has become my new home for writing “blog posts”, the main reasons being…

It’s free [for me] to send my subscribers notifications that I’ve posted. Sending emails to my blog subscribers used to cost me £55 a month (whether I posted on the blog or not), and I could NOT afford/justify that any longer.
AI results on Google searches has killed blog traffic. A few years ago we feared it might, and it has (for me at least). Advancements in technology so often change things beyond our control.
The costs of running a blog were outweighing the money received from sponsored blog posts, and I was running it at a loss.

But what to do with a (once-successful) blog? So many blogs that I followed “back in the day” no longer exist. It’s so sad when I type in their URLs only to find they’ve gone :(

An idea came to me out of thin air while I was in the shower (as all good ideas do!) the other day.

“I finally know what to do with the blog!” I exclaimed. (To myself, as no one was around to hear me. It was an anticlimactic moment of the utmost degree.)

And I don’t know if any of the OG “What I Wore Today” bloggers are doing this now, but I’ve decided I’m stripping it back.

I’m going back to basics.

And when I say basics — I really, truly mean BASICS. When I first started the blog, I posted one photo of one outfit plus a few words. That’s what I’m going to do again. It won’t be as regular as the two or three posts a week I used to do, but as and when I’ve worn something cute, I’ll photograph it and share it on the blog. (And maybe a monthly roundup here on Substack of the blog’s outfit posts so you can have a quick look at them.)

But more than that, it’ll act as a kind of diary of my life. Although many of my old outfits are starting to look shockingly outdated (see exhibit B below)…

…I’d really be upset if I lost the blog (or I just let it go) — it’d be like losing all my diaries and photographs. I love to have a scroll through the early days of the blog now and then. It’s a trip down memory lane for me.

So that’s it: my simple solution to the thing I’ve been mulling and fretting over for a good couple of years now. It’s simple, it’s back to basics, I can cut the costs of running it back to the bare bones.

I don’t think I’m going to start a new trend where old school style bloggers go back to their roots and publish the most simplified outfit posts*, but you never know. It’s a solution that I feel will work for me.

(*I do realise there may be many bloggers out there who never stopped!)

Less pressure.

Less time spent shooting different angles and multiple viewpoints.

Fewer hours spent in Lightroom uploading and editing photos.

I’m not going to bother to spend time on carefully crafted SEO or metadata or any other technical nonsense… It’s not worth it, because, you know — AI Google search results. Again, too much of a time suck.

I just want to wear cute outfits, spend an hour (tops) photographing and writing a blog post about it, walk the dog and write my books. That’s it.

And when I say books… I’ve already started on book 2. Yes, it’s the second in the Sweet Sweet series.

Don’t know anything about book 1 yet? I’ve got you covered.

Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is for you if you love:

❤️📚 Nostalgic romcoms
⌛ 🚀 The nineties (we’re talking time travel, kids)
❤️🩹 Second chance love stories
👫💞 Friends to lovers trope
😂😭 Writing that’ll make you laugh and cry (but in a good way)

A quick reminder of the story…

What if heartbreak came with a do-over?
A heartwarming second-chance romcom brimming with ‘90s nostalgia, love, regret, and the life you might have lived.
Just days after her silver wedding anniversary ends in disappointment, Ellie Foster-Russell discovers her husband is having an affair.
When she wakes up the next morning in 1997 — twenty-five again, back in her old life — she knows this is more than a second chance.
It’s a do-over.
Same flat. Same job. Same friends.
And Tom.
Funny, charming, impossible to forget. The man she once shared a single, perfect New Year’s Eve kiss with… before everything went wrong.
Ellie knows exactly how the next twenty-seven years are supposed to unfold.
Although this time, she has a choice.
But changing the past comes at a cost, and the present she left behind might not be finished with her just yet.
She’s about to find out that second chances come with consequences… and now her heart is on the line.
A warm, witty and nostalgic romcom about love, timing, second chances and finding the courage to choose yourself, Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered: what if?

A note about the pre-order: you can only purchase an advance copy of the ebook — if your preference is paperback, then that’ll be available to order on launch day, 7 November.

Thanks soooo much for all the support, happy Tuesday!

Catherine x

I Finally Know What I'm Going to Do With the Blog

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