Let's hear it for Amy Winehouse!

At 20 years old, Amy burst onto the scenes in 2003 with her first critically acclaimed album Frank, which sold in excess of 600,000 copies and was nominated for a Mercury prize.

Frank is a beautiful soulful/R&B album, which touches on the trials and tribulations of relationships in a very open way – hence the album title. One of the most memorable songs from this album is called 'stronger than me' which Amy sings about being with someone who wouldn’t take a leading 'man's role' within the relationship, and therefore she felt that she was supporting him, where it should be the other way around in her eyes.  Amy sings this song with so much passion in her voice that as a listener, you really do feel what she is vocally expressing. Although not hugely successful in the British charts, the song went on to win Ivor Novello award for ‘best contemporary song musically & lyrically’ in 2004.

Her second Album Black To Black was released in 2006 and had a more grown up feel to it. Amy took influence from Rock, Ska and Soul, and then combined it to make some of the most recognised songs from the Album. The Album sold over two million copies and had won five Grammy awards. There are several memorable songs from this album, for example ‘Rehab’ and ‘Back to Black’, however, one of the biggest 'cross over' songs for Amy was ‘Valerie’. If anyone had not heard of Amy Winehouse before that song was aired; they certainly did by now.

Valerie was a song which was first sang by the English Indie rock group The Zutons. They had a fair amount of success with their version of the song, but nothing to the scale that Amy had. Thanks to Amy and Mark Ronson, people wanted to hear the original song again to compare the two, which briefly put the Zoutons back in the spotlight again.

Although Amy was in the press for the majority of times about her personal life, not too much was mentioned about the good that she did. Amy supported breast cancer awareness charities throughout her career and even posed nude for a magazine that supporting the campaign. She also donated her song 'Back to Black' to the Global Fund's 'Born HIV Free campaign, where she allowed her song to be used as a soundtrack to a film which was in aid of raising awareness of babies being born with HIV.

Sadly, on the 23rd of July 2011 at the age of just 27, Amy had passed away and Britain had lost one if their brightest stars.

Love or loath her, you cannot deny the impact that Amy Winehouse has had on British music. Her distinct singing voice, talent and individual look made her stand out from the crowd.

RIP Amy Winehouse, gone but never forgotten.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

My very first blogger blog entry. I'm so excited to be doing this and I thank you for visiting my blog. I'm honoured.

Thought that it would be good to share my interesting weekend with you. I went on a free personal coaching course which was held on Saturday and Sunday in London. The course was more or less geared towards people who obviously wanted to make a career out of being a life coach, but you could attend for your own personal learning too.

The whole weekend had a strange kind of feel to it, but in the best possible way. It was a real eye opener and I went away feeling that I had some of the tools needed to stick to goals that have been set and achieve whatever I set my mind too. It also made me realise what the barriers were that was holding me back and what I can do to get over those hurdles. I learned so much about the life coaching process, as well as how to apply some of the theories to my everyday life.

It was also felt so good to have met so many interesting people, some of whom were fabulous mummies from all walks of life. I felt as though I already knew or had met the trainers and the attendees before. They all seemed really familiar for some reason. Maybe we knew each other in another life (if you believe in such things of course), who knows, but it felt good being in their company. Then coincidently, when we were introduced to the last trainer of the day, realised that I actually did know him, as we had briefly worked together going back over 10 years ago! It was really good to see him again and to see how far he had come in life - a Master NLP coach and trainer. He quite literally appeared to be a different person in regards to confidence and demeanour, but I could tell that inside, he was the same lovely person that I knew all those years ago.


The highlight of the weekend however, was fact that it was gay pride day on the Saturday and the procession was marching past the building that we were in. You could hear positive songs like "You're free" by Ultra Nate pumping out of sound systems as they went past cheering and clapping. Bearing in mind that the course was about positive thinking and being the best that you can be etc, it just felt so appropriate to what we were learning.

At times their cheering and music was so loud, one of the trainers had to shout in order for us to all hear and she was wearing a microphone! It did put a smile on everyone's faces at the time and you could hear fits of giggles coming from various parts of the room. At our lunch break some of the ladies and myself went outside to video with our phones and take pictures. I'm ashamed to say that some of the men in the parade could strut better in their high heels than me!

I've added a small snippet of the video clip for all to see on my Tumblr blog.  I hope that it puts the same smile on your face that I had when I captured it Fabulous Mummy Life Tumblr Blog

Enjoy!