Singer Songwriter – Dawn. The Sparkle Diaries.

2025 has been quite a year, from the highs of happiness to some sad losses, the circle of life and the paths life takes us down. Once again I have been very lucky to have done some travelling and have visited some beautiful places; Sorrento, Costa del la Luz and Ireland. I have met some wonderful people some of whom are now good friends and are as crazy as I am about singing, dancing, music and having the craic. I’ve also achieved things I thought would be impossible for me to achieve.

None of the above could I have done without my amazing friends and family. I know there have been times over the past couple of years where they must have looked at me and wondered what on earth I am doing and no doubt there will be more of that in the coming year. In the past few years I have found some new confidence, new strength and new power to try things out and push my comfort zone. It’s been scary but so worthwhile.

I’ve been very lazy with my blog and at times I have thought about giving it up. As if the universe is pushing me, almost as soon as I have these thoughts to end the blog, I receive an email from WordPress to inform me about people visiting my site and that spurs me on to keep it going and actually start writing again. I always found writing my blog very therapeutic, it helped me through the darker times in my life and from the messages I received, it helped others too. I also connected with some wonderful writers on here and to sit back with a coffee and read a blog post was very relaxing.

Thank you for all your support, your love and kindness, for giving me confidence to follow my dreams. It’s still January so I’m not too late to wish you all a very happy, healthy, peaceful, love filled and totally sparkling 2026.

With love and sparkles and more to follow xx

Well this was a very, very exciting day for me. A photo shoot. Imagine me, me, having a photo shoot?! I had been trying on my outfits for weeks at home. Of course the additional weight gained over lockdown and holidays meant that a lot of clothes were tight and some were just too tight to wear. I had also spent months sourcing the jewellery I wanted. That Turquoise look, you know, it’s very ‘in’ in country music. I found some in very unlikely shops, thankfully, as the majority of what I wanted was only on sale in America and the cost of shipping was sometimes three times the amount of the item I wanted to buy. Thank you to Esty, Next and Amazon.

It was a dry day which was great as it had been raining most of the week before. We headed off to country park and we started the photo shoot. It was such fun once I got into it all. The photographer, Sean from Essay Photography https://essayphotography.co.uk/ was so good as putting me at ease and talking me through the various shots and directed me as to what to do, where to look etc. I had five outfits and had to run back to my car which was parked in the lane, to quickly get changed and update the jewellery I was wearing for the next batch of photos to be taken.

Once we had finished in the country park we headed into Digbeth in Birmingham to Norton’s Irish Bar. What a fabulous venue. I can’t believe I haven’t been there on a night out!!! The staff were amazing, so accommodating and eager to help with the photo shoot. Again, very exciting for me and at least this time I had the ladies bathroom to change my clothes in.

Standing and sitting up on the stage was amazing, I’ve not been up on a stage before. It filled me with such excitement and nerves. Once again, Sean was great at directing me and we have some absolutely fabulous shots from within Norton’s.

By the end of the day I felt like a real singer songwriter, almost like it’s not a dream anymore, I’m really making this happen and the right people are crossing my path to help me along in my dreams. We liked it so much at Norton’s we are going back there at the start of next month to film the video. There’ll be no talking to me I’ll be that hyper after filming a video.

Norton’s Bar https://nortons.bar/ If you are in Birmingham, drop in for a Guinness or a Jameson’s.

With love and sparkles xxx