The dust has finally settled on our orangery extension, and now that the garden is really taking shape we feel ready to share it properly with the world through the medium of time lapse video!
My husband worked very hard on putting the video together, not just the final editing but the constant positioning and checking of cameras as the work was carried out, downloading hundreds of video clips, and planning the best angles to fully showcase what was going on. We even used a drone for the final shots.
The building work started in August 2024 and took just under four months, finishing just before Christmas 2024. Then the garden landscaping began at the end of March 2025 and took just over a month. The garden is still a work in progress - we've been making regular visits to the garden centre and slowly filling out the borders. I'll be sharing a few pictures once it gets going!
So if you enjoy a good time lapse, click below to watch as our house is pulled apart and then put back together to create something amazing that we are so pleased with.
Firstly I intended to make a video featuring a second of footage each day for 2017. I was very successful with this, and you can read about the video and view it here - 2017 in seconds.
My second challenge was to publish 52 videos in 2017 - a new video every week. This one didn't quite go according to plan. When I gave myself the challenge I was buoyed by my success with Vlogmas 2016, and after managing to publish 24 videos in December 2016 alone I thought that with a few holidays planned for the year I'd easily hit my target.
What I discovered though was that the more videos I published the lower my views were. I was getting so few views on videos that it hardly seemed worth making them, and I just didn't have the time to promote them when I was publishing so frequently. I did publish 29 videos over the year which I think is pretty good, and I'll probably aim for about one a month this year.
I find it quite difficult to predict which videos will do well, but I have noticed that videos with lots of views as soon as they are published seem to take off better, so it's worth getting on with promoting a video as soon as it's live. I shared a video taken at Center Parcs De Vossemeren on their Facebook page. They were good enough to reshare it immediately which led to lots of views straight away, and it is now my most viewed video of the year.
My next most viewed video from the year was the video that I made about the resort we stayed in on Fuerteventura - the Iberostar Playa Gaviotas Park. In fact I have several similar videos which have all done very well, people clearly like to have a good look around a resort before they stay, or perhaps they are revisiting their holiday memories.
Some of my most recent videos are my favourites but they don't have many views yet, I'm hoping that they will pick up over time as I continue to re-promote them. My personal favourite video of the year is probably the one that I made of our family visit to Whipsnade Zoo, just because it brings back so many happy memories of a lovely day.
And that's the reason that I love making videos - I enjoy taking the footage and then editing it together to make a little video memory with our highlights from a day or a trip. So even though this type of video doesn't do particularly well for me, I'm still going to continue with them as a way of recording our memories - it's not all about the views!
At the beginning of 2017 I started a new video project. Every day I took a short video clip which I edited down to one second, and then I combined them all together to make a short video showing our entire year in seconds.
I quickly got into the habit of capturing a brief clip of something that we were up to every day. Although on some busy days I was a bit distracted, and the clip I ended up with wasn't always representative of our main activity! There were also lots of days, particularly when we were on holiday, that it was really difficult to choose just one second's worth of footage. There were also those evenings when I suddenly remembered that I'd not taken the video clip that day - that's why there are several clips of the children brushing their teeth or reading in bed, and more than a few of Mia fast asleep as I sneaked into her room just before I went to sleep!
Amazingly I did manage to not miss a single day. The only day that I had a problem with was when we went to watch Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in May - I remembered to take the video but found out the next day that I hadn't pressed the button properly and all I had managed to record was a brief shot of my lowering the camera. So I had to take what I had and slow down the recording to make it last for a second - you can tell if you listen to the sound but I'm hoping that it's not too noticeable!
I decided not to carry on the project into 2018 as I did find it rather stressful remembering to take the video each day. I was really proud of the result though and I've had so many positive comments, so I may well do it again in a future year!
Here's my finished video - 2017 in seconds - enjoy, and I'd love to see if you complete a similar project!
