As this Friday afternoon and Saturday is the Gluten Free Expo, I thought that I needed to explain to my readers the reason for my logo. You see, the reason I mention this is that I have not only had cards made up with details of my blog, which you can find at Julians Free (which is those yummy pizza bases I wrote about) and the other lovely exhibitor is Tasty Bite (which sell fast, convenient, heat and eat gf Indian Food). That's just with the cards, I also ordered a t-shirt, with the puffer fish logo, which I will be wearing at the show on Saturday. I got it delivered today, its fantastic, but the blue and pink puffer fish is very visible! I ordered the t-shirt to encourage readers to come up and talk to me, ask some questions, give me some feedback. But that firstly explains where the cards will be (I will also have a heap with me too), and now onto the reasoning behind the logo for the new readers.
For those of you who don't know the reasoning behind my logo (the puffer fish), is I relate it to how I feel when I eat gluten and my stomach almost instantly blows up, I mean explodes, looks like I'm 6 months pregnant! It looks and feels like it needs to be deflated with a pin and then I'll feel the air be released from my stomach, I imagine it to feel and sound like letting the air slowly out of a balloon!, leaving a deflated but pain free stomach. That's not including the pain and agony that it can sometimes cause!
When I first created the logo I tried to explain to my family, but my mum is a bit of a visual learner, and despite trying to get the logo she didn't get it at all until she recently watched Shark Bait (the cartoon) the other week, and couldn't stop laughing at the puffer fish. She called me to tell me that, when it went from nothing to this massive round blob, it reminded her of me when I ate gluten. I could seriously have a flat stomach one minute, and the next few minutes it would bow up. I'm sure there were times, when people thought I was pregnant. I always made a point of showing my relatively flat, still pudgy but not massive stomach on days when I wasn't eating much gluten!, just to squash those rumours!
My husband aka Poppa Smurf and I, watched Finding Nemo,on the weekend and I kept on laughing when the puffer fish blew up and insisted on pointing it out to my husband!! He got the point after I kept on saying it, for the tenth time!
I guess to me things like logos, business names and even tattoos have to have a meaning behind them. My great grandfather started a diary farm, which he then turned into a thriving business if milk trucks, buses, coal trucks and the house, the bricks in that house and the house, were built by the hands of my great grandfather, grandfather and great uncles. Now I'm telling you this because the house and all trading names for the business were called Emohour (which is our home spelt backwards), it meant something to him and he carried that through every aspect of his life. I also have a small tattoo, but its of something meaningful to me. I don't understand the need to get a pretty butterfly or angel wings tattoo when it has no meaning, apart from it looks pretty (its there forever, so you better make sure you can tell your grandchildren why you got it!).
The puffer fish to me, apart from being an embodiment of coeliac disease and the reaction people have when they eat it, I want it to change. To empower others with knowledge and about the condition/disease and create a world where we can eat, go out, relatively stress free!
So please come up to me if you see me at the Expo on Saturday. Enjoy
