Virginia Cheeseman Blog

One week until my summer holiday! It is all go in the bug house trying to get the animals ready for me to have a week off. My website special offers have really gone down well, it has taken quite a bit of organisation but it has meant that I have managed to lessen the number of animals to a far better number. Most of the special offers are set to finish on Monday. I will certainly send out orders Monday - Wednesday but I may not be able to post on Thursday as there will be a lot of last minute feeding to do. I may have cut down but I still have a huge number of spiders, all needing to be housed and fed separately. Last weekend I received a record number of orders, it seemed that every time I glanced at my computer another order popped up. I was delighted, Monday and Tuesday were pretty much completely taken up with packing bugs and trips to the post office. Then I was amazed when I didn't receive a single order on Monday or Tuesday, it just didn't seem to make sense. However ...

Only two weeks until my holiday in Cyprus! It has been a very busy week, my plan to cut back on animals is working well. I have been running lots of short term, often one day offers and things are selling well. Some items have been bought in one go when I only meant to sell a couple at the cheap price. That will teach me for not keeping some back! It will certainly make my holiday a lot more enjoyable if I don't have to come back to an overwhelming amount of animals to feed and clean. I am only going for a week but there is a lot of planning involved. My hubby will be here (hopefully decorating the front room) but he won't be doing anything except spraying the bugs with water and keeping an eye on the temperature. I doubt the bug house will get too warm, judging by the current weather. He may just about manage to give the stick insects a bit more bramble as I have it growing in the garden. Last Friday my daughter and I went to visit the Sealife Adventure in Southend -on-Sea, E...

Off to the Sealife Adventure centre in Southend today. They have a great bugs display, I haven't seen it yet but it must be great because they are mostly, if not all, my bugs. I'm really looking forward to it, my daughter is driving me, so even better. She works in aquatics and is looking forward to visiting the centre too. It's some years since I visited Southend-on-sea, it holds many happy memories of my childhood as my Nan, aunty and cousins lived there. We may even escape the rain as it is non-stop here but according to the weather forecast there won't be any rain further south today (seeing is believing). The bugs are all going well. I was very pleased to see this week that my recently mated Trinidad Olive tarantula is carrying an egg sac around. I have been rearranging the bug house quite a bit as I need to get things organised for going away at the end of the month. My special offers have been a hit and I am cutting down slowly but surely on the amount of animal...

This year seems to be flying past, June already. The Jubilee weekend is upon us and of course that means two bank holidays and I cannot therefore post any orders until Wednesday. This last week has been very up and down, I was rushed off my feet Monday and Tuesday and then received no orders at all on Wednesday. It seems that most people get paid at the end of the month and therefore a lot of orders come in during the first few days of each month. I will send out orders as they are received, I hope to get most, if not all orders off next week but I will be very busy as there will only be Wednesday and Thursday that I can post. I get a lot of feedback about my blog (that's how I know how popular it is). Last week I moaned that I really wanted some giant water bugs that I saw at the BTS show. Well, a very nice reader has said that he has some that he hopes to breed and if successful, he will let me have some. They are Abedus species, from North America (not Africa, as I thought). A...