Christmas Panic!

Christmas Panic! It is that time of the year again, I seem to be rushing around and getting nowhere. Last week I had a couple of days down in Brighton with hubby who had a week off from training for his new job (he's back up in Manchester again this week). It was very nice, we did some Christmas shopping and visited friends and family. Then on Saturday we went to the AGM for the Bucks Wildlife Trust. The meeting was held at the Oxford University, Natural History museum. Before the meeting we signed up for a museum tour. What I hadn't realised is that each group was allocated a specific area for the tour. We got fossils 'rocks with very old, dead bits in the middle' (as you can tell I wasn't impressed). However after the AGM I met up with an old customer of mine who just happens to be in charge of the museum and took us on the most fantastic tour behind the scenes! We were really spoilt, being shown the very first known pinned bug (a butterfly) and items collected by Charles Darwin himself with his handwriting on the labels. Yes, they were still dead but how exciting it was and how lucky I feel, the insect collection was huge and fascinating! We also got to hear all about a research project that is being carried out in Indonesia. Palm oil production and the devastation it causes is something I feel very passionate about. I love Orang-utans and they are being wiped out, largely due to palm oil production. This project aims to show that growing the palms organically, using various animals (one of them being dung beetles) will not reduce the yield and will certainly be better for the environment. I could go on and on but not having written a blog last week I do have other things to say. I will just finish with the fact that I was also told products must declare if they contain palm oil from this month. I know it is used in so many lotions, potions and food. I have said I would never use palm oil if I knew it was there. I'm praying that Cadbury's chocolate doesn't contain any!

Those of you who have placed an order this week will have received one of my Christmas cards. I am quite pleased with them but it was a terrible rush to get them sorted before we went away. I had bought a 'prop' for the photo but when I got it home I realised it was broken. I went back to get another but they didn't have any left. I'm not telling you what it was as I intend to track one down for next year's card, it was a really good idea! I aim to get my cards organised a lot earlier next year (hubby says I should aim for August). I ended up using my giant Christmas gnome that I had already bought myself. He is now standing in the front garden looking magnificent (well I think he's great even if nobody else does).

Another improvement to my business this week is that I have included the Special Delivery tracking number in the 'despatched' email, sent from my website when an order has been sent off. I got a bit muddled on Monday, cut and paste is a wonderful thing, when you get it right. Unfortunately I had a letter at the front of the code wrong and then repeated it on several emails so I had to go back, check them all and then resend the correct codes, oops. I do get a few people contact me when their parcel has not arrived so I think this will help. Obviously if I am home I am quite happy to check the Royal Mail website but if I am out I cannot sort it until I return as I don't have the tracking numbers on me. I haven't had a parcel delayed for ages (thank goodness) but sometimes the postman is a bit late that day or the person has been out and not received a card to tell them that their parcel has been taken back to the sorting office.

I am still trying to improve my website but I honestly never have enough time for everything and everybody in my life. I am still updating a tarantula most days by putting a little information on each species. This seems to be working well as I have certainly noticed an increase in sales on the specific tarantulas that I have completed. I need to put some basic care information on each category still but I will get onto that when I have finished the spiders. Talking of spiders my Madagascan Fishing spider egg sac hatched this week, great excitement. I love these spiders, they are really pretty. I now have tiny ones running around but I did manage to move them into a large cage just before they all burst out, they are so incredibly fast moving.

That's it for another week, I will save my other bits and pieces for next week because I have run out of time. I have taken a couple of phone calls whilst writing this blog and ignored several others so I had better ring them all back now and sort things out. Never a dull moment, along with my daughter we are helping to set up a youth club in our village. All our training has been completed and this week we had a trial night (it begins in earnest in the New Year). A number of kids (young people is the correct term I'm told) turned up and showed an interest and my daughter and I really enjoyed playing table tennis and table football!