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Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas and thank you for all your support throughout this year. I am shutting up shop today and will be back and raring to go on Monday January 5th. I would love to say that I will take it easy over the festive break but it is sure to be as busy as ever! Sadly my aunty died last Friday and the funeral is just two days before Christmas. However I do have lots of fun family events planned to fit in around caring for my 'mini zoo'. I wish I had managed to cut down on the animals a bit more but at least I will have plenty of stock for January (a surprisingly busy month for me). The bugs are all cosy in their room next to my office. I can just pop in and out, it is so much easier than when they lived in the log cabin at the bottom of the garden.

Royal Mail have done extremely well this Christmas, I only had one parcel delayed by a day and no animals have died or been damaged in transit at all. My last day for posting orders was Wednesday, I was going to send on Thursday but I didn't want to push my luck, I thought it was a bit too close to the weekend. I was panicking a bit as several parcels were going to Scotland and I kept hearing on the weather forecasts about snow up there. It has been surprisingly mild here so far this Winter, long may it continue!

I have been supplying a tracking number for all orders over the last couple of weeks and I think this has been a really good idea so I intend to carry on. It is a bit of extra work to copy out the tracking numbers and put them on the despatched emails but I think it is worth it. I am still on a mission to improve my website. Nobody has come forward to help me with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and all those scary things that I need to set up and don't have a clue about (you cowards). It is amazing how much I have learnt on my iPhone from the mums in the playground when I wait to collect my great-nieces. Perhaps I should volunteer to collect them every day from school! I will look into getting a friend to help me with these social media projects but it will have to wait until the new year.

I am thinking of doing away with my landline. It is only a thought but I'm not sure I really need it anymore? I almost exclusively use my mobile now and so does everybody else, the main reason for keeping it is that our internet is connected to that number, rather than our home landline. We would like to switch to BT Infinity but it seems complicated with two lines and there is a constant crackle on my work phone (I don't think the line is working perfectly due to being waterlogged which has happened before). What do you think? Would it stop people contacting me if I only had a mobile number? I am always trying to encourage people to call but most people prefer to send an email these days anyway. My mobile is always on me (I was really cross when I got changed before going shopping yesterday and left it at home), I can only answer the landline when I am actually in and within ear shot of the phone. I'm not sure but it is something to talk over with my husband. He gets back from Manchester today and isn't away again training for his new job until January thank goodness (he isn't off work though, just working more locally).

I do have a funny little story to tell. I have been chatting to lots of family over the last week since my aunty died and an older cousin of mine (who is terrified of spiders) recalls when I went into hospital aged 9 to have my tonsils removed. Evidently I took a spider in a matchbox with me to keep me company. I have no recollection of this but it certainly sounds like me!

I'm off out to walk the dog now. I hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year. Thanks for all your cards, my favourite card has to be from Natalie, it is brilliant and shows a spider in a Christmas hat sitting on a web covered in baubles with the moon in the background (I hope to get hubby to put a picture of it on this blog, along with my own 'bug featured' card). Who knows I may be able to do it myself by this time next year! (perhaps?)

Edit.....She couldn't do it herself so I had to do it....Mick

My Christmas Card 2014


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