Sunshine at last!

We are enjoying our few days away by the sea and actually enjoyed a little sunshine yesterday on our favourite Cornish beach - a National Trust beach near Hayle - Godrevey. As you can see from the photo we had pretty much the whole of the beach to ourselves for a couple of hours first thing - lucky us!

Fingers crossed the sun shines and I can relax by the seaside!

WOW!

Well you all know how I love to blog but you may or may not know that I also facebook and tweet via twitter. On a Sunday night Theo Paphitis, one of the famous Dragon's from Dragons Den, does a Sunday Night Shout Out for small businesses - You basically tweet about your business including his name and #SBS between 5.30 and 7.30pm - he looks through them all and re-tweets 6 of his favourites every Sunday to his 150,000+ followers.

Well last night was dots and spots night !

I must admit I have only ever done it about 5 times as I am always busy doing tea and getting the children sorted for school. But last night was Sam's birthday, we had invited his Grandpa over for tea and when he left, I quickly had a catch up of my tweets and just commented about Sam's birthday.

Well after Dragons Den had aired he re-tweeted his favourites and dots and spots was one of them! Well you would not believe what has happened on my twitter stream - well over a 100 new followers, 100's of fabulous supportive tweets and lots of 'pings' in my inbox!

Wow! What an end to a lovely day - I certainly went to bed smiling!

We have a birthday.......

.... to celebrate today!

A certain (very excited) someone turns 9!

5 days old

Age 1

Age 2

Age 3

Age 4

I've missed a few years in between!

Age 8

Birthday Boy!

We have all been up since 7am - having been woken up by a very excited boy! Lego has been the order of the day - he is building as I type and we have a day out at Legoland booked for mid week. Pancakes, roast dinner and profiteroles are on the menu, with a little birthday cake thrown in too!

Happy Birthday Sam!

The 'BIG' order

The end is in sight - Hurray!

I have, since ............. well it seems like forever been going on about the 'big' order - well come Monday, it finally leaves dots and spots HQ and to be perfectly honest with you, I can't wait!

The past 2 days have been so incredibly busy and exhausting - actually packing all the individual made up elements, into their specific orders.

The cards and place settings have gone from piles of printed stock, to being laid out and packed, to being stacked into towers and finally into individual order boxes.

The tape has gone from a neat but foreboding tower, to being checked, neatened and prepared for packing, to this chaotic heap of empty boxes ready to be recycled.

This was the scene that met me this morning - looks a mess but I assure you was very much organised chaos!

I have been reliant on this colour coded piece of paper to aid me in my packing!

And yesterday in 5 hours of continual packing we completed - 56 boxes!

Today has been the final push and with a further 36 boxes packed - the order is complete! Well my bit of it is anyway - Jeff now has to book all the parcels in with the courier for a Monday dispatch, fix on all the address labels for 30 individual stores and then trolley them all down the hallway to the loading bay and onto the van!

This little lot is not going out until Wednesday - I mustn't forget!

I must confess, it's lovely seeing space again.

I would like to thank my wonderful team for all their help - I most certainly wouldn't have got through it all without them and continue to keep up with all my normal dots and spots orders of which the most recent, will be given my full attention tomorrow and Saturday!

I will reveal all once I see it in store - don't get too excited - you may not have heard of them. I certainly hadn't before one of the stores was built local to me!

15 years .....

....of truly wedded bliss!

19 years ago I met the man of my dreams, the man I knew I would marry and share the rest of my life with and 15 years of marriage and 2 wonderful children later, I can honestly say I am so very happy with my lot.

They say romance is dead - well he put together a little clip (click to see) on You Tube, brought a tear to my eye.

Here's to another happy 15 years together!

Daughter's!

Now there is a lot going on at the moment work wise and the children were supposed to have spent last week down in Cornwall with my parents - but my Dad has been unwell, food poisoning (we think) so they have remained at home.

My daughter has had a bee in her bonnet about changing her room around for a while now and I kept saying 'later', 'in the holidays'. Well in her little mind, the minute the holiday started, it meant room changing! So on our return from Harrogate, with a full order book to work through and still the 'big' order to complete, I also spent my evenings shifting furniture around.

Her bed has been replaced by her desk.

Her cube unit / comfy area with her bed.

Her desk area is now a beauty area!!!

I can't quite believe how grown up she is becoming - other than move the furniture, she did all the rest. She has discovered the wonders of Harry Potter in the last week and is found in a quiet corner head down reading. This summer marks the end of her Junior School days as she prepares for Secondary School in September. No doubt we will be going shopping soon with a list as long as her arm and me an empty purse at the end of the day.