New Year, New Start

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? I do appreciate the view that it’s just a date and if you want to make a change in your life you can do it any time. However, what better time than a fresh New Year to start a new project or make a big decision about the way that you live your life? 

I have a lot to look forward to this year, of course the main event being my second baby, another little girl, who is due at the end of April. In the shorter term though, I am so excited about what is going on at work. 

Our fabulous new website will be launching in January. We have learnt the hard way how difficult it is as a small business so we will be supporting other small businesses in our new venture. We will also continue to support the amazing Maternity Worldwide charity. 

In order to support small British and fair trade businesses, we will have some small, unique, handmade gifts available for people to win. The site still works on the lowest unique bid auction principle, but we will only accept a maximum of 50 bids on each of these gifts. This allows us to pay the full retail price for the item and make a small profit to assist in the running of our website. 

We will be doing a similar thing with charity auctions that will be carried out exclusively for the benefit of Maternity Worldwide. Again, we will take 50 bids on the Maternity Worldwide items, but with these auctions, we will make no profit, with all proceeds going directly to Maternity Worldwide. 

Of course, we will still be giving our customers the chance to win amazing holidays too. The holidays this time are in holiday homes owned and rented out by British families, which is another way in which we will be supporting British entrepreneurs. Again, we will be paying full price to the owners and aiming to take just enough bids to cover our costs and make a small profit towards the running of the website. 

Here are Pluto and Soxa checking out the beach at one of our new destinations!

So whilst I’m not making any resolutions as such, I have a lot to look forward to in 2014. What about you? Are you making any resolutions or launching a new business? I’d love to hear about it, there’s something really special about looking forward to a whole new year. 

Silent Sunday 22/12/13

Silent Sunday 15/12/13

Well here it is, Merry Crispmas…

Before you ask, no I haven’t jacked in my wonderful job and sold my soul to Walkers. I’m actually having a bit of a dilemma. Having posted my dilemma on Facebook and Twitter and got no useful suggestions, I decided it was time for more drastic action – a blog post. 

Libby loves food. That’s great, it makes my life easier. She has never met a food she didn’t like, including stilton, olives, chilli, all the things that children shouldn’t like. She’s always up for a good meal, which really has never been a problem, until this year’s festive period. 

You see she’s always had a bit of a thing about crisps. As food goes, crisps, in Libby’s humble opinion, are one of the best things going. Like most mums do, I’ve been telling her about Christmas, she’s been listening to some stories at playgroup about it and we’ve shown her lots of Christmas trees and Christmas lights. And somewhere between adult mouth and 18 month old brain, it has all been lost in translation. You see, Libby is absolutely certain that the whole thing is all about crisps. 

Merry crispmas, lets go and see some crispmas lights and pull a crispmas cracker. We’ll have some crispmas presents under the crispmas tree, eat our crispmas dinner and then pig out on crispmas pudding. 

This isn’t just a speech thing, it’s not that she just can’t say Christmas. Every time it is mentioned, she is incredibly excited and looks around in anticipation for her crisps. So has this happened to you? Surely Libby can’t be the first child ever to experience crispmas? Any advice gratefully received. In the meantime, Libby’s off out for a walk… in her festive crispmas pudding hat of course!  

Silent Sunday