Everything Must Go!

Well, not exactly *everything* but Jon and I have been very busy this last week clearing out our stock and we now have lots and lots of bargains listed on our business ebay account. Many of our previous buy it now items have been moved to auction with low starting prices and we're also clearing out and discontinuing most of our pagan/wicca items too. So, if you want a crystal ball for 99p, go and have a look!! :-)) Some items have indeed gone for a penny or 99p but on the other hand, plenty have gone for more than we expected too, so on balance we're happy bunnies. We're taking the business in a new direction once our current cash crisis has passed, so as well as creating much needed space at home, this is a bit of a spring clean. Have been busy listing stuff on our personal account too. In places, we can now see the floor!

Weather's been a bit boring....where's my lovely autumnal lashing rain and wind??

Emily's been having a fairly quiet few days on the "work" front....think she deserves it after her mammoth Titanic efforts, lol. On Friday afternoon Romy came to play and I didn't see hide nor hair of either of them until it was time to go home. Think they spent most of the time playing with Barbies, which was nice as Emily hasn't really played with her large collection of B's for quite a while. No, she doesn't think all women have to be blonde and size 0 in order to be worthwhile, either. Guess she has a good role model in me....rofl. I was never quite going to fit into that category even in my slim days. It annoys me actually when people complain about children playing with Barbies/Cindys/whatever. I think it insults the intelligence of the children to assume that they'll all grow up with this distorted view of women. Think they're quite capable of understanding womanhood in all its diverse forms but ALSO enjoying playing with pretty sparkly doll clothes and indulging in a bit of good old fashioned make believe/escapism..... But then again, I seem to be out of kilter with most of the world in my views on that and other things, like thoroughly enjoying Harry Potter, encouraging Emily to love it too, and not feeling the need to be ashamed of so doing. Oh well, each to their own.

Yesterday morning Emily went off to ballet lesson number 457 and - big news! - her bun stayed put. Not only that, it stayed put ALL DAY until she actually had to take it out. Ha! Cracked that one. Says she, tentatively. We discovered yesterday that the ballet examiner will be a man...which didn't go down very well. Piano rehearsal tomorrow morning, then yet another lesson on Tuesday morning with more to be advised later in the week - good job we weren't going away for half term.

This morning it was off to karate, where Emily had a fab time. She's really taken to it. And I'm impressed with her Japanese :-)

This afternoon and at various points Emily's been busy listening to Horrible Histories CDs. She had quite a few, but has collected others from the Telegraph this last few weekends. Today's freebie was WW2. I must admit I didn't like that one, though. As something within living memory of our parents, it jarred somewhat to listen to an attempt to make it funny/sarcastic. It was also a bit short on actual facts. Emily's keen to read Carrie's War and Blitz from the My Story series shortly though, so her interest in WW2 is developing. I always feel emotional when talking about it with her, so I'm not sure I'm looking forward to a possibly imminent request to "do" it as a subject.

Have also spent a pleasant few hours recently window shopping (well, online windows) for Christmas and Emily's birthday. Spotted loads of fabulous stuff from The Bead shop, especially the fashion design kits and of course all the beading kits, but lots of it doesn't seem to be available in the UK...and the prices! Had a bit of a brainwave half stolen from their fashion design sets, though. Emily LOVES to design clothes, in fact she spends most evenings while I'm doing the packing designing item after item after item, but she does them all quite tiny. The kit I was looking at had lots of blank fashion croquis (blank model outlines) in it for the children to design clothes for, so I've found a load of blanks online and I'm going to print them out, in various different poses, sizes etc, and put them in a folder decorated to be Emily's Fashion Folder or somesuch - so she can design items on a bigger scale and keep them, without having to worry about getting the body proportions right etc. Think she'll love that :-)