With only fifty-five shopping days left until Christmas Day (its exactly eight weeks today), I really need to get thinking about what I need to buy everyone as gifts. Like I said in a previous post a few weeks ago, I’m getting a lot of stuff from Avon but the past couple of brochures, there’s not really been much in there. There’s been a lot of wholesale fashion jewelry but not much of anything else. I have a couple of things for my mum, something for Alex’s mum, something for my Grandad and something for Amy. Oh and something for Emelye as of Tuesday. I really need to make a proper list of everyone’s gifts so I can start buying something every week or so, so that come the payday before Christmas, all I have left to buy for is Alex. I have no idea what to buy Alex to be honest. I was thinking an iPod docking station but I don’t know where we’d put it. I’ll probably get him a new cymbal for his drumkit. The ones he want are about £100 each cymbal so I’ll just get him a new ride or hi-hats if I can get the money together. I’m hoping for an engagement ring but I’ve been hoping for that every Christmas and birthday plus all through the year so thats nothing fresh!

The kids, I have no idea what to get them both. I’ll probably buy Meghan a lot of paper, paint, pens etc. and books because she has enough toys to last her for a while. I always buy both of them new PJ’s and dressing gowns for Christmas so I’ll be heading to Marks and Spencer for those. It would be nice to have some money to spend on Christmas shopping when I head to London again in December so I can head to Hamley’s and get something a bit special for them both.

One thing I keep forgetting about is a need a new Christmas tree. I’m not looking forward to shelling out £50 for a tree but we can’t have the one we had last year. Between Daxter and Jak, it just got so ruined and looked a complete mess most of the time. I’m buying a fiber optic Christmas tree this year so I don’t need to buy any seperate lights or decorations for it. They can’t ruin a fiber optic tree. Hopefully.

Every Christmas my dad gets loads of gifts from all the companies that he does work for inside his company. I don’t know why because its not like he personally does work for them but its just a thing he gets every Christmas. Its always been a perk of the job. Well, every job he’s had actually. He gets wine, whisky, crates of beer, food hampers, gift vouchers, chocolate and corporate holiday cards. And I’m not talking cheap wine and cheap hampers. Its all really good stuff. He’s set for over Christmas and New Year with the amount of alcohol he gets and the hampers and chocolates come in handy for Christmas Day. I really need to get myself a job like that. Its worth working all year for what you get at the end of it!

I’m currently waiting for my mum to pick me and Meghan up so we can go to town and get some food in to last us until next Monday. I thought I’d blog while I had the chance. I always write out a meal plan before I go food shopping and I thought I’d try and make a few different meals this week since we’re stuck in a rut of about three different meals. It gets rather boring after a while. Tonight I’m making fish in a herb and lime crust with vegetables. Meghan will just be having pasta since we’re having a white fish. I’m making homemade pizza on Friday night and Saturday, thanks to Lisa’s input its tuna melts! I have never made one before and I don’t know why because I LOVE tuna melts. Lets hope I don’t suck really badly at making them. It can’t be that hard.

I’ve always wanted to just book a last minute weekend break to somewhere in the UK with Alex. Obviously its not really possible now we have Meghan but when we first got together, I always wanted to do it. Even though its not all that far away from us, I would love to go to Manchester for the weekend. We’ve never had a night out in Manchester because to be honest, if we waited until Meghan was in bed before we left, we’d probably only get to Manchester at about 8.30PM and we’d have to get the 10.45PM train home so its not really a proper night out. A taxi home is a ridiculous amount of money so we wouldn’t even consider doing that. I keep saying to Alex that for our four year anniversary next year we should go to Manchester over night then we can have a proper night out at all the pubs and bars we want to go in and not have to worry about missing the train home.

I keep looking at last minute breaks every couple of weeks just to see how much it would cost us to go to Manchester, or even London over our anniversary in February. I almost booked something last night actually but I thought I’d better sort it out with Alex first. The fact that we don’t really have the money to pay for it right now probably should have put me off more. I’ve not even asked my sister if she would have Meghan overnight or not yet! I’m sure she would. Every single year for our anniversary we say we’re going to do something nice because we didn’t the previous year and we still have yet to actually do anything. It would be really nice to do something next year and I’m hoping we get that whole night in Manchester.

Meghan has this thing at the moment about pulling her pants down. She then waddles over to me and asks me to pull them up, only to pull them back down. I really don’t know what the deal is about having no pants on and I wouldn’t really mind her having no pants on. The problem is, when she has no pants on, she then takes her nappy off. I wouldn’t really mind that either but… well I do mind her walking round with no nappy on. I know its probably good for her and most people would probably just say ‘Let her do it’ but I’d rather she didn’t thank you. Its different when we’re upstairs but downstairs, we have a pants on unofficial rule.

On the subject of nappies and no-nappies; potty training is going very, very slowly. We had an ‘incident’ about three/four months ago that if we mention to Meghan she starts getting very upset and doesn’t want to talk about it. Now she won’t go on the potty at all, the thought about it seems to be very scary but she will sit on the toilet. She’s sat on it about six times in the past week but not actually done anything yet. Sometimes she tells me she wants to go on the toilet (she has to put her knickers on before she’ll actually go on the toilet, we pull them down first obviously) but then we get there and she changes her mind and won’t be convinced otherwise. I’m sure she’ll do it in her own time but right how I just want it one way or the other. Alex says I don’t try hard enough where as I think he pushes it a bit too much with her so who’s right and who’s wrong, I’ll never know.

I’ve been thinking for a while if there is anything I could do from home, business wise but I just can’t think of anything. It would be nice if I had a small business opportunity that I knew I was able to do but I honestly don’t know how I could make money from home. I guess I’ll just have to become a fantastic sales person and up my Avon sales. Or finally write that novel that I have been meaning to write since I was about fourteen.

One thing I never remembering doing with my mum when I was younger is baking. I think I maybe did it with my nana’s once or twice but nothing that sticks out at the front of my mind. My love of baking started when I was about fourteen and I made my first apple pie. It was the best apple pie ever and I went on to make one pretty much weekly until I started finally getting a social life and didn’t have much time to be at home in the kitchen. Things sort of faded out a bit for a few years but my love of baking picked up again about eighteen months ago. Muffin’s, cupcakes, cakes, pies. Anything that involves a set of scales and a whisk gets me excited. As you know, I made Emelye some Mew Mew Power cupcakes for her birthday but I didn’t make Meghan anything so I still owe her a huge chocolate cake (Peppa Pig eats chocolate cake so obviously, Meghan wants chocolate cake) which I’ll make once I remember to buy some cocoa powder because I keep forgetting. One thing I really love doing is sending Alex to work with all the stuff I have made. I always get a good responce from the lads at work and I have even had a request a few times to make certain things again. My M&M Cookie Bars went down the best but I haven’t made them for a while. I might make some for work this week for them all.

This morning, me and Meghan woke up and came downstairs to make apple oatmeal muffins for breakfast. I took the margarine out ofthe fridge last night so it would be ready this morning for me to make. I was going to make them last night but there’s nothing better than a warm apple muffin with some butter on. Meghan loves to stand on a chair and watch me mix the ingredients. She’s the same when I cook. She likes to watch me cut and add all the ingredients into the pan and watch it cooking. Even though she doesn’t actually do any mixing or anything, I still explain whats going into the bowl and how many. Even though she’s only two, I really want her to learn these simple things like how to cook and bake. Its a really nice mother and daughter time that I can’t wait to do properly when she gets a little older. I have to say though, even though she didn’t do anything other than stand on the chair next to me, she still managed to get flour all over her face. How do kids get so messy without even doing anything?

Oh and the muffin’s were beautiful.

I’m back to blogging again. I think. I hopefully am anyway. I’ve been doing a lot of my blogging over at Love Duckie at the moment and been neglecting this place. I think I’ll do one of my lovely bulleted blogs just to get me back on track.

• Meghan’s birthday – It was a week ago today and I’ve already blogged about it here so if you want to know what happened then head in that direction.
• I didn’t get two of the jobs I applied for which sucks. But never mind.
• I got tattooed again on Wednesday. That makes my sleeve now on four hours work. It’s probably going to take another 3/4 hours before its finished. I didn’t go faint this time which is good but I did start struggling on the last ten minutes or so.
• I really, really cannot wait for my holiday in April. It just can’t come soon enough. I’ve been looking at it online a lot and some other resorts and countries that I’d like to go to. I have been looking at las vegas hotels too but Las Vegas isn’t exactly relaxing which is just what I need on a holiday right now.
• I’m off to London again in December to meet Sarah. Just for the day this time but I can’t wait!

I’m really behind at the moment with my blogging both over here and at my other two blogs. I need to blog about Meghan’s birthday but I just haven’t had the time or the energy to do it up until this point. I’ll have to catch up later on tonight or in the morning because right now I have Meghan chewing my ear off and I can’t concentrate. Plus I’m looking online for things I can’t afford like treadmills, bikes and ellipticals. I don’t know why I do this to myself because I just feel worse when I get offline without ordering anything! I promise a decent blog within the next 24 hours.

I don’t know about you but when I go shopping online, I don’t just look in one place. If I’m buying a CD, I’ll probably look at two or three different online stores to see who has the best overall price (after shipping) before I actually commit to buying. The same with toys, books, DVD’s and games. The only thing I don’t shop around for as much is clothes. If I see something I like, I’ll just go and buy it straight away. Your probably thinking it would be easier for me to just go on a price comparison website than running around everywhere but to be quite honest, I have never found a price comparison website that I liked. Well until the other day.

Shop.com is a price comparison website with a bit of a difference. It does the job of an ordinary price comparison website but it also makes it so you can shop for everything, all in the same place. Its great as you don’t need to keep switching websites and filling in your information all over again, you just do it once and your done! Once your find the best prices for what you want, you can take a look at the website’s coupons to see if you can save even more and they also have a few free shipping offers that you might be able to take advantage of. Its a great website and it will fantastic for Christmas when I need to shop for the whole family. It just makes life that little bit easier.