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It’s always extremely difficult finding a gift for bacon. Like seriously, what to you get a bloke on the mushiest day of the year, surrounded by all things pink and cuddly? Well, no such problem this year! Interflora, here I come!! No, not being silly, but bacon do really love flowers, and after all that’s happened this week, it was definately good time to get him some. We seem to have abit of a reverse relationship – he’s the one who loves getting flowers.

I went on to intrerflora’s website and had a quick click around. It was easy to navigate, you can filter out products by categories or price – and of course I did it by price . It was suprising to see interflora offering affordable flowers for Valentine’s day – you can get a gift bag of flowers from only £19.90! That’s amazing – I was totally under the impression that it would cost me at least £30 to get flowers delivered. I picked one that came with a vase and a helium ballon, the Sweetheart Perfect Gift Set. Delivery was super speedy, demonstrating the level of service that you can always be sure from Interflora.

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Isn’t it pretty? Awww….

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Have a closer look. There is one giant rose in the middle with a faux-diamond, bringing the look of the whole bouquet together. Nice.

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Seeing that this year we will be up in the air during Valentine’s day and having plane food (ugh) as we travel to sunny Melbourne, I thought bacon should have something to bring with him on the long plane trip as well. No, it’s not a book – neither is some ear plugs & eyemask. It’ll probably be best if he passes out the whole long 24 hour journey:)

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hur hur hur . Do you like my inscription? I ordered him a personalised local Sheffield Pewter hip flask from The Last Detail , who specialises in wedding decos, gifts and more. Now, wouldn’t you much prefer this to your regular mushy card and teddy bears? Fabulously functional yet thoughtful I thought getting him a personalised hip flask was such a fabulous idea, not only would he get use out of it, my inscription would remind him always of how fabulous I am….no praise like self praise .

I do like the Last Detail’s website. I love how you can shop by color, narrowing stuff down to the colour theme of your wedding and only getting cream colored accesories, for example. I also love the little bits and bobs that they have, like personalised chocolates and aprons. Personalisation just puts gift-receiving and giving in a completely different dimension ….so if you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas & birthdays …*nudge*nudge*

PS: If you’re thinking of getting the hip flask for valentine’s day, give them a ring, it might not be too late for Valentine’s Day delivery – I got mine within two days of placing an order – including personalisation, that’s absolutely amazing! And of course, Valentines flowers!

A few weeks ago the lovely people at Prospera Publishing sent me a review copy of Nicky Schmidts’ debut novel – Naked in Knightsbridge. I am not a self-professed chick-lit booklover; but then again, before Twilight, I was never a teen vampire romance lover. I don’t do book reviews very often (if at all) , so forgive me if it doesn’t sound too right!

I wanted the book to be a complete suprise, so I ignored the summary that is so often available on the back jacket of the book. It started off with a letter from the heroine’s bank, demanding repayment for her outstanding business overdraft. In fact, all the chapters start with letters addressed to the heroine, Jools. I actually looked forward to the start of chapters because of the often hilarious letters, especially those where the author seem extremely preplexed at her mostly unreasonable behaviour.

Naked in Knightsbridge is about Jools, a single late-twenties woman that had always taken the easy way out of life. Stumbling into the cleaning business after finishing uni because she couldn’t really be bothered to look for a proper job, she actually achieved some success in it. However, like quite a few people, she spent all her profits- and more. Mostly on unsuitable items of clothings (i.e. 2 sizes too small)….and doughnuts. So when the business starts to go belly-up, she was left penniless and as close to homelessness as you can get, making meals out of hobnobs and expired alcohol.

What will resonate with readers is the reality that Jools live in. The spend now-pay later culture that is so prevalent in modern British society – I am very debt-adverse and am really terrified at the way people spend the money that they do not have. Coupled with references to eBay (everyone loves a bargin, right?) and sham marriages for illegal immigrants to stay in the country, this is definately intelligent chick-lit that makes itself very current and on the pulse. And of course, everyone has the one friend that you are slightly envious about right? So is the loneliness in modern society of having only a handful of friends – with everything falling apart once that small teensy support network collapses. This would not be a chick-lit without the knight in shining armour – and I do love the character development of the knight in this book. Trying not to give too much away, I must say that the eventual knight is most definately my favourite character in the book…I shall leave you to guess which one of them is the eventual saviour .

Bridget Jones meets credit crunch, I would say. Available here with FREE worldwide shipping, definately a must-have on your Christmas list for the chick-lit lover who appreciates a good laugh as well.

My sifu Moo introduced me to text link ads last year about this time. My objective was to get enough advertising revenue to maintain this domain and pay for flickr PRO. On the sideline, I was also interested in tracking how succesful does non-intrusive online adverts it works with a small insignificant blog like mine.

Well.

VERY WELL! Total payment from August 07-August 08 is USD 366.05! Even then, I did not start earning double digits $$$ until the beginning of this year….but the past 4 months have seen my monthly revenue rise to $50+ on a monthly basis.This will definately go to either a purchase of a new laptop that I sorely need now that I broke my old one or purchase of a new bring-everywhere camera that I need to be able to take sharp shots of randomness that catches my fancy.

The system is easy peasy. You sign up for an account with your blog domain, wait for it to be approved, and then voila, they start hawking your site to advertisers. You can even set it to auto-approve advertisers, thus you not having to do any work whatsoever but to sit back and watch the money roll in! Definately worth the 10 minutes it takes to sign up and install the code…especially useful for hobbyist bloggers like me. Once advertisers sign up, they take 50% of the earnings, leaving you with the other half. Now, this may seem outrageous, but bear in mind that they are doing all the donkey work of sourcing for advertisers, billing ect…whilst all you do is sit back, relax, and continue blogging. And watch the money roll in. If my small insignificant and badly updated blog can make money, so can yours!

My favourite part about txtlinkads is the fact that it is completely non-intrusive and that I am not forced to blog about crap things like credit cards, florida holidays ect….yes, those that annoy you because your fav blogger talks about windows, floorpolish and other things that are completely unrelated in every other blog – just for the sake of getting some moolah.

So, click on the below to start making money….when you register using me as a referee, I get a small token payment as well, which will contribute to the running of this site. Click click click NOW!

I have spent the past few weeks working with the good people at The Dreymall regarding my dream shop.Yes, there is no denying that The Dreymall is run by my good friend dree and her business partners so I get preferential treatement blah blah .

Most of us have dreamt of running our own shops since the days of playing shopkeeper when we were children. With the advent of the internet and push button publishing, dreams have been coming true for many of us wannabe shopkeepers. Even me and drey have tried selling items online via multiply.I would be the first to admit that our multiply shop wasn’t as good as it should be, therefore no buyers for the lunabliss items that we tried hawking.

The problem with many new online shops that keeps popping up like mushrooms is that items are displayed and sold via blogging platforms (just like this one). This is totally marfan (troublesome) as each new post is a new item for sale, and sales cannot be done real time like amazon but interested buyers are asked to request for it via email to the seller. Also, there are no automatic notification when the item has run out, prompting interested customers to continue emailing the seller only to get a dissapointing reply a couple of days after.

I believe that if you are going to run a business, you’ve got to be professional. You’ve got to be prepared to provide the best service to your customers and be at their beck and call. Nothing turns me off more than a horribly designed website. What’s more frustrating is when you are really interested in the items up for sale, but not being able to buy it because the seller makes it so hard for the shopper to purchase it! In the current PayPal world, I am very annoyed that consumers still have to put up with shoddy displays, annoying shopfronts and difficult procedures in purchasing.

In comes the Dreymall team. They have created a easy to manage and customer friendly interface for all your online selling needs. As a seller, it helps you track your shipping, stock levels and is extremely easy to use and manage your prices and items for sale. As a buyer, the clean and intuitive controls helps you shop in a stress-free environment. Once you are done adding items to your shopping cart, you click checkout, where shipping will be calculated and your final bill is presented to you. Easy as 1-2-3. No agonizing waits for emails that you have been accepted as a buyer, no annoying controls to navigate through like other online shops that are on blogging platforms.

Don’t believe me? Check it out here. The team have even provided a test logon so you can just go in an have a look around at what the system can do. You manage your item listings, pictures, prices and shipping all from one easy to navigate system. It is all so clever! I was most impressed with the ability to compute shipping and track shipping rates. It just simplifies life for a small time online shopowner. I am not saying this just because me and dree are friends, but it really is clever – try it for yourself if you do not believe me.

So, if you have ever wanted to own a shop, have a look at The Dreymall now. From now until my birthday, as my gift to you (wrong way round isn’t it?) The Dreymall is even offering a free three month trial on their system. Go on, have a look. Speak with the Dreymall team. If you don’t like the system after three months you can always board the shop up at no extra cost to you at all. What’s more, if you should decide to keep it, setup costs are not expensive at all; unlike many of their competitors.

Who knows, you might be the next amazon…..

Yes, one of the thousands that must must have to have the Wii Fit – the revolutionary at-home personal trainer. I preordered this nearly three weeks ago, and it was delivered on launch date of 25th April. And it was well worth it!!!

It first measures your BMI, which puts me at overweight– no suprises there, especially since I entered the wrong height measurement. Then it measures your balance , which gave me my Wii Fit age at 44. Hah. However, I do think that it tends to measure younger users and give them an older age, whilst older users will be assigned a younger age. All about motivation me says. The younger ones will be determined to lower their Wiiage whilst the older ones are so happy about being a younger wiiage than they actually are and thus continue playing

And its games -nothing like Bubble Bobble or even Grand Thef Auto. This was just out of the world! Over the weekend I had jogged on the spot with the Wiimote (the controller) in my pockets, headed footballs, ski jumped, dressed up as a penguin and chased after fishes, did pushups and many others. What was excellent about this Wiifit is the Yoga section, which measures if your weight is evenly distributed between your feet and how much you are shaking when you are doing a pose. This is nearly impossible to judge with traditional classes or even one to one yoga training. Wiifit takes out the doubt that you might be doing it wrong by measuring your centre of gravity and shakiness of your leg supporting your upper body.

I also found out that I rocked in hulahooping! Excellent for straining the thigh muscles, it was absolutely exhausting! Step aerobics was one of my plus points as well, fairly similar with dance dance revolution. Just trying to do more cardio stuff at the moment due to my Mii ( avatar on Wii) currently resembling a rotund barrel – it automatically shrinks your Mii if you’re underweight and vice versa.

This was bacon doing step aerobics

I might dissapear in the next week or so, but will definately take more pics! Been to busy excercising myself and had no time to take pixs. Very happy with my progress so far, seeing that I am horrible with sticking to gym, Wiifit will actually scold me if I was not consistent with my excercises! It says good morning to you, asks you if you’ve had your lunch and tells you to stay off the afternoon snack. Now, have you seen a friendlier personal trainer?

The trailer is available from YouTube here

All those who are on their playstation 3 yearn for a day like this!!