I promised you that I had lots to share and I am now able to share most of it. In my usual style, I’m going to tell you a bit of a story first.

I am a renowned rubbish practical joker. I try and play jokes on people all the time and they usually fall flat, this year’s April Fool’s Day was no exception when I told the kids that I was pregnant again and that as a result we would have to move into a one bedroom flat since we couldn’t afford to stay in our house anymore. They fell for it so well that I decided to expand it and phoned my sister, whereupon the following conversation ensued:
Me: Steph? Steph! Oh my GOD I’m pregnant. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’m pregnant and I have no idea how it happened and how can I possibly have another baby I’ll have five kids under 10!
Steph – Deadpan: Oh my actual God. Are you kidding?
Me – almost crying: NO I’M NOT KIDDING I can’t believe this how on earth did this happen?!
Steph: Are you kidding?
Me: NO!
Steph: No way. I am too.
Me – shrieking: OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I WAS ONLY KIDDING BECAUSE IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY! Are you ACTUALLY pregnant?!
Steph: I hate you.

What this little vignette doesn’t tell the reader is that I am also renowned for being the worst secret keeper in all the land. Seriously. And Stephanie is the only person I know who actually managed to keep her first pregnancy secret until she’d got past 12 weeks. GNNNNNNNNNGGGGGG! So the last eight weeks has been torturous for me knowing but not able to tell anyone until today. Steph & Gary had their scan yesterday and there’s a little baby in there! It’s the clearest scan picture I’ve ever seen – you can see it here which is a photo of the scan and therefore not great, but clear enough to see a bambino in there. Hooray! Baby is due to land before Christmas which is just perfect. I am seriously excited

So that’s my first piece of news. My SECOND piece of news is that Bob & I’s business The Life Craft (which we’ve been sporadically blogging about here) has been entered into a really amazing competition run by Barclay’s Bank. Competitors are divided up by location and then by sector; in 12 days the judges will shortlist their favourite three entries per location and whoever gets the most votes wins up to £50,000 to develop their business. We really need people to back us just now – a task that will take literally seconds to do in the hope that we can be shortlisted. If you could take a moment to do this I really would be most grateful.

So that’s the news for just now! Onto the reviews.

I posted yesterday about our big walk around Calderglen Park with Penny the other night. When we got home, I was so knackered that I decided to have a bath. Lush had sent me a Big Blue bath ballistic and a bar of Sandstone soap last week as a freebie to encourage me to take 90 minutes as a World Cup Widow and I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth (although I didn’t have the heart to ‘fess up about Scotland’s lack of qualifying!) I’ve used the Big Blue loads of times before and love it but the Sandstone soap was a new one to my crappy sensitive skin and I’m really impressed with it! I got off all of the dry flaky bits without irritating my skin any further and it smells really nice too. Lush are also promoting their BB Seaweed facemask to World Cup Widows but I haven’t tried that one yet.

Although I have to say I’m very jealous of our friends in the South after discovering that Lush have Spas, but they’re only in London, Leeds, Poole and Kingston! Have any of you tried them out before?

The other review I wanted to share with you is for a website that I discovered after Christmas called Dot Com Giftshop. I got these supercute Russian Doll tins for the girls to keep their hairbobbles, colouring pencils and various tiny toys in so that I’d stop standing on them and I was really impressed with the speed and service offered by the site. A few weeks ago, they contacted me to say they’d listed Adventures of a Lady in Training in their top 50 craft blogs (at #42! The cheek of it, I reckon I should have been top 20 at least!) and would I be interested in reviewing some of their products. So they sent me out some of their Heart gifts range and I have to say that yet again, I was impressed with the speed, service and quality offered by them.

This gorgeous & classy tealight holder has been claimed by Erica for above her bed:

and they also sent this selection:

which just made me smile as soon as I opened the box which contained Feltcraft butterfly hearts, Iron-on patches, thick wrapping tape with hearts, thinner gift tape, alphabet heart stickers and decorative heart stickers which I have to admit made me want to sit down and write a letter to someone – anyone – which I could decorate with hearts. Yes I know, I’m unashamedly girly. Anyway, it’s a big thumbs up from me for the Dot Com Giftshop not just for having such a wide variety of cute and inexpensive gift items but also for the brilliant customer service experience.

And finally the bit you’ve all been waiting for – the giveaway! This giveaway has now closed

OK – up for grabs we have everything in this photograph:

and to enter the giveaway I would like you to:

1) Comment here (that gets you one entry)
2) Be a fan on facebook (that gets you another entry
3) Tweet about the giveaway (that gets you yet another entry)

Please remember to tell me in your comment if you’ve done steps 2 & 3 otherwise you won’t be credited for that entry! Also ensure you leave an email address for me to contact you on. You have until 8pm on Wednesday 2nd June 2010 to enter and I will post anywhere in the world.

Please note: I am not paid for reviews other than getting to keep the product I’m reviewing. You can therefore be assured that the review I write is unbiased.

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