… or a short story about why I never got round to blogging the new stamps last Friday.  (Don’t worry, if you’re in a rush, you can skip down to the good bit at the bottom.)

Ever had one of those days when you take one step forward, two steps back?  Well things got a bit like that last week.  I decided to take a half day off last Wednesday and get my hair done.  (I checked with the boss and she said oh alright then …)  So after lunch, I got myself all rigged out in snow gear (we had heavy snow) and tried to get in the car – the door wouldn’t open.  I pressed the keyfob again and there was a little faint clunk, but the door still wouldn’t open.  Tried again – the alarm started going off.  The door was now open, but the key wouldn’t stop the alarm, start the car or lock the door.

I managed to find the spare key (which is a minor miracle actually), but that didn’t make any difference.  I nodded and smiled with mild embarrassment at the neighbour passing by staring at the beeping car (yes, hi, we’re your new neighbours, just moved in, that’s right …) I called Adrian (no answer) , called the garage, spoke to the guy who’d just spoken to Adrian, tried the emergency alarm override (didn’t work) and sighed gratefully when the battery finally drained completely and the alarm stopped.

So there I am stood in the snow with a car I couldn’t lock – and that’s reason number one why I never got the new stamps blogged on Friday – I had to re-arrange the hair appointment and Friday afternoon was the only option.  Blogging the new stamps was number one on Friday’s to do list – I figured I had plenty of time to do that before swanning off my half day.

(I did eventually remember how to lock the car manually – boy it’s been a long time since I’ve done that!)

Reason number two – the trade show.  Which is kind of linked to reason number one actually.

You see right now (17-19th) the UK’s major craft trade show is on and we had plans to visit Sunday.  On Friday morning my to do list grew by one item as I suddenly remembered we had no business cards.  Options: 1. print them in house on thin card and look completely unprofessional; 2. call our printers and see if they could do same day.  Yay, they could, so an hour and several emails later, we had business cards in progress – only slight issue, we needed to drive up to Gateshead to pick them up by 6pm that night.

Hair appointment 2.45 Barnard Castle … Gateshead pick up 6pm … yeah that’s entirely possible.  What is not possible is doing that and blogging when you’ve got a rush of orders from the email you just sent out the day before.  Never mind, I thought, I’ll do the blog post when we get back in.

Well that didn’t happen – our printer is actually very close to the Metro Centre and we got sucked in by the lure of SHOPS!  We just didn’t stand a chance of withstanding the whirling vortex of TK Maxx, M&S and Pizza Hut – two poor small town victims of the bright lights…  Never mind, I’ll do the blog post early Saturday morning.

The weekend was a write-off.  I had a minor argument with iPeriod – an app I use on my laptop to keep track of my very erratic periods.  No one told me they would speed up!  I thought they were supposed to kind of tail off at my age – get further and further apart, not come along every three weeks.  iPeriod really was quite sniffy about it – I don’t think it’s programmed for three periods in a six week timescale  (I’m pretty sure my body isn’t!).  Although I am no longer having the excruciating pain I had last year, they’re still bad enough to warrant a day or two in bed, so after all that running around, we didn’t get to the trade show yesterday and I certainly wasn’t up to blogging.

So if you’ve stayed with me this long, you deserve a treat – how about this:

or this?

Something brighter perhaps?

Yes, we have NEW STAMPS!! This is a range of clear stamps called Edges (for obvious reasons) and they are so much fun.  I’ve found myself reaching for them a lot lately – I’m using them in my journals as well as for cards and they’re brilliant on tags.

I normally reserve Fridays on the Design Team blog to announce new stamps and our Stamp of the Week (it’s With Sympathy this week), but it’s all gone out of the window this week, so  instead, I am giving you a link to our weekly email which contains the whole shebang.

Click here for all the news

Well right now I need to go and pack up the stamps Adrian made on Friday.  We started with quite a stockpile of these stamps and we’ve sold out each day since.  In fact, we’re almost out of raw materials now and we’re waiting for more polymer to arrive.  So if I’ve whetted your appetite and you’re frustrated because we are out of stock, please use the waitlist feature and hang in there – we’re making them as fast as we can!

And just a note – we won’t be shipping any orders on Tuesday (19th Feb) as we are taking a quick spin down to Birmingham to the trade show.  Well I can’t let those business cards go to waste now can I?!