I have been playing with my new camera and have taken a few pictures using various different settings. The first is my purple clematis in the garden, the second my waterfall in our pond and the third a female newt swimming in the pond.

I am still enjoying playing with my new camera so I will probably be posting lots of pictures in the next few weeks. I took this picture of Oscar using the close up setting and was quite impressed that you can see the wet part of his nose in the picture. The second picture was taken last night when we went out for my 30th birthday. I had a great evening and had 16 of my friends join me for dinner which was great. Thank you to everyone who made the effort to come out and also to all the people that have sent me messages on facebook, sms, email etc. If you are my friend on Facebook you can see more of the pictures there.

Its my birthday today and I have just opened my present from husband. I have wanted a new camera for a while now and am now the owner of a Nikon D40. So far I have just about figured out how to charge the battery and attach the strap. As the rest of the buttons are rather similar to my old SLR camera, I'm sure I will taking lots of pictures soon so watch this space.

People who remember Fraggle Rock will be pleased to hear that the Fraggles are back. They will star in a new musical film where they leave Fraggle Rock and head for the real world. The film is expected to be released next year.

This is slightly odd, an artist who paints with his tongue. Ani K devised the technique last year and has so far completed 20 watercolours. However, painting in this way does give him severe headaches and body aches. He does say that he is growing immune to the effects of the paint, but it really can't be good for you ingesting paint. Still, its an interesting technique and if the effects of the paint should become too much, I suppose he can be happy in the knowledge that most artists work is worth more after they die.

A man in Suffolk has found a baby tarantula in a bunch of grapes he brought from Asda. He caught the spider which was later rehomed at a local reptile centre. I hate stories like this, they always make me a little wary when buying fruit.

This is a giant NES controller that has been made by an Australian gamer. It is fully functioning although it takes two people to operate it properly. It also doubles as a coffee table and a storage unit.

If you are one of those people that has never got used to calling Opal Fruits Starburst then you will pleased to know that Opal Fruits are back for a limited time. The manufacturer will sell Opal Fruits for a period of three months before reverting back to calling them Starburst. The sweets will be available in the original four flavours, orange, lime, lemon and strawberry. They will be sold exclusively through Asda from the 11th of May for 12 weeks so get them while you can.

I find it irritating when watching TV that the adverts are always much louder than the program you are watching. I was relieved to see that the Advertising Standards Authority has now drawn up some new rules to help combat this problem. The rules will mean that advertisements will have to be a consistent loudness to the TV programs and advertisers that breach these rules will face a fine. The new rules come into force on the July 7. Hopefully this could mean the end to constantly adjusting the volume because of loud irritating adverts.

This is the tallest Lego tower ever made. It was built to celebrate Lego's 50th anniversary. Standing nearly 100ft tall, it was built by visitors to Legoland Windsor and took four days to complete. The previous record for a Lego tower was set in Toronto last year with a tower that measured 96ft high.

We are now back in the UK after a week in St Lucia. I spent most of yesterday recovering from jet lag, hence no blog posts, but am feeling a bit more awake today. Further to my post about our open top jeep ride around St Lucia, I have now been able to get to the pictures. I found that the jeep ride was a particularly good way to see the island, mainly because there are only 8 people to each jeep, so if you have any questions you can ask the guide at any time. You can also ask to pull over at any time, if there is anything you want to explore further.

The tour started by driving through some of the more built up areas of island including the capital Castries. Pictured left is one of the islands many Catholic churches.

Pictured right is the tour guide Chris and our friend Dave who also came on the trip with us.

Here you can see one of the many places along the road where the local farmers offer some of their fruit for you to taste.

Pictured right is just one of the many banana plantations that we drove past.

Pictured left you can see me at the front of the jeep and next to that some pineapples growing in one of the plantations.

Here you can see the landscape as it starts to change as we reach the range forest. At this point the air becomes much cooler and the tracks through the forest are at times no more than dirt tracks.

To the left you can see a view of The Pitons, St Lucia's most famous landmark  that stands over 2,000 feet tall. To the right is a picture of Rory enjoying a dip under a waterfall which is meant to have healing properties.

On the left is a picture of the Sulphur Springs at the dormant volcano and on the right myself, Rory and Dave at the springs.

This shows our visit to a cocoa plantation. The picture to the far left shows the cocoa beans drying in the sun and the other picture shows a lady pealing the roasted beans before they are made into cocoa sticks. According to the guide over 90% of the cocoa from this plantation ends up in the US.

In the afternoon we made our way  back by boat. Here you can see me enjoying the boat trip and Rory swimming in the sea.