If you like Lush products you might want to take advantage of their current offer. If you place an order of £30 or more between now and the 11th of January they will give you £10 of free stuff from the Christmas and Retro range. If you spend £50 they give you £20 of free stuff, spend £80 you get £30 of free stuff and spend £100 you get £40 of free products. Needless to say I have just placed a rather large order, I should have enough bath bombs to last me a few months.

As a Next customer I received a pre sales invite before the main sale started and whilst there was nothing that I actually needed I have successfully ordered nearly £400 worth of stuff which has started arriving in various packages. I now have the difficult task of deciding what to keep and what to send back. As most of the stuff I brought in the sales last year is still sitting unworn in my cupboard I am going to try and be a little more careful this time and only select things that I will actually wear. After all there is no point getting a good bargain if its only going to sit in the cupboard. I guess I like many other people am seduced by the red sales stickers.

After several days of eating too much food and drinking too much wine I am starting to feel the effects of too much Christmas cheer. Whilst in many ways it has been a good Christmas spent with family it will be nice to get back to eating normal, more healthy food and a regular exercise regime. Saying that, I still have a few days left of holiday which I will probably spend trying out some of my other computer games, after I have been running of course, that way I can justify sitting in front of the games console.

After completing Gears of War some time ago I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Gears of War 2 but had put off buying it, in case I received it for Christmas. I did receive the game as a gift from my husband and we tried it out for the first time today. We like to play in the co-op mode as we find it makes for a better game. So far I am not disappointed. We have successfully avoided mortar attacks to go underground to try and defeat the locusts and most recently have managed to survive being eaten by a giant worm. This game is more challenging then the last but it looks like it will provide many hours of great gaming, I better get back to it, whilst I have some holiday time to spare.

One of the presents I received this Christmas was Rockband for the Xbox. I have wanted this game for a while and it was a real surprise when my husband appeared with a huge box on Christmas morning. After putting together the instruments I had a go at the drums and Rory tried the guitar before switching over and trying the other instruments. Both instruments took a little bit of getting used with the singing being the easiest and least challenging part. After a little practice, however, this game gets really addictive. I haven't quite mastered the guitar but I am starting to get quite good at the drums. This is a game that appeals to all ages as well. Rory's parents spent Christmas with us and we formed a band with me doing the singing, Rory's mum and dad taking turns at manning the drums and Rory on lead guitar. Despite it being quite an expensive game I can see we are going to have hours of fun with this. Once we have exhausted the songs on the original disk I will be off to the music song to download more.

I would like to wish all my readers a happy Christmas. I have received lots of new toys today and will be reviewing these in the coming days so watch this space.

Every night for a few weeks my four cats have been running up and down by the window shaking their tails and making hunting noises. It took a while to find out the cause of all the excitement and it was only after a week or so that I discovered Mr Nibbles (pictured) as I have named him. After several days of sitting by the window with my camera and using a little cheese as bait, I finally managed to get a picture of our elusive night time visitor. At least we know the cats are not crazy now, there really was something out there. Mr Nibbles only visits when all the cats are closed in for the night so for now he is perfectly safe and its great entertainment for the cats.

This article suggests that snorers burn more energy whilst they sleep. Apparently people who are heavy snorers burn around 373 extra calories a day compared with those with only mild symptoms. Scientists studied the link between weight gain and sleep apnoea and looked at 212 patients. On average the volunteers burnt 1,763 calories a day, whilst those with the worst symptoms burnt 1,999. The extra calories amount to the same amount that you would burn if you did a 30 minutes work out in the gym. 

This is quite cool its actually three parts of a tree that appear to look like one big tree from outside the house. Greig Howe cut a 35ft Christmas tree into three parts and put one part in his sitting room, another in a bedroom and the last part on the roof. It took  several people two days to put the tree in place and some of the branches are so big that the windows of the house need to be kept open. The tree is decorated with 160 baubles and 2,000 lights.

I appreciate that products that contain nuts need to have warnings on them to alert people who suffer allergic reactions but I sometime wonder whether this policy goes a bit too far. The reason I say this is that I picked up a large bag of unshelled mixed nuts in the supermarket the other day. The product is clearly labelled as "unshelled mixed nuts" and it is clearly what it says on bag. On the back is a large label saying "warning may contain nuts". I find the wording somewhat amusing "may contain nuts", I thought I had brought a bag of nuts, is there any doubt that the product has nuts in it, what else would it contain?

This article suggests that otters are now starting to become much more common in Britain. Otters have previously struggled to survive in Britain and have been restricted to isolated parts of the countryside. Although they were widespread in the 1950's they were nearly wiped out by the 1970's due to the use of pesticides which poisoned both the otters and the fish they depend on for food. It appears that improvements in the water quality of rivers and increasingly fish stocks now means that the creatures are becoming more common. Some otters have also started to adopt an urban lifestyle with reports of them being seen in gardens, parks and churchyards.

Burger King have released a barbecue scented cologne. It is called Flame and is being promoted as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat". It is currently only available in the US and costs $3.99. It is being marketed as a novelty stocking filler but I'm guessing it is not suitable for vegetarians.

This huge crab was caught by fishermen in Norway and was put on sale at a fish merchant in Swansea Market. At 3ft by 1ft and weighing in at 3kg, the crab which is as big as a table would cost you £75. I'm not entirely sue what you would do with all that crab meat, but this is one seriously large crab.

I got an invitation to download the beta version of Playstation Home a few weeks ago and after a good 45 minutes I had managed to install it. I was then prompted to install some further updates which the Playstation apparently requires in order to run Playstation Home. After around an hour of installation time I prepared myself to enter the virtual world and explore. First I created my avatar which despite my best efforts didn't look much like me but I did my best with the limited range of hair and features available. On entering the virtual world I then found myself in my virtual apartment and spent a few minutes looking around to see what I could do. I quickly found out that there there was not a great deal to do here. I could move the furniture around so spent some pointless time moving all my furniture out of the apartment onto the balcony before getting bored. Then I tried to throw myself off the balcony and found that I couldn't. Having exhausted all the possibilities of the virtual apartment I decided I would go outside and look around, so I approached the door expecting to be able to walk straight through. The system then promoted me to install the next section so that I could move on. I spent another 15 minutes in my apartment moving all my furniture back into the apartment and trying to stack it in the centre of room whilst I was waiting for the installation to finish.

Then I eventually stepped out into the virtual world. Once there I found that was not an awful lot I could do here either. I spent some time exploring before trying my hand at a game of draughts against another player in the square. After beating him soundly I looked around for more amusement. I found there was a bowling alley which always seemed to be full so I was unable to try this, a cinema where you could watch movie trailers and a shopping centre where there were lots of shops but with nothing to buy. All of these sections also require further downloads to access them. I tried some of the games in the arcade and played a rather poor game of pool whilst trying to avoid the other male players who seem to cluster around the female avatars like flies. After spending a couple hours in the virtual world the majority of which was spent downloading new sections of the world I took my avatar back to the apartment and went back to the considerably more interesting real world. In some ways I can see where Playstation are trying to go with Home, but it could certainly use a little more excitement.

This article suggests that the average Briton spends more than three and half years of their lives suffering from colds and flu. That amounts to an average of three colds a year and around three weeks a year off sick. Over the course of an average adult lifetime this amounts to an surprising three years, five months and 15 days suffering from a cold or flu. I guess I must be one of the lucky ones, I can't remember the last time I got sick.

A pub landlord who lived all his life in the same pub has had his ashes buried at the bar. Jack Woodward was born in the Boat Inn near Towcester in 1924 and lived there all his life until he died aged 83. In his will he said that he wanted the bar to be his final resting place. His remains now lie under a flagstone with a plaque reading "Stand here and have a drink on me. Jack 1924 – 2008."

The lightsabre used by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars has recently sold at auction for £133,000. The prop was sold at an auction of Hollywood props and memorabilia. Other items for sale included an original section of the Death Star which sold for £13,300 and C-3PO's helmet which fetched £66,444. My husband was love a lightsabre but I think I might have to look around for something a little cheaper.

This is quite unusual, its the story of how a shopkeeper fought off some robbers with little more than a cup of tea. Varsha Patel had just made a fresh cup of tea when two men wearing balaclavas and brandishing 10 inch knives burst into her store. She reacted by throwing the tea into the face of one of the potential robbers and throwing the empty mug at the other. She then picked up a bottle of whiskey to throw at them but the robbers had had enough and fled the shop. The message here is that tea can be a powerful weapon if used correctly.

I found this picture of a cute duck who is recovering from a broken beak at an animal rescue centre in Essex.

This article suggests that almost an eighth of the customers who order cod and chips from the chip shop actually end up eating haddock without realising it. Whilst haddock is equally tasty the one big difference is the price with cod costing around £16.17 per kg and haddock £11.63 per kg. An investigation conducted by the Food Standards Agency found that haddock was substituted in place of cod at around 12 per cent of chip shops, 10 per cent of pubs and 9 per cent of restaurants and that it was more common when cod prices were high. Whilst most people would find it hard to tell the difference between the two fish especially once they have been breaded or battered it seems wrong deliberately mislead customers, if you pay for cod then you should get cod.

This article suggests that older drivers are more likely to be caught by speed cameras. In fact figures show that older drivers are six times more likely to be fined for a speeding offence than they were ten tears ago and that the number of older drivers fined outnumbers young offenders by almost three times. A study which was commissioned by the Department of Transport looked at the age of offenders in two periods between 1997 and 1999 and 2003 and 2005. It found that younger motorists appear to have adapted better to speed cameras whilst the number of men aged over 60 receiving penalty points soared by 540%. In contrast, the number of drivers under 25 being caught for speeding grew by just 18 per cent in the past 10 years.

These cute little guys are Amur leopard cubs who have been born at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in Smarden, Kent. The foundation support rare and endangered big cats and runs some captive breeding programs. There are only around 40 Amur leopards left in the wild and the species is facing extinction due to the burning of forests to make way for agricultural land.

This is unusual, its a story about a doctor who performed an operation he has never done before using only text message instructions. The British doctor who was volunteering in the Congo needed to perform a complex amputation know as a forequarter amputation. The procedure involves the removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and needed to be carried out on a boy whose arm was badly infected. Mr Nott has never performed the operation, so asked for instructions from a colleague who had. He contacted Professor Meirion Thomas, from London's Royal Marsden Hospital who sent him step by step instructions by text message. The operation was later performed successfully and the boy made a full recovery.

A run down pub in Liverpool has doubled in value due to some graffiti on the side of it. The pub was originally worth around £495,000 before the graffiti appeared. It is now worth around £1 million after the graffiti was found to be the work of Banksy, an artist who is known for his images of vermin. The estate agents overseeing the sale have been inundated with offers from buyers looking for an investment.

This is interesting its a project that will use "beer goggles" in schools in an effort to try and show children the adverse effects of drinking. The goggles will impair the wearers vision and show children what it is like to be intoxicated. I wonder whether the project will work as it is supposed to.

Whenever I get sick I always put it down to having travelled on public transport and picked up other peoples germs. This article came as no surprise to me. It claims that a single sneeze can infect as many as 150 fellow passengers with a cold in just five minutes. Researchers looked at 1,300 workers and found that almost all of them had suffered from at least one cold last winter. The results were analysed by a cold and flu experts who also looked at how the sneeze travels. He found that a single sneeze expels 100,000 droplets into the air and that these droplets transfer themselves to handles, rails and other areas. Around 10 per cent of commuters then come into contact with this infected area which at rush hour amounts to 150 people. 99 per cent of people who travel by tube, 96 per cent of rail passengers and 98 per cent of bus passengers were found to have caught a cold last winter. In contrast only 58 per cent of those of worked from home caught a cold. The advice is to 'think of others before you sneeze without a tissue, otherwise in just five minutes you may have infected other commuters and won't be the only one feeling poorly.'

According to this article Mischief could be the world's oldest cat. At a grand age of 27 human years that makes him around 125 in cats years. There are records of a 29 year old cat which has since died but there is currently no record holder in the UK for the oldest cat. Mr Thorne, Mischief's owner got him as a kitten in 1981. 27 years later he is now an indoor cat and despite losing clumps of his fur is still going strong. The oldest cat ever was Creme Puff, who was born on August 3, 1967 and lived until August 6, 2005 an amazing 38 years and three days.

This article suggests that the average cost of a wedding has doubled over the past decade and now costs around £21,000. I wonder whether its just a case of people not shopping around when they are planning their wedding. When I got married two years ago I spend a total of £9880.81 on our wedding which I considered to be quite a lot of money. For that, however, I got a lovely ceremony in my local church in Egham followed by a stunning reception for 120 people at Royal Holloway University as well as an evening buffet for an extra 50 people.

My dress cost just under £600 including the veil and tiara and the bridesmaids dress was around half that. I definitely didn't cut corners but was aware that our total budget of £10,000 could not be exceeded. We had a little help with my parents paying for the photographer and we made all of our table decorations and favours to save a bit of cash. The only thing we couldn't afford was a honeymoon so we came up with the idea of asking our guests to contribute towards this and as a result had a nice relaxing break in the sun without having to worry about the cost. I found that the £10,000 budget went further than expected and our wedding day was certainly not lacking in any way in fact it was pretty much perfect, a little careful budgeting and research can go a long way in planning a wedding, and I don't think it needs to cost £21,000.

A street cleaner in Lincoln could find that he is considerably richer if he can solve an unusual puzzle. The cleaner came across a bag full of cut up bank notes when he was going about his daily cleaning. He handed it into police but after six months the notes have remained unclaimed and as there is no evidence that they have been stolen the cleaner is allowed to keep them. The only catch is that for the notes to be worth anything he first has to stick them all back together. It is estimated that there are £10,000 worth of notes in the bag so this is one puzzle that is really worth solving.

This is interesting its a sat nav collar for dogs. The sat nav device in integrated into a waterproof collar. It uses satellite, telecom and radio frequencies to pin point the location of the dog and then alerts the owner once the animal is on the move. The collar can also send a text message if the dog goes beyond a pre programmed range. Whilst at home the collar can be switched off to save the battery life but it can still send an alert if the dog wanders out of range. The collars which  are made by a company called Retrieva will be available in January and start at £250. I wonder whether they will make a version for cats.

The government has come up with a new scheme that it hopes will stop people taking advantage of the sick note system. Sick notes have been in place for around 60 years, however, what started as a scheme designed to protect vulnerable people has effectively turned into a means for some people to be consigned to long term unemployment. Under the new scheme instead of receiving a sick note saying that they cannot work a patient will instead receive a note detailing what work they can do and well as what they are unable to do. The idea is that the it will make it easier for people who have been sick to return to the workplace and encourage people to stay in work. The scheme will be introduced in 2010 and it is hoped that it will encourage doctors and employers to work together to help people with a disability to stay in employment. Its an interesting idea and I can see that is is aimed at benefiting those with genuine disabilities. I wonder whether it will go any way towards cutting down on those people who use the sick note culture as an excuse not to work.

Those who are feeling a little wobbly on their feet after a night out in Devon are being offered flip flops so that they can get home safely. The police in Torquay say that giving out the flip flops makes it easier for women to get home instead of struggling with high heels. The flip flops are part of a wider initiative which includes advice on safer sex and measures to reduce crime. The flip flops will be given out in December and will have information about safe alcohol limits printed on them. The scheme is costing £30,000 and is being funded by the Home Office by Safer Communities Torbay which is an alliance of the local authority, police and health services. At a time when many local authorities are finding they are rather short of funds, I can't help wondering whether this money could have been put to better use elsewhere. 

This is interesting, it suggest that lizards attract attention by doing push ups when the forest is noisy. Researchers found that Puerto Rican lizards put on elaborate displays of push ups and send signals by bobbing their heads up and down and unfurling flaps of skin under their chins. The push ups are only used when the lizards are trying to communicate with another lizard that is far away or when the light is bad.