I WON A COMPETITION!! You have no idea how exciting this is for me. Especially when all I had to do was retweet a tweet, which I totally would have just done anyway, because the lady in question is awesome. 

FINALLY. I've been itching for the festive season to officially start for a long, long time, but somehow December has snuck up on me and I can't quite believe it's that time of year again. I haven't even got myself an advent calendar/advent candle/hand-crafted super-duper advent extravaganza yet, and as for Christmas presents... well. The less said about that, the better. I do have some sparkly boots though, so don't go thinking I'm *completely* unprepared for the festivities.

I am stupidly busy at the moment, but my Christmas present to myself (oh and birthday present. Did I mention it's my birthday in December too? No? It is. Two days after Christmas, in fact. You might hear me mention it once or twice. Or a million times. One side-effect of having a birthday so close to Christmas is that I feel the need to bring it up at every opportunity, lest anyone should come even remotely close to forgetting it. Or - even worse - wrapping my birthday presents in Christmas paper. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THAT?) is to devote a little more time to blogging for the rest of the month. I'm not all that far away from my one-year bloggiversary and I don't want to limp halfheartedly across that threshold, dragging my pale, lifeless blog along behind me like a shrivelled limb, oh no. I want to skip across it wearing sparkly boots and singing Christmas songs. Even though it will be January by then. Whatever.

In this spirit, I am so excited to be hanging out with the lovely Lauren McGlynn this weekend and hopefully taking a few pictures of the newest and most photogenic member of my little family. I might even be in some of them too, and if you're VERY lucky (and I don't look like a total weirdo in them), you might get to see them. Merry Christmas.

Anyone else getting into the Christmas spirit? No? Just me...?

(That isn't Smidgen in the antlers, by the way. Not yet, anyway. You know how I feel about dogs wearing clothes.)

Image: Punchline by Derek Potts