While I’d love to buy a drink for each and every single of the one hundred bloggers heading to the Zoo this Sunday, I don’t think it’s fair on those of you that can’t make it.

How about I make you all some cake? Yes, that photo is me in the kitchen, rustling up something tasty, wonderful and celebratory – but oh, what rotten luck, with our low-tech social networking, you can’t even taste it!

Well fear not, I’ve managed to magic up with a bit of blagging and barefaced cheek blogging goodness some cracking goodies for everyone to have a shot at bagging.

And here they are and they could be yours, just drop me a comment on this post, or a tweet @nixdminx and I’ll pick the winners of these darling goodies by December 10. I’ll be adding a few more over the coming week too, so keep your eyes peeled lovelies x

Karaoke Golden Ticket

I’ve got a Lucky Voice Golden Ticket on offer. That means two hours free singing in this most glamorous of establishments with cocktails and microphones galore!  It’s so much fun, you’ll want to say longer…I ended up staying an extra three hours on my Birthday last year.

If you can work out what this song is below, will you let me know…the lyrics aren’t recognisable but I think we sang it more than once!

Super Lush Sweet and Dreamy Box

This gorgeous Sweet and Dreamy Lush briar box of rosy dreams and sugar candy baths (quite tempted to keep it actually) could be winging it’s way to you ahead of the Christmas Party Season and could help you get over all those dreadful hangovers feel fresh as a winter daisy.

Festive Fun: Peter Pan tickets

This is one hot show this Christmas – I have two tickets to see the Peter Pan show at the 02 from lastminute.com*.  It’s also a little known fact that my birthday falls on the same day that the original book was published (Peter Pan by J M Barrie)

Kitchen Goodies from Simple Human

Thanks to Simple Human for the Sinky Caddy & Drainer – I would hate for you all to be scrubbing pots and pan without some kind of stylish kit…

Tickets to SeaLife

Here’s one to fill the days after Christmas when you simply have to get out of the house, two tickets to Sea Life – take your pick which one you want to go to

Transformers DVDs

Blockbuster movies are always great for rainy days and I know this one is a goodie. I have four, yes four!, DVDs of Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen

I really enjoyed the first film, so please let me know what you think of it – but remember it has a 12 rating.

Thanks to Lush, lastminute.com, Simple Human, Lucky Voice and Paramount DVD for their generous offer of prizes – it always helps to keep the readers happy! x

*valid for performances Monday to Thursday before December 17 2009

After a hour or so of feeling like I was about to pop, I woke up again thinking it was 8.54 and was just about to panic when I checked again and it was 6.54. Phew!

I got a good morning kiss, a cuddle and a cup of tea in bed. Then I was babbled at for 90 minutes. Oh yes, Miniminx was up and about and working on her new, new signature. It’s morphing over the pages of her Hannah Montana notebook, so now it’s a fish motif (she’s Pisces) with her first name in the body shape and her surname initials in the tail. Wow, amazing and thoughtful and invidual – what a cutie. She’s learning how to express herself and creating a sense of identity. She proudly showed me page after page of permutations and I have to say I’m massively impressed, in fact it’s quite a developmental milestone.

We’ve had a Wicked weekend in more ways than one. First we went to see the Wicked the Musical on Saturday and second, after a long and Rosé fuelled Sunday lunch by the river in the fabulour sunshine we were Wicked and Musical.

Miniminx’s Luckyvoice Partybox is a hit in our house, but not it seems next door. So much so in fact, that my neighbour felt it necessary to holler at me about above through the din. It was 7pm, not 2am. Yes, how very unseemly of her, she obviously didn’t enjoy our renditions of the Smiths and Pulp or our duets – we hadn’t even got to Dolly Parton on the playlist. Thank heavens I took off my Amy Winehouse wig before I answered the door…actually, hang on a minute, maybe I should have just kept it on and screamed ‘Blaaaaaaaaaaaake Incaaaaaa-arse-errated’ …that would have stopped her in her tracks.

Ooh she’s a wet blanket isn’t she? Three hugely happy grown ups were placed on the proverbial naughty step and the impromptu party died a death. While I’m tempted to hang my smalls out to dry on our shared trellis just to wind her up a bit, I won’t, because I’m nice and she’s a meanie. I’ve never complained about her REALLY ANNOYING chair-scraping-across-wooden-floor habit, or the way she lets her burglar alarm ring loudly as she goes in and out of the house, or her car alarm going off at 6.45am.

Maybe I should drop anonymous notes through her door saying ‘Lay off that wind breaking will ya?’ or ‘Don’t mean to alarm you but your cleaner is having sex parties while you’re at work – signed a kind, concerned neighbour’.

We’ll just stick to show tunes for now though…I think she might get the point non?

Ooh 70% off at figleaves.com – what better way to cheer myself up – I picked out some bras but there were no matching knickers – I tried to go from the sale site to the normal site to find some matches – the sites aren’t connected so I gave up – again…

My tesco.com ‘delivery slot’ meant bog all – eagerly awaiting my supplies and flat out of milk, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm – the slot passed and I began to panic. Fair enough, someone rang from customer services to say the order would be 30 minutes late. It arrived 90 minutes later, no apology and the Happy Christmas from the delivery guy was obviously a hint for a tip. Harumph!

Next, online Christmas present shopping – thanks Amazon – I got the best deals on everything there having compared play.com, apple store, argos and tesco. An iPod (£15 cheaper than elsewhere), Sony Vaio, Nintendo Wii and Wii fit (great bundle), along with a bunch of other Christmas goodies were ordered. Then the pain. My card was refused six times. I called the HSBC fraud prevention department, it was a total ‘Computer says no’ experience. They said my transactions had been picked up as unusual and therefore refused. I went back to Amazon and tried my card again when they told me it would work, but it didn’t, so I said they should stay on the phone while I put the transaction through. After most of it was paid for I rang off, only to get yet another email to say my card wasn’t working – I used my Barclaycard instead without a wimper. HUMBUG!

Back in the real world – I shredded my banks statements to avoid cyber crime – oh, the irony – I can’t even use my own bank card!!

I’m still copying my CDs onto my laptop awaiting the arrival of the iPod – I wasn’t going to buy one until I found my Sony stereo docking station is only compatible with iPods, sorry Creative Zen but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

On a better note (pardon the pun) a friendly call from Luckyvoice to confirm my booking – thank heavens someone has this stuff sorted out – a pinch of the real world in customer services goes a million miles. 10/10

I’ve just done the Guardian Quick crossword online – I am not sure how long I will stick to online newspapers. It’s a daily ritual of mine to buy The Guardian, The Sun and The Mirror, at the Post Office and say Hi to the lady that runs it. If I stop doing that, I feel I won’t be supporting my local community, the post office, the butcher and the corner shop punctuate my walk home from school. It’s a social dilemma.

~Some bloke on the fiddle ~

So there is no way I could make my usual dash to get the Sunday papers today, so my 48hour living online experiment continues, even though I have now run out of three essentials; milk, Lemsip and bread.

So, News of the World is amazing online – I’m definitely not buying it again, maybe they’ll make money out of me with their online offers – but I’m definitely not a Laura Ashley fan and Brandalley – well, it’s hardly exclusive anymore, and everything is on sale these days anyway.

Online Fabulous

So, onto The Sunday Times – well you can now buy an e-edition – see the free trial here – reading the bog standard online version is fine by me, especially if it’s free. I am totally gripped by this feature Exposed: Dick Fuld, the man who brought the world to its knees – the writing is worthy of Tom Wolfe. It’s one of those rare press articles that really makes an impact – written by Andrew Gower, who was working at Lehman at the time it collapsed, it really does resonate on a grand scale with other tales and fables of hubris – Nero, Rome and fiddles spring to mind – although this time, it’s all of us who have been fiddled. Out of credit, security and jobs. It makes me angry, I am swept away with this story, the tide of intrigue, how obvious the downfall is and how shit it all really is. Every day I wake up and think – Bloody hell – I haven’t got a job anymore. When I was fired I was told that I’m a great talent, charismatic, an achiever – spare me the saccharine I thought. Emails are being sent around to teams saying ‘what a loss’ and ‘sorry to see you go’ – is the vanity and avarice of this one man really responsible for this crisis in my life – yes, sadly, I believe that this is true.

I’ve not yet received my Tesco delivery – another four hours to go – and I aim to be asleep for most of those. I managed to watch about four or five movies last night while ripping CDs and I’ve now got two boxes of CDs to do away with. I also sent email and text invites to my birthday party and booked a room at Luckyvoice – so pretty productive really.

Some things just don’t really work though – I tried to book a restaurant on toptable but my search blew up – I really don’t believe the site is clever enough to calculate Christmas closing times so I don’t trust it. I always have problems finding places to go as my birthday is a couple of days after Christmas, so hotels are usually the best option, I’m thinking of the Soho Hotel or perhaps St Martin’s Lane – not quite sure yet.

I’m still bargain hunting online for Christmas stuff but overwhelmed by choice – why don’t they make web sites which just have really limited collections instead of an infinite inventory?

I’ll leave you with that thought as I go back to my foraging, TTFN.

Yesterday was spent on the sofa shivering and sneezing, too sick to go out and feeling really rotten. Boredom is paramount during flu, so in my ennui, I’ve decided to see if I can live digitally – I’ve been emailing, texting, calling to stay in contact with people – nothing new there. Unable to get my daily papers, I’ve switched to online and found The Guardian has finally put it’s crossword online and you can even cheat! I do the crossword everyday religiously and it’s more fun online. I’ve been reading The Sun online for ages so won’t bother buying either paper anymore. That’ll keep the recycle bin a bit slimmer and stop me worrying about trees Will the publishers notice?

Virtual milk? Shame the milkman doesn’t deliver anymore huh? Do I want to leave my cashmere cardi, scarf and slippers at home and wrap up to go out in the pouring rain? Not bloody likely. I’m checking Tesco so see the earliest delivery, they can do 1-3pm tomorrow – not bad at all, I can last until tomorrow.

Entertainment? Sky is fab – all those things I’ve recorded and never had time to watch have been viewed. You can not argue with the glorious technicolour TCM, I just love it. I’m going back to bed to copy all my CDs onto my laptop and then ditch the boxes in storage…I hate the clutter.

No point facebooking – everyone’s out doing Christmas shopping and partying – I can shop online but the party is over for me this weekend -and it’s horrible – I suppose if I get really desperate, I can switch on the Xbox and have a karaoke session with Lips. I feel like I am living on the moon, life is nothing without people, I need my family and friends, one can not live online alone!

The upside of all this is that I can shop without leaving home (yay!) and I’m bargain hunting Amazon and all the other usual suspects for deals on laptops, iPods, Nintendo Wiis and zoom lenses without wearing out my shoeleather. I’ll venture out to the new Westfield when the sales are on…
Ciao-achoo

PS: a note to all you manic emailing brands; urbanoutfitters, graham and green, lastminute, ebookers, letterbox, play.com, argos, figleaves et al – three emails a day, do not a sale make – take a tip from Luckyvoice and the Adventure Company – little, interesting and often please