Some of you will know that I like entering competitions - to be absolutely correct I like winning competitions. Pickings have been slim lately, with only a trip to the theatre for R's mum and brother in recent months. Today, I won a professional garden design! A lady is coming to my house to get my ideas for a - wait for it - fruit and vegetable garden! Then she takes photos and draws up a design. The process costs £1500 according to the entry form, but you could rebuild our whole garden for that! I warned her that the space available for fruit and veg was small, to put it mildly, but maybe she will be happy to work on the south terrace, the kitchen garden, the cottagers plots and the rose garden while she is here. We shall see. I remember entering and thinking it would be a stupid prize for us to win as we have one of the smallest gardens in Britain, but here I am, winning again!

School has got into that hectic phase, with trying to teach reading, papier mache, spelling, handwriting, maths, paper scrunching and folding techniques, all bundled in along with assembly and a writing audit (still not done that). That was all in one day, a bit paper heavy. The papier mache is coming along now, done three layers, almost ready to paint. Tomorrow is a sane morning of reading, English, Maths and I will do the audit, and I leave at lunchtime - well, I stay and get my planning done and leave at 2pm. Which is better than doing it at 11pm on a Sunday, as I did this week.

The girls have had their first couple of days at breakfast club, which seemed to go down ok, especially as pancakes and scrambled egg been on the menu so far. After school club today was not a disaster, A's old preschool teachers are now leading the after school club so she had friendly faces, and the other regular children seem nice, and one of them is a little girl A knew from toddler group. At last, she brought home a book with words, for much celebration from all as she read it to us, several times each. As well as the pasta jar (on target for Paultons this weekend) we have started a 'Posh meal out at an Indian restaurant' incentive. Each empty dinner plate is worth £1, and when we have £30 we will all go out for a curry. A a bit disappointed we not going to fly to India for the dinner, but Ryanair don't go there. Now don't come round bringing empty dinner plates and expect me to give you a £1, OK!

Just going to enter a competition to win M and S vouchers.

Wish me luck!