I found this story today: Kids go popcorn crazy at Christmas about the Junior Ready Steady Cook Popcorn Maker. Which claims

The £29.99 popcorn maker has been tipped by industry experts to become one of the top 10 Christmas gifts.

and goes on to say

The British Toy and Hobby Association and the British Association of Toy Retailers both agreed the popcorn maker was up there with the best of them.

Well I guess there will be a lot of disappointed kids round about now.
Jamie got one of these from her grandma for Christmas and I can only say it’s rubbish. Really! It is powered by an 80-watt light bulb. Which I’m sure is nice and safe, but is next to useless for popping corn.
It takes 10 minutes to heat up, and then it pops about three kernels at a time every fifteen seconds or so into the tiny collecting bowl. But it also throws out five unpopped kernels too which then have to be seperated and put back in the top. In all it took about 15 minutes to produce a handful of popcorn.
After the second lot, it switched itself off (probably for ‘safety’ reasons) and then took half an hour before it came back on. Jamie was very disappointed.
The only good thing it has going for it is that it looks great. It’s a pity it doesn’t live up to its promise.
We will be taking it back tomorrow and getting the money back. We’ll probably put the money towards a proper popcorn machine. The Prima ‘Duck’ Popcorn Maker looks good and at around half the price.

Jamie didn’t get up too early (apparently she took my wish literally), but was excited at the presents which Santa had left.
  
Even Pepe was excited with his present!

Jamie has been very excited all day, too excited to even sit still. She is in bed now and it’s all gone quiet, so with any luck she will have gone to sleep. I can’t wait to see her face in the morning. (Hopefully not too early 🙂

Woohoo! It’s Christmas eve! All the shopping is done: and if not, it’s too late! All the presents are wrapped and under the tree. Jamie is very, very giddy with excitement. It’s dark outside. No chance of snow, but you can’t have everything. There’s not long to go now!

An odd day today. Jan, Kim, Jackie, and Paula went off to Manchester to do some Christmas shopping. Me and Steve stayed at home to look after the girls; Jamie, Bekki, and Megan. Graham was here, but he went Christmas shopping as well.
Eventually I had to go shopping too. I went in to Stockport centre which was pretty packed as expected. I managed to get almost everything I wanted within the first half hour. But then the last thing took me almost another two hours! Typical. Anyway, everyone was back by the time I got home.
We didn’t do much after that, just chatting and stuff. Graham and Jackie went home with Bekki, and eventually Steve and Kim went with Megan. Jamie went to bed at nine, and I decided to slob out in front of the TV for a change. After much flicking through the channels, I eventually settled on watching Die Hard with Bruce Willis for what must be about the tenth time.
Now I’m off to bed to continue reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

We seem to be doing quite well with the Christmas preparations; we got all the presents bought (well almost — I’ve still got to get Jan’s), some of them are even wrapped. Lots of shopping and cleaning done too.

Hence the fact that I’ve not done much on this blog or with the projects I planned for this holiday. Still, I’ve got one thing half completed, and plans for more.

It looks like I may be taking on another blog hostee too! THis time a group blog. More when things are firmed up.