Seriously responsible printing

Do you want to lessen the impact your business printing has on the environment?

I'm working with a great company in Norwich who are seriously environmentally friendly with their green and ethical printing business - not only do they use the latest technology to lessen the environmental impact, but they also bale you out when you get into a pickle (I speak from experience!)

So if you have a printing job, care for your environment, and want excellent customer care, contact them. They're called Seriously Responsible Print Ltd

New home page for the website

I would really appreciate comments on the new layout of my home page. There's now a slide show of some of my products - do you think the slide show is at the right speed? Is it of interest to you to see a range of products in this format?
I also now have a button to enable you to sign up for a newsletter and another to come here to my blog.
As a tiny thankyou for any useful comments, I will send you out a little sample - so do please email me separately to let me have a postal address: info@pennylindop.com

Thanks!
PS. The border terrier was the most popular breed for me at the Country Living Show, so here he is!

An Episode in the life of a primula plant

So I've just done the Country Living Magazine's Spring Fair, well a week ago now, and this is a little story about my primula plant that I took there.
I have a wonderful friend who came over to help me load the van before the show. She then went to our very brilliant local post office in Garboldisham (Norfolk) and found this very pretty primula plant - lots of flowers and lots of buds still to come, and a lovely orangey pinky colour. She bought it for my stand, so I dutifully put it by the front door along with my bag and the important show paperwork, just before leaving the house so that I wouldn't forget it.
It's obvious what would happen next, but I wasn't into the obvious at the time - the border collie sat on it!
Looking a bit sadder, it sat on the dashboard all the way to London.
At the show I tidied it up a bit and it spent 5 days under 12 spot lights, just like I did. We both wilted a bit.
But no end of customers admired it with comments like "I've never seen such a pretty primula; the colour is beautiful"
It must have listened to this because it looked great for the whole time - sorry, I forgot to take a photo
Then it got put in a crate along with other stuff for the journey home, and then of course it was forgotten until the crates got unpacked, which wasn't for a day or two.
A bit of water helped to revive the poor thing and deadheading.
But it's not happy - it's getting it's own back, because it's now just an ordinary yellow primula with not a sign of orangey pink left.
I guess it had been drugged!
And I'll continue to give it some tlc.

Online marketing strategy with networking opportunities

I attended a fantastic workshop yesterday on building an effective online marketing strategy up in Norwich. It was put on by takeITon and run by Derrick Cameron of Eximium. I came away with a really useful list of what I need to do for my online marketing. If you get a chance to go to any workshops run by Derrick, then I'd advise you go - clear plain English and lots of enthusiasm. You can actually view his seminar "Fight the credit crunch with IT" on the takeITon website

However, I sat next to Tessa Shepperson who runs www.landlordlaw.co.uk and thought I'd like to let more people know about her services and her website. This is an extremely useful website for landlords and tenants alike and, as I have a daughter about to embark on a few years at university, thought that this would be a useful site for all students and their parents to bookmark. It would be a good place to start if you need help with a tenancy agreement and the like.

I'm now off to Birmingham University with my daughter to visit the School of Government and Society. We'll have a look around the campus too which will be very odd for me as I went to Birmingham Uni way back in the 70's. I read Archaeology and Ancient History, and look at me now, designing greeting cards and prints!