Have a wonderful Christmas and a safe and peaceful New Year. We’re staying close to home this time, with family coming to visit. I’m looking forward to ham and seafood, but until then I’m enjoying the neighbourhood Christmas lights and my sparkly fibre-optic Santa.

What are you getting up to? Whatever you do, take care and eat ham.

This is the green park. The only exception is the playground at Bradman Oval, which we call the steamroller park. Anyway, why is there always one solitary shoe left behind in public spaces? Who walks home with one shoe on?

So, here it is on a Saturday, instead.

Todd Sampson is the hott-looking ad man on the Gruen Transfer. This is a great article in today’s SMH about his childhood and what it meant for his stellar advertising career.

There was a home office feature in a recent Apartment Therapy post. I work from home and I’m always looking for ways to make it better. (Perhaps unpacking the rest of my boxes and decluttering would improve things.)

I’m a big fan of Men With Pens and a couple of weeks ago they had a guest post about confidence. If you think you don’t have enough confidence, read this and you might find you’re wrong.

Damn You Auto Correct is a new blog with posts showing iPhone auto correct fails. This did the rounds of Facebook a week or two ago and had me in fits of laughter. Crying fits.

And from YouTube today, here’s something for this Christmas season. Flippy the cat demonstrates how to wrap a gift cat for Christmas.

On Sunday, 106 couples took the opportunity to marry on the 10/10/10. Matt and I were at the wedding of one of those couples. And on the lovely grounds of Craigieburn in Bowral, where the ceremony was held, I spied someone wearing a gorgeous almost-floor-length navy dress with white birds all over it. I loved it instantly.

An hour or so later, when the guests and wedding party had moved on to Centennial Vineyards for the reception, I was lubricated enough to quiz the wearer and she’d told me she’d bought it locally—in Bowral!

I did a little happy dance, but because she was an out-of-towner, she didn’t know which shop she’d bought it in. Of course, I was too lubricated then to ask whether the shop was in an arcade or not, or on the main street or not.

So, today I checked every clothing store window on main street. It’s always in the last place you look, but it was also the only one left in the shop. And it was in my size. Clearly, it was meant to be.

Oh! See those dark clouds rolling in? That means Little Athletics was cancelled.

An aerial, greyscale view of dark forested mountains smattered with white snow contrasts with the muted coral pink of the sunrise across the tops of the clouds.

That’s how yesterday started. I flew down to Melbourne for the day to attend the Problogger training event.

I’m such a novice flyer. I rarely do it. I don’t have “points”, I’m prone to bouts of mild anxiety between home and the airport, (though I’m not sure why), I don’t even have my own laptop bag. So yesterday, I revelled in my first junket as a self-employer.

The Problogger training day brought together the blogging entrepreneurs — Darren Rowse, Chris Garrett, Collis, Yaro Starak and Pip Lincolne — and those who are on their way.

I wasn’t expecting to learn much. I’ve been blogging for close to 10 years. The main reason I went was to meet people, but was I wrong! There was much to learn, especially for someone who hasn’t had the drive to try and derive income from blogging.

Not that I’ll ever head down that rabbit hole in this space, but it is something I am doing more and more of for clients and to support our own business.

The packed room of 150 guests was full of famous avatars and people I’ve been mingling with on Twitter. And imagine my delight to find Lady Smaggle and Mr Smaggle at the event. I positively squealed with excitement..on the inside.

It was a thoroughly worthwhile event. I’ve come away with some new ideas, some wake-up calls, and I hope, some new friends.

After waking up to start the day at 4.30am, I didn’t get back home to Mum’s place (where Lincoln had been all day) until after 8.30pm. A massive day with so much information.

Now I’m waiting to catch up with Fraser because he went to Sydney with Matt last night to watch Mumford & Sons at The Enmore.

During a break Lara Solomon asked me what my one tip of the day was. I suffer from a lack of ideas – implementation I can do, ideas not so much. So, when I need to find some material to blog about I go and read other blogs. Something there will be a seed to germinate something. It could become a different way of interpreting the same thing or a whole new idea. If you were there, what’s your tip of the day? And even if you weren’t at the Problogger event, how do you keep the creative juices flowing?