Ralph sent this email out via balloon HQ,

I'm looking for candidates for my Balloon Excellence awards for 2009 which will be presented in 2010. If you would like to recommend someone, privately email me with their name and the reasons why they should be considered. The categories are: twister of the year, career contributor, rising star and trailblazer. See the link below for past winners.
http://home.flash.net/~balloonz/Award.htm
Please send your recommendations by December 21.
Thanks for your input and help.

We will be having some more work carried out on the forum on Thursday to make the site more user friendly for the search engines. All the links on the home news page will have to be re-directed afterwards so may not be working correctly for 24 hours while I change all the links over.

The maximum size of picture for the forum is 480mm wide and 600mm high.
I use a free downlaodable programme called Irfanview which seems nice and easy to use; http://www.irfanview.net/

There is also another thread which may help as well; viewtopic.php?f=21&t=35

The maximum size of picture for the forum is 480mm wide and 600mm high.
I use a free downlaodable programme called Irfanview which seems nice and easy to use; http://www.irfanview.net/

There is also another thread which may help as well; viewtopic.php?f=21&t=35

DAPRA in the US were holding a competition today to mark the 40th anniversary of the internet's birthday. This is Larry's attempt at being the first team to find all ten across America. http://findtheredballoons.com/

Does anyne know how to do this? I have googled for advice and followed the instructions but cant seem to make it happen. I normally hit alt and prtsc buttons and save to my editing folder.

Art in the 21st century and there is a balloon dog in sight; http://www.target.com/Art-Twenty-First- ... rchSize=30

Did the first Christmas show of the year this morning for a small playgroup in Norwood. For the past five years or so I have been doing a themed show all to do with a Christmas tree and adding all the decorations etc. It made a nice change from the usual birthday party magic show that I normally do, it was a little ring rusty and I will nee to speed up as I only got to do six of the planned seven effects in a 45 min show with all the balloons being Christmas related as well.
Last night I was making up the Christmas balloons to make sure I remembered how they all went and hit upon two new variations on the angel that we showed last week at the Leeds day and a nice new ride in reindeer which are both quick enough for the real world.
Will try and get some pictures and post them later.

If anyone came to the magical seminar days that we run this year I forgot all about putting this show into the notes, so there is something else for me to do when I get a few minutes.

Zakh came around today and I made him a guitar a few weeks back so as soon as he got in the door he wanted another one. I only had 160's to hand and liked the look of this, although it may need a little bit of fine tuning    
He was not hapy about me getting a picture of him with it  

We have just had the latest version of the forum template uploaded onto the site so one or two things may look a little different?
The automatic joining function has als been updated and you can now join automatically which hopefully will add a few extra members and we have added some spam software to hopefully stop what was happening before with all the naughty sites loading up details.
If anyone does spot this before Danny & I then please either get in touch via the forum or give us a call so that we can remove this ASAP. Thanking you.

Graeme, the computer say.......it's your birthday. Have a nice relaxing day and take the time to smell the flowers  

Does anyone have problems with the look of the forum?
I have been told that the home news page and forum pages are of different width dimensions, they come up the same on my computer and on other computers that I have viewed the site on.
I'm just about to have some more work done on the forum to help with google search engine and to cope with spammers so that we can put back on the aotomatic joining function to the site so if there are any other issues I could get this all sorted out in one go.

www.sempertexballoons.co.uk
For a while now we have been looking at getting a private courier service to deliver all our packages instead of royal mail and paecelforce. The dilema has been volume quantity to get a sensible price, we have now found a company that we will be trying over the december period to see how things go.
Parcelforce was a 3/5 day service and the courier 90% of the time is a 1/2 day service with a guaranteed tracking number which hopefully will cut out all the lost parcels that we have been having.

We have reduced nearly all the prices on the website, but please dont get too excited as postage is now added on at the checkout. One of the reasons we have done this is because we have had many instances where people have told us they would like to buy the product but once they add shipping onto the price of the balloons they are not competative. Shipping was already added and the price you saw was the price you paid. So to go along with all the other sites we are now putting shipping on at the checkout, shipping costs are;

up to 24.99 - £5.00
25.oo-49.99 - £7.50
50.oo-99.99 - £10.00
100.oo-199.99 - £15.00
200.oo-300.oo - £20.00

So for this month any order over £50 will be sent via the courier service, from 25-49.99 will be sent the cheapest which could be either and orders under £25 by royal mail.
We are hoping not to have too many teething problems with this and I've just spent the afternoon going through the website reducing the prices accordingly;

160 & 260's fashion solids have come down from 3.75 to 3.25
160 & 260 metallic £4.25 to £3.75
360's £6.25 to £5.75
660's £8.50 to £8.00
Hearts £5.50 to £5.00
pumps £5.50 to £5.00
Graham Lee DVD Vol 1 & 2 £17.50 to £15.00

We do appreciate that if you are ordering only a small quantity then this will probably put the price up for you but we are a wholesale company selling at wholesale prices. By just ordering over £25.oo we believe you will be making a saving on the product.

You can also buy all of David Grist DVD's on the site as the volume discounts have stopped due to the price reduction in the product.
This will bring the cost of the balloons down for everyone, but if you do find something not quite right then please let us know ASAP, thanks

Just for December we are having a sale of the busking bags and aprons with £10 off advertised prices on all items.
We have in stock the small aprons in various colours and both sizes of busking bags again in a varies assortment of colours.
Here is the link; http://sempertexballoons.co.uk/index.ph ... nt=10&pg=1
The offer is for balloon chat members only. Just send me a PM if interested.
Small apron £25
Single busking bag £35
Double busking bag £40
These prices include shipping to the UK

http://www.dayspring.com/ecards/subcat. ... reen=False

Is this a first? It's the first of the month and I'm posting this months models. These were to be November's model of the month but I misplaced the pictures just before heading off to The Millennium Jam, so here they are for December instead.
Two quick and easy christams balloons for use in the "real world"
The angel is made with a heart and one 160.

Each year we try and change/add/move things around to keep the days fresh and hopefully people interested in coming back to them again and again.
So if anyone does have any ideas on what they would like to see or changed or added to the days we are always very interested to hear your views and thoughts.
You can either add them to this thread or if you prefer send me a private mail, thanks.

Dennis has volunteered to do the interview next week for us all o the forum.
He comes from up north and has a few other talents as well that you may like to ask him about.
Website details; http://www.dillingerentertains.com/
This is his new website and I believe he would welcome comments about it.

Hope you have a lovely day without any fainting (he he)

Have taken this day to be the first one of next year even though at the moment we are talking with Sempertex about sponsorship for next year.
I'm on the look out for someone to be the mystery lecturer, (have been in touch with who I think would be ideal to talk on the subject, just waiting for a reply to confirm everything) it will not actually be a balloon lecture but a mini talk on the history of balloon modelling and how it's changed over the years, from the early days with balloon books being written our and typeset by hand to todays computer technology.
Really looking forward to this talk so fingers crossed that we can get it all confirmed and booked in for the 13th Jan.