I received my Arbitrary Day gifts today, had a good chat with the postie about the gift exchanges too, he says he might join for the next round. I'm really happy with my gifts, thank you so very much Laura! Here's what I got!

Firstly, a book with a list of walks around my local area, thank you, don't worry, I don't have this one yet, well I do now thanks to you! a great selection of walks, all circular too which I like as I loathe walking back the way I came! So far I've been plotting out my own walks on the OS Map and hoping for the best, but it's nice to have a best of to go and find. All too often I end up walking up a stream that has decided to pop up and follow a footpath, or end up knee deep in mud. It's even got a walk past the pub where I do some gardening sometimes!

Next was a packet of chamomile seeds, I grew loads of this last year in pots for making tea, but didn't save any seeds for when I moved, so I'm really glad to have some more, thank you! Chamomile tea is great for bedtime.

Then there was some fertilizer for the plants in my aquariums, really handy thing to have, as some of my crypts have been looking a little hungry the last few weeks. These will get them looking nice again! It's fishtank day today, so I'll be playing about with the tanks anyway, doing water changes and bits and bobs, a perfect time to get this gift as they can go in tonight! I've got two tanks, one 3ft (30ish gallon) with little fish in it, cardinal tetras and harlequin rasboras, and a honey gourami too, hoping to put some shrimp in this one sometime soon, and a 4ft (50ish gallon) tank with some bristlenose catfish and some Geophagus that I'm hoping to breed from once they grow up a bit more. There's some bloodfin tetras and otos in there too. Thanks again for the fertilizers, I've used similar ones before and they really do make a difference.

The list goes on! Next there's The Photo Book, I've had my eye on this for quite a while, a great resource for inspiration, it's a list of photographers with an example of their work on each page. I'm still fairly new to photograpy, and this will no doubt help me get better at it! Will make a great toilet book! Thank you!

Laura was even kind enough to include a gift for my daughter, Rose, a finger puppet book about a puppy. Rose loves it, I've been trying to get a better photo of the book but rose won't let me have it back. As soon as she saw it she started going bookabooka, and she likes woofing when she sees dogs anywhere. Puppet books are her favourites. Thank you, it's very kind, a happy Rose makes me happy too.

Finally the last thing in the parcel was a hydrometer for homebrewing, it's a tool that measures the density of the wine (or beer) before and after fermentation, and with a little maths added in will tell you how much alcohol is in it by percentage, thank you, it's a really useful thing to have actually, my last hydrometer was 'borrowed' by a friend of mine the autumn before last, and has not been seen since! I'll be making some summer hooch later this week, it will be good to know how strong it ends up, I've not checked my brews for a long while, have had to wait for the hangover to tell me how strong they were!

So thanks one more time, I'm really pleased with every thing that you sent me, and I hope that your santa is just as kind to you as you have been to me! I hope we can stay in touch!