Giveaway winners!

It's time to announce some winners!  Thank-you everyone who took the time to say hello, and to those who suggested such wonderful names.  As there was such cosy number of entrants I decided to draw names the traditional way.  So I wrote all your names down...

Then I popped them all in a large cup...

Then I enlisted some help picking out a winner...

And Lillia picked...

Congratulations to Smbumblebee!  The doll is yours and will be on her way as soon as she has packed up her borscht recipes and her Russian ballet DVDs.  But she will need a name for her passport.  The suggestions were all marvellous and a few really made me smile, I really wish I could send a gift to each of you, truly, in fact I probably would if I didn't have hubby to talk me down to earth!

But in the end, after much debate, there was one name that all three of us agreed on...Valentina, suggested by Pea Green Kitty, after the first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova, who was Russian and, it would appear having googled her, pretty cool.  Before she was an astronaut she was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur parachutist!  How could I not choose to name her after such a woman!  So thank you Pea Green Kitty for such a great suggestion, a runner-up prize will be on its way to you! 

If both winners could please email me (address in my profile!) with the address they would like their parcels sent to that would very handy :)

Ah.  I feel better for getting ready to send some gifts out into the world.  It's been a long tough week but it has all been worth it.  Yesterday I managed to bag myself a new job in the organisation I work at - a job that will allow me to work more flexibly and be there more for Lillia when she starts school.  It has always been so important to me that I would be there every day, well almost every day, to pick her up from school.  Now I will be able to. 

My heart is full :)

Valentina