Looking to have all the dates sorted for the whole year rather than keep announcing them now and again, these are provisional at the moment in case we have clashed with school hgolidays or other events, if anyone does see a date clash then please let us know.

Jan 19th, Wed Banstead
March 9th, Wed Darlington
April 13th, Wed Bishops Stortford
May 9th, Mon Bristol
June 7th, Wed Manchester
Oct 5th, Wed Leeds
Nov 30th, Wed Bishops Stortford

We will also be having the David Grist Memorial lecture in Birmingham on Wed 20th July

The care & share days are all sponsored by Pioneer Europe and Lyn and I sponsor the memorial lecture

All days are dependent on getting a minimum of 15 people attending for the day to go ahead, venue ideas or suggestions for other areas are always considered so please let us have your thoughts on making the days even more fun and interactive. We are also happy to travel to face painting conventions and jams so if anyone attends these and would like us to come along then please let us have the details and we will see if we can fit the date into our diary.

This site has some amazing sculptures, http://www.cuteballoon.net/blackcat-0.html

We are always looking to improve the forum and the ideas we are thinking about at the moment are to have a website button under everyones post like the profile, quote and PM buttons so that people can click straight thru to your website. Also looking to have a portfolio button added as well so that everyone can add pictures to the site.

Membership is growing and we are always looking for ways to get people more actively involved with the forum so another idea is to have just the balloon chit chat section open to non members and then you have to join the site to view everything else, thoughts are that once you join up you may as well then add comments and start posting. Membership would still be free, I'm not thinking of making this a paying site.

All thoughts, suggestions and ideas are welcomed and appreciated, another idea we are thinking about is starting up a balloon club similar to the United Twisters in Holland which would help in getting money up front to help booking international lecturers for the group instead of myself taking a chance and hoping we get enough people booking to cover my expenses.

THE BALLOON ARTISTES GUILD, to attend all 10 days and receive 3 DVD's from the star lecture days that are recorded with over 4 hours of educational material from
some of the top names in the balloon community. The cost is just £120 with bank transfer or cheque. The fee is £125 if you wish to pay with credit card or PayPal.

Ralph sent out an email via balloonHQ looking for nominations for his balloon excellence awards;

Hello Twisters,
I'm about to start making decisions about my annual Balloon Excellence Awards. If anyone would like to suggest a twister for consideration for the awards, please let me know by the end of November.  Please explain why the candidate should be considered.  There are several award categories which are explained on my web page.
http://home.flash.net/~balloonz/Award.htm

This is worth a look, made me smile; http://www.cybersalt.org/funblog/5446

http://business.ezinemark.com/start-you ... 1ae9e.html

Crofty and Jana made this animation film a while ago with the music as well; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfzgQms-DIw

Ok It's a you decide one, I can either post two variations on a bird come duck or it can be a scooter.
The one with the most votes will be posted Friday Morning before I leave for The Millennium Jam

Great............Just Great!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qd1qVkvIB4

Plenty of balloons to see in this 2 min clip; http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/morning ... l-11032010

Apologies but the forum went off line for about 4 hours last night due to the site exceeding the required bandwidth that I have for it.
All sorted now and have upgraded to the big super duper it should last a lot longer bandwidth, I think that's the technical term for it  

I was looking to see all the technical stuff in the google analytics pages with counter rate etc and was very surprised to see what the most common phrase is typed into google that gets the forum linked, would anyone like to hazzard a guess to what it is?
Perhaps I can give a prize away as I do get sent some qualatex samples and they are bubbles and foils which is very doubtful that I will use.

This is well worth watching; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spofqnCG ... re=related

I thought this was balloon art at first look; http://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/ ... rdens.html

Have just confirmed this date as going ahead, apologies for the short notice but Mark is coming over for The Millennium Jam and then over to see family in the UK.

The day will be in Banstead and run from 10 till 6 with Mark doing four sessions between 10.30/4.30
Bad to the Balloon Vol 1/2
Twist & Shout Lecture, which I did a write up for.
Marketing
Requests

The day will cost a bargain £10 to attend for the first 20 who book and then £20 after.
Will be putting up the booking details later.

I have just booked up to go along to see Danny's new show on Sunday with Lyn and Lord Geoff, we are at the 3pm one.
Just thought I'd mention it incase anyone else fancied coming along as well, for details and to book; http://www.blueelephanttheatre.co.uk/tr ... n-gardener

For some reason this website keeps spamming the forum; http://www.igtto.com/
I have emailed them about it but surprise surprise they never reply, they have two email adresses; yueaf101@hotmail.com

Looks like McDonalds are now doing weddings with balloon dresses; http://wedinator.icanhascheezburger.com ... apple-pie/

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_s ... _new=41697

Looking into getting some plastic bags printed up and was just wondering if anyone has a firm to suggest for this before I start googling?