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Swantastic ;-) So, the party was Saturday night, and, if I do say so myself, I think was great. After a general bit of a converse with my keypad about details leading up to the night I will give you a brief run down of costs, highlights, lowlights, success's and difficulties...But for now, cast your mind back several weeks to when I was upset, nay distraught, at the possible loss of my swan....

So in the last blog I posted pre-party I told you that my beautiful swan, that I purchased $120 for on ebay (including courier delivery, was supposed to have been delivered to me, an signed for, but I had not reviewed it. Anyway long story short the sender of the package had just been given the wrong tracking number, and so, the next day I arrived home to have a note from the courier saying I  could pick it up from the depot. Super-excited I raced off the next day after work to go and collect my precious piece of porcelain. I arrived at the depot 5 mins before closing and signed for my package. I should have known something was wrong then. The box was on its end, just haphazardly at the end of someones desk. But I was just so excited she was not missing anymore that I put the very large box on the back seat of my car, strapped it in, and off I went home. I got home, put the box in the lounge room, and sliced open the box. It was packed full of cushion stuffing - yey I thought, its been packed carefully. But as I started to unwrap it I heard the unmistakable 'clink' noise of broken china. Be strong I said, it might just be one small piece, and you will be able to repair it, but as I removed more packaging it became much more apparent that the swan was in more than 20 pieces.

after downing a shot of something, I sent a text message to the seller. He at first was very supportive, and said not to worry, it was insured and, not to unwrap it further. As it turns out however, the excess on the swan's insurance was $150 dollars, and therefore not worth the seller making a claim. I then told him I wanted a refund, as clearly the goods did not arrive to me in the condition described! The seller said he would half the loss with me by refunding me $60. I told him no way, that he had all the control over the situation and I had none, and as I found out through one quick phone call to the courier, they actually don't provide a service for fragile goods. Ho hum. I upped my 'upsetness' with the seller, and he upped his refund offer to $90 (still leaving me out of pocket $30 for a heap of broken china. So I picked myself up from off the floor where I was throwing a 2-year-old style tantrum and set about sticking it back together. (Photo's below) And, may I just add, I have not yet got my $90 back...