Ellis continues to do well and started primary school in September 2009 where he is making plenty of new friends. Ellis attends a very small village school where he is completely accepted with good understanding of his birthmark. Looking back at photos, the difference and improvement in the birthmark is obvious. We hope that we face only 2 more essential surgeries (nasal tip and right ear) in 2009 before this part of the journey comes to an end for Ellis. We take comfort in the fact that Ellis can see and appreciate the difference after each surgery and we still tell the story of how he proclaimed "I can close my eye right up!" after our last trip to Berlin.

We sold our very first item for the Ellis Fund on eBay on the 10th October 2007 and to date we have raised £5,000 in total from all of the auctions. We continue to be overwhelmed by the generousity of strangers - one eBay member paid for an item they had won and then told us that they didn't actually want it and would rather we re-listed it and made even more money from it! We are very proud of our 100% positive feedback rating and would like to extend our appreciation to all those that still left positive feedback when it took a little longer than normal to send out items after our last minute dash to Berlin for Ellis' 4th surgery. The list and range of items that we have sold on eBay is diverse to say the least, from cots and laptops to clothes, toys, handbags and bedding. It is always the most surprising items that sell better than we anticipate. It's certainly true to say that people will buy anything!

Though many of the items we have sold have been our own, we have received and sold large numbers of donated items from family, friends, colleagues and employers. Thanks to Sandra Coombes we have a number of porcelain collectables to list for which The Ellis Fund will receive 25%.

We are now coming to the end of our donated items to be sold (our spare room looks like a bedroom once again!) and we would like to ask if you have any unwanted items that you may like to donate for sale - you don't need to do a thing - we store all the items and list them. So if 2009 sees you having a clear-out and you would like to donate, please contact us by email and we can arrange to have any items collected ellisfund@duggiewuggie.co.uk . Our best selling items include bundles of pre-owned baby or children's clothes, toys, furniture, electrical equipment and old mobile phones, and we haven't yet found any items that don't sell, so that dusty old lamp shade taking up room in your attic will be loved by someone!

We are also able to raise charitable funds through the sale of mobile phones - old, working, broken, smashed to pieces and vintage even - all the phones are recycled for parts or repaired and The Ellis Fund receives a fairly sizable donation for each one. If you would like to donate a phone or any other item you can post to the following address:

The Ellis Fund
Long View, Main Street
Clopton
Northants
NN14 3DZ

Since October 2007 we have received an additional £628 in donations and we would once again like to thank all of those people that have made a donation to help our fund raising, particularly those who continue to make regular monthly contributions.

We would also like to take this opportunity to say a special thank you to Ben Parr, an Intamac employee, who gives his own time to arrange couriers, makes trips to the post office, and chases up packages that are taking a little longer than expected. Intamac also continues to support The Ellis Fund by subsidising the cost of our postage and dispatch whilst also raising in excess of £100 in loose change at their offices from a number of fund raising activities - paying for home-made cakes, sweets etc.

Lastly, we were contacted today by a recent eBay winner to say that their employer, DeAgostini, would like to sponsor our website in exchange for a donation. They are currently launching a new Peppa Pig publication, which you may have seen advertised on the television recently, and so we have added a link to our sponsors which you can find down the left hand side or alternatively click the cover of the 1st issue pictured below. Thank you Peppa!