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daily thoughts

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July 04, 2008

friday nonsense

Sammy Stephens, the man behind Flea Market Montgomery, is back with a little more magic. What a guy.

If you find yourself in a disco situation this weekend, perhaps you should give it a bit of Flea Market.

doodle things and win stuff winners

We ran a little competition in our weekly email newsletter a couple of weeks ago to doodle on the label of June's smoothie of the month. Our Ben's just had a look over all the entries (you can see them all here) and decided on his three favourites. Which in no particular order are...

2624614694_cf1f29e56a
jomrpicklemolloy "Everyone went ‘ooo’ at this one. we think the birds make it, and the grass skirt."

2623934825_a55ec146d6
sueappleton60's not so innocent desert island "Lots of brownie points here for pre-sketching in pencil. Preparation."

2621633764_a58c164b59
and creative_one "Nice use of felt tips, and we like milky joe too."


A box of smoothies goes to each of the winners. Keep an eye on your inbox for even more chances to win stuff.

July 03, 2008

tetra tent

Along with a few other thousand revellers, our Lucie went along to Glastonbury last weekend for a spot of festival living, falafel munching and Jay Z appreciating.

While she was there, she spotted this brilliant little tent/igloo structure in the Green Fields

Tetrapak_tent

It's made completely from used tetra cartons and some very bendy twigs.

On closer inspection, Lucie discovered a couple of rather familiar looking panels inside

Nice_panel

Hats off to whoever made this ingenious recycled tetra tent. We salute you.

mama five goats

Farmafrica
Mama Five Goats holding Malith.

Every now and again we like to give you an on the ground update from our innocent foundation partners. Some of you may already know that 10% of innocent's profits go to charity each year, primarily to the innocent foundation, but it's individual stories like this one which really remind us of why we do this. The foundation is currently supporting work in South Sudan through FARM-Africa. The people of Sudan have had it really rough through being displaced through conflict, but they're working hard to rebuild their lives and reduce their reliance on food aid.

Amou Mariec Aweer (above) lost her husband in the conflict and her cows and goats were raided by her neighbours. She returned to her home village with nothing, but in 2007 she received training and 5 goats from her local FARM-Africa team. Now she has a flock of 8 goats and in time she will return 5 to the project to re-stock other families. She is now known as Mama Five Goats and this says it all:

“Now people are respecting me in their meetings because I also have goats like them. They no longer call me a poor woman. My life has changed, I am a woman now”.

Her newest goat kid is called Malith, which means spotted colour in Dinka, as animals are often named according to their colour. We wish luck to Mama Five Goats and all her goats.

By Linda, our innocent foundation guardian

July 02, 2008

cheese club and bronte

P1060777

Our Bronte (standing, far right) popped around yesterday to help us enjoy a Scandinavian themed cheese club. She's a bit of an expert on all things Scandinavian, being from Denmark herself, and also starting her very own Scandinavian Kitchen last year.

You can read all about yesterday's Scandinavian cheese club and the cheeses Bronte brought along for us on her own blog here.

put up posters and win stuff

the innocent village fete

2625169238_3954c1788a

We're hoping that you might be able to help spread the word about our village fete this summer in your local neighbourhood or place of work. All you need to do is download this post, print it out and stick it up somewhere where lots of people might see it.

Then you can take a photo of it and enter it into our flickr competition if you like. There'll be prizes for best placed poster, the strangest placed poster and the place where the most people are likely to see it.

It's all about keeping it local these days.


July 01, 2008

spreadable biscuits anyone?

A very kind drinker brought us a present last week when they popped into Fruit Towers

Biscuit_spread

Speculoos is the spreadable version of those little biscuits you get with your coffee in posh coffee shops.

Speculaas

Those little biscuits are techincally known as speculaas and are a traditionally eaten on 5th December in Belgium and the Netherlands to celebrate St. Nicholas' Eve.

Seeing as biscuits last about 3 minutes in our kitchen, the biscuit spread has gone down a storm and has overtaken chocolate spread as the choice of topping for 3:30pm toast munchies.

Toast_munchies 

Alternatively, it tastes just as good straight from the jar.

Biscuit_love_002

Cup of tea optional.

punctures made easy

Yesterday, Fordy taught me how to fix a puncture properly and enlightened me as to how far puncture repair kits have advanced since I last got someone else to fix my bike.

No more glue, funny little rubber circles or scrubby bits of chalk.

Just a postage stamp sized patch that you peel off and stick over the offending hole.

Super_patch

Small enough to fit in your pocket yet strong enough to stop that air escaping from your tyres.

Magic stuff.

June 30, 2008

young enterprise finalists

Laura from Sharnbrook Upper School got in contact to let us know that the Young Enterprise Group she's part of have made it through to the Young Enterprise National Finals with their company, Green Elephant.

Green_elephant

They've published a little book for children, which is all about encouraging them to eat more healthily.

Olliefc

The book has some great healthy recipes in there and some nice illustrations, drawn by Michael who's also in the group.

The finals are today so fingers crossed for Green Elephant and Ollie the mouse coming up trumps.

same same but different

Here's a quick spot the difference for you

Spot_the_difference

Before you start writing in about the variation in shading, the bottle shadow or the hidden netball, there's actually only one difference, which all eagle eyed Dutch speakers will have clocked straightaway - namely, that our recipe book is now available in Dutch.

Hot off the press, it will make a lovely present for all your Dutch friends, neighbours, colleagues and football coaches and you can get it here, here, here, here and here.

please say hello to the innocent band

the innocent village fete

Here's a very sneak preview of the innocent band who played for us here at Fruit Towers last Thursday lunch time. They'll be playing again at our village fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so keep your eye out for them on the programme.

Every single member works here Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm, so we're quite proud that they've managed to pull together a fully fledged 9 piece band in such a short space of time. In the blurry distance, you can probably just about make out Caroline, Cass, Ceri and Vic on vocals, Duncan on drums, Jamie M and Tim S on trombone and trumpet respectively, Ruvan on guitar, Malinna on bass and Ben T working his magic on the piano. Oh and there's a tambourine that gets passed around as well. We can't forget the tambourine.

And here's a chicken with his eye on some apples.

Dsc02944

Unfortunately, he's already been booked for another engagement this summer.

June 27, 2008

long distance siobhan

On Wednesday we got an email from office favourite Siobhan. She's much loved here at Fruit Towers for her top notch fruit buying skills and feats of physical endurance.
She's currently doing a mammoth cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats all in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. You can read more here. Apparently her favourite cycling buddy is 'Big Bear Grits', a Latvian carpenter with mighty thighs. She reports that she has so far avoided getting acutely saddle sore and the temptation to get married to said carpenter in Gretna Green.
Here's Siobhan and crew at Land's End (our hero is on the far right).

Siobhan_cycles
Siobhan Linard. Legend in her own life time. Doing it for us so we don't have to (and so we can eat crisps and have a lie in this weekend).

getting in contact

It's Friday. It's random video time. Let us introduce you to the fine art of contact juggling.

Flabbergasting is a very under used word these days but I'm going to use it here...

Flabbergasting.

June 26, 2008

excellent award

Excellent Development are one of the organisations that the innocent foundation support and they've just won a couple of rather big awards.

Sustainable_communities

They work with communities in rural Kenya to help improve water supplies, food production, health standards and generate income using environmental and sustainable methods. Back in February, our Graham went to visit one of their projects which you can read a bit more about here.

Last week, the Excellent Development team scooped an award for Environmental Charity of the Year at the Charity Awards.

Excellent_development

And if that wasn't enough, they then went on to be crowned overall Charity of the Year from a shortlist of thirty other organisations.

It's great to see recognition for the fantastic work they do improving people's lives through sustainable development and nice to see that they all scrub up a treat too.

(Posted by Graham)

June 24, 2008

do your bit (and win stuff)

The nice people at Friends of the Earth have just published a handy, new guide to stopping climate change.

It's packed full of easy-to-understand facts and simple tips to help make life better for you, the planet and your pocket.

Helpful_book_2

They're very kindly giving away a copy of this helpful, little book to the 5 lucky people who can tell us how they like to do their bit for the planet.

It's as simple as that.

Deadline for entries is Monday 30th June so get doing and get posting.

June 23, 2008

re-entrants ukulele duo do the ace of spades

the innocent village fete
We love a bit of the ukulele at innocent. That's why we've got the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain coming along to play at our fete on the Sunday.

If you also like a bit of the ukulele have a look at this rendition of Motorhead's The Ace of Spades by The Re-entrants. It's truly unique.

Just to be clear The Re-entrants won't be playing at the fete. But we will have cover versions done on ukulele's that's for sure.

June 18, 2008

doodle things and win stuff

You might have seen our new smoothie of the month - mangoes, coconuts and lemongrass - in a shop near you. It's got a nice drawing of a little desert island, lovingly crafted by our designer, Kat.

However, the island is looking slightly bare at the moment, so we'd like it if you can have a go at populating it.

Ben W and Simon K have already done a couple of examples to give you some inspiration.

This is Bear Island by Ben (age 22)

Bear_island

And this Simon's interpretation of the island out of Jurassic Park (minus Jeff Goldblum. Simon couldn't get his hair right)

Trex

All you need to do is buy a bottle, get doodling and upload your creation to our flickr site by 1st July 2008. The best three doodles will win some smoothies and an art related prize of some description.

This recipe is only around for a couple more weeks though, so like a well dressed crocodile, make it snappy and get drawing.

innocent smoothies help you read faster

Amzaing

We've just come across this blog post by a clever guy called Michael who specialises in speed reading and accelerated learning techniques. He's really good at it and could probably read this whole page from top to bottom in a just a few seconds. Like that bit in The Matrix.

Anyway he came across one of our labels (above), where we mixed all the letters up but you can still kind of read it, and thought it was interesting so has broken the science behind it down a bit. Tnakhs for yuor knid wrods Mcehail.

June 17, 2008

local marketing, for local people

the innocent village fete

Ceri found a lovely example of some local marketing at our nearest pub the other day. Then on my lunchtime stroll today I came across this sign for our friends at Brackenbury Primary School's Summer Fair this Saturday (literally a stone, or stray tennis balls, throw away from Fruit Towers) .

Dsc02733

Their Summer Fair is being supported by the local estate agent by the look of it so they've come up with the very nifty idea of sticking up estate agent signs with the children's own art work advertising the event.

Dsc02737

If you'd like to advertise your own school/ WI/ cricket club/ any other type of fete or fair, or to find the nearest ones to you this summer pop over to our fete finder.

what's your method?

David, Tom, Louise and Sarah from method popped in yesterday to tell us a bit more about what they do and to see what we could learn from each other.

Method

If you've not come across method before, they make lovely smelling, eco friendly cleaning products which don't contain any horrible chemicals or toxic substances, are kind to the planet and clean your house up a treat.

Detox

They very nicely brought along some of their new products for us to try out and a special recycled goodie bag to give away. It contains a copy of their brand new book Squeaky Green (which isn't out properly for another couple of weeks) as well as a sackful of green, cleaning stuff for your house.

To win the goodie bag, all you need to do is tell us what your 'dirty little cleaning secret' is by next Monday and then Tom from method will pick the best answer.

Don't forget to keep it cleaning related, though. There's mucky and then there's just plain rude.

keeping it local

Round the corner from where we work, The Thatched House pub has a lovely little thing going on.

Local_pint

Everyday, they write up a different street name in the local area on their blackboard and if you can prove you live on that street, you get a free drink on the house.

Simple as that.

It's a small but charming way of making people feel part of a community and a great excuse to get to know the neighbours and have a bit of a knees up.

June 13, 2008

this week's 'most special visitor' award goes to...

Preston and Malin, two of Brackenbury Primary School's finest who came to visit us this very afternoon.

Preston_and_malin_2

They'd both had a really busy week preparing for 'Proms in the Playground' hence the rather natty head gear. Malin intends to spend the weekend 'just chilling' and Preston is excited about a prospective trip to see 'The Lord of the Rings'. Two fine ideas for those of you still lacking plans for the weekend.

in training

Last week the pupils at All Saints' School in Putney ran a smoothie workshop, to learn more about different fruits and nutrition.  They tasted a few of our recipes, and had to guess what ingredients were in each of them. 

Those with untrained tastebuds can find this a bit challenging, but one bright spark managed to identify guava in one of our Superfood smoothie recipes.

Example_work_1

Smoothie_tasting_001_2

Smoothie_tasting_010

You might see these two on here one day.

on the go

Breakfast on the way home from a night shift.

On_the_go

Thanks to Amy from Worcester for sending this in.

June 11, 2008

a short film about andrew's trip to malawi

andrew in malawi

You may remember back in April we waved goodbye to our Andrew and packed him off to Malawi to visit and help out at an innocent foundation project. Well as the culmination of his trip he has just finished editing a short film about his experience. And here it is. It's well worth watching to the very end if only to witness his unique dancing talents.

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