juice drinkers wanted

Shopping can be slightly confusing. There's a lot of choice, and too many words that we don't really understand. We thought that this might be the same for people who buy juice  - and we'd love to be able to make it a bit easier. So we're looking for some nice people to pop into Fruit Towers and have a little chat to us about shopping in the chilled juice aisle.

If you're over 35 and you buy chilled juice and smoothies fairly regularly from a supermarket, we'd love for you to let us know if you can come along to Fruit Towers in Shepherds Bush, West London on Monday evening (2nd April) at 6.30pm. If you think you'll be able to help there'll be plenty of smoothies and an innocent goodie bag to say a big thank you. Drop Helen an email by 12pm on Monday if this sounds like your cup of tea/smoothie.

the strength and determination of Rocky

A nice man called David from Creative Emporium decided to make us some hoodies to help us keep warm on our early morning runs. We're really pleased with our super snug hoodies and they've inspired us to adopt a new running mantra - Wear Rocky. Feel Rocky. Be Rocky (grrrrr).

Last week, we headed to the softer ground of Richmond Park for a big Rocky style run. We saw lots of deer, greeted fellow runnners and cyclists with happy hellos and got our trainers all muddy (which made us feel like real runners). We also got a bit lost and ended up being overtaken by power walkers, so we've decided to write directions on our hands from now on.

This week sees the last of our big runs, so we're spending the week resting and eating pasta in preparation. If you've got any tasty pasta bake recipes, please do let us know.

beeing creative

A quick hello to Cath and the parents/kids at Beeing Creative. They sent us in some excellent pictures of them making stuff out of our kids cartons, so we thought we'd share:

making a bee out of one of our boxes

applying bee stripes


playing skittles with our wedges

we love to squeeze bananas

While many of you might already of seen this, we still thought that it was worth sharing when Dan sent it in.

It's a little video about a man named Juan giving out free hugs and the reception he gets, which thankfully starts being a very warm one. It has really taken off and he now has a wee website of its own you can visit here. It also reminded us of a poem by Brian Patten:

We love to squeeze bananas.
We love to squeeze ripe plums.
And when they are feeling sad
We love to squeeze our mums.

Have a good hug today...

green penguin

We like Penguin books over here at innocent. So much so that we invited them to set up a nice quiet reading area under the trees at our summer festival last year. In keeping with our recent green theme we'd like to point you to Penguin's recently launched Green Penguin website, dedicated to recording what they are doing to reduce their impact on the environment. They've also bought a wood with the Woodlands Trust in which they plan to plant 40,000 trees over the next five years.

And like any good plan they need clear targets. Here are Penguin's targets. Well done and good luck Penguin.

random acts of kindness

Everyday at innocent we look forward to opening up the hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk inbox. It's always full of great stuff you send us and inspiring stories. Here's just one story we received on Friday...

Hi There

Today I was walking down Strand Street and popped into Starbucks, looking for something to drink. My eyes wandered across some Innocent Smoothie products and landed on a Smoothie of the Month drink, which was made of passion fruit and lychees.

I thought that this smoothie looked interesting and decided to give it a try. I arrived at the till and was ready to pay for my chosen drink, when a notice was shown to me, which stated that I couldn't use my debit card.

I had no cash on me either and so was about to return my drink, when a fellow customer stopped me.

This lovely lady standing behind me (who was wearing a very vibrant shade of red lipstick) offered to pay for my drink. At first I was shocked (not believing what I was hearing, for it had never happened to me before) but then very grateful, after realizing that she was serious.

And so to this lovely lady, I would like to say a very big THANK YOU!

I commend her greatly, for the warmth and generosity of heart, which she showed towards me.

Olivia

Thanx :)

If you know the lady in vibrant red lipstick please let her know that Olivia sends a very big thank you from us for her kindness that day. If you fancy trying a random act of kindness yourself then this book is a great place to find some inspiration.

Go on, make somebody's day.

far far away

Patricia sent us a nice letter recently showing us just how far one sprig of our xmas mistletoe ended up.

This particular sprig made it all the way out to her students Christmas celebrations in China. Unfortunately Tom, one of her students, misinterpreted the instructions into having to kiss the actual mistletoe instead of kissing underneath it...

This duly resulted in a bang to his head on the doorframe. After closer inspection no real damage was done though.

Thanks to Patricia for writing to us and good luck with your IELTS exams Patricia's students.

fishface

Spotted outside our development kitchen a couple of weeks ago. Anyone for a herring and anchovy smoothie?

finding a green car

the world's worst paintjob

Cars aren't exactly the greenest machines in the world, but it's a fact of life that some of us need them in order to make our lives work better.

As I'm thinking of buying a new car, I thought I'd do some investigations into how green they are. And I thought I'd share some stuff with you, just in case you're looking into buying a car too.

First of all, I asked the people at WorldChanging if they knew of any data. They pointed me towards the website of the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA). Data available includes new car fuel consumption and exhaust emissions figures.

And then there's this top 20 chart of the greenest carmakers (thanks to Dan for sending this over).

All worth looking at before you book a test drive.

fame

Our Ginger Sarah (far left) recently went to New York and met someone famous. Can you guess who it is?

(Clue: he may be levitating)