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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

re-entrants ukulele duo do the ace of spades

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.

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)

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

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

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.