last lunch

We're moving house next week

So to celebrate our last Friday in Fruit Towers 2, we all got dressed up and had a slap up lunch to send ourselves off in style

Bubbles? Check

 

Silver service complete with waiters dressed in black? Check

 

Posh nosh? 

 

And pud?

And all rounded off with toasts and a Jerry Springer Final Thought wrap up style speech from Rich?

Check check check.

We're noting down all the stuff we've got up to over the years here so we can preserve all those special memories to take to our new home.

Birthdays. Parties. Sports days.

Exciting meetings. Less exciting meetings.

What happened in the shower by the kitchen. 

We'll also be posting more about the move and our shiny new home right here over the next couple of weeks

Today though, it's all about celebrating the breeze blocks, astroturf and sketchy car park that has been our home for the last 10 years.

So here's to The Goldhawk Industrial Estate and all those who have strolled to work down her charming concrete drive.

an inspiring visit to a foundation project

Pictures often speak better than words so here a a few highlights of Emilie's recent 2-day visit to innocent foundation project with Find Your Feet in Uttar Pradesh, India.

The first day started with a warm and colourful welcome.

 
 
This involved flower necklaces and face painting to fit in (kind of).

 

We then joined a proper mother's group and chatted about micro-loans.
 

Balance sheet secrets were shared.
 

Travelling to the second village involved a little adventure.

 

But it was all worth it - I was told all about  the vegetable programme that Find Your Feet is running with the innocent foundation. The aim is to help the farmers diversify their crops and it's cleraly working - I got given more vegetables than I could carry.

And then the best bit: the village photo.

We ended the first day around the vegetable tree of luck - a beautiful use of my gifts.

On day 2, I thought I needed more than face paint to blend in, so Savitri helped me put on a sari -not an easy task.

 

The sari didn't really want to stay on after a few dance moves but this provoked roaring laughter from the local children.
 

We then visited one of Find Your Feet's water pumps in the middle of the fields. A great way for the villagers to grow vegetables all year round and not just in the rainsy season.

We followed this by a weaving class and general chat about setting up a business.

 

And last but not least - delicious Indian treats were passed round constantly. Here we have a mix of peas, biscuits, strange fruits and lumps of sugar (a rare delicacy)

 

 
 

the innocent a-z part 2

Here goes with a round-up of this week's alphabet magnet craziness. A big well done to all of last week's winners. To play the game and win prizes click here.


H for a hat wearing hedgehog (Kez_the_bird via flickr)


I for a pile of ironmongery (poface via flickr)


J for Jasper and his favourite jar of jam (alex.gee73 via flickr)


K for a crate of kiwis (LittleFriendSusan via flickr)


L for a long long line (poface via flickr)


M for a myriad of medals (divermark via flickr)


And last but not least, N for a little button nose (@paul010870)

This week is all about O to U. So find yourself an innocent alphabet magnet and snap away.

as Tarantino so famously said...

..."get those mini movies in. Pronto."

Because in just 7 days time, our judging panel will be whittling down all the entries from our mini movies competition to a shortlist of 5. Those 5 will then be in with a chance of having their work aired on TV, and winning 5000 British pounds and 2 special tickets to the BFI London film festival (accompanied by a nice weekend in London on us).

 

7 days is a long time in the showbiz world of movies, so if you haven't already entered, there's no time like the now- click here.

Congrats to Jackuss1000 for their winning the last of our weekly competitions £200 of amazon vouchers will be whittling their way towards you.

london coffee festival

We've got a stall at London's first coffee festival this weekend.

 
If you like coffee, nice food, free smoothies and live music, and can get yourself to Brick Lane this weekend, you'll find us in the Hyde Park area.

Tickets are usually £8.50 (with all money from ticket sales going to Project Waterfall, a charity initiative helping to secure clean drinking water for thousands of people in Tanzania), but we've got a nifty discount. Enter the code FRUITY here, and you'll get your tickets for £6 each.

Hope to see you there. There's a smoothie with your name on it if we do.

fudge in the post

It's nice when someone sends you something special out of the blue.

It happened to us last week, when eight year old Charlie and his Mum sent us a card and some homemade fudge, to say thank you for some magnets we'd sent them.

 
The fudge went down a treat (so much so that the first batch was actually stolen from the communal fridge). Charlie's Mum was kind enough to send us another batch though, and even included a new peanut butter version that we hadn't seen before. All's well that ends well in the world of posted fudge.

the innocent a-z part 1

Can you say the alphabet forwards and then backwards really fast? No neither can we - but to help you along a little, with the forwards bit at least, why not get involved with our fun alphabet magnet game.

Seeing as our brand new alphabet magnets are now in kids' smoothie boxes across the land, we launched a snap-happy picture game last Monday - celebrating one of our new A-Z magnets every day. To play along and win some cool prizes, all you need is one of our innocent alphabet magnets, a camera and plenty of imagination. Click here to find out more.

A big congratulations to all of last week's winners. Monday's prize went to Louisewkr, with her inspired picture featuring Astrid on an avenue holding an alarm clock, an apple and of course our glow in the dark 'A' magnet.



Tuesday's winner Harlandos braved the rain to stick our "B" magnet on the front of a bus and on Wednesday GregorsDad got dangerously close to a prickly cactus to be crowned our king of "C".




On Thursday we celebrated the letter "D" with a family of papier mache deers that would have made Tony Hart proud (thanks to kohsamuirosie).



"E for Eyes" by Suzukichick had us chuckling on Friday and Fimegjoe snapped fruits in a football to be Saturday's winner.




To complete our first week of alphabet fun, our Mother's Day winner CheepCheepCheep tweeted her glorious green garden complete with smiling glow worm finger.


This week we're doing H to N. So why not grab yourself an innocent alphabet magnet and get snapping.

And remember to keep practising the alphabet backwards - we can just about make it from Z to V.

a damsel in distress experiencing picnic panic

With 13 days, 11 hrs, 48 minutes and approx 24 seconds to go until the deadline for all mini movie entries, we bring you sunshine and summer in this week's winning entry:

Our judging panel are officially quaking in their boots with excitement about choosing the shortlist in just a few weeks time. To get a chance to get your work infront of them, win £5000, your mini movie shown on TV, and a special weekend in London for the BFI film festival, just get your entries in sharpish here by midnight on Sunday April 17th.

And if that wasn't enough- the mini movie submitted between noon today and next Monday noon that clocks up the most views will win £200 of amazon vouchers.

Fame awaits. Look busy.

p.s. if you haven't already- take a short jaunt here to get your hands on a special mini movie makers' film kit to help you make your masterpiece

fruit fight

We were having a debate in the kitchen the other day. If all the fruit in the world got a bit lairy and had a scrap, who would win? And who'd be knocked out first round? Unable to agree which fruit was the 'ardest, and which fruit was the weakest, we thought we'd ask the nice folk that follow us on Twitter & Facebook for their opinion.

Here's a selection of some of the things people said.

Warning: these pictures contain a blend of bad jokes and utter nonsense, and don't contribute in any way to your five a day.

Happy Friday.