Can you be Kitsch and Classy? Making the world better with a sweater.

I'm going to a party on Friday 13th.  Haven't been to a proper one for yonks.

There'll be loads of people, witty banter, festive goodies and crass clothes.  Can't wait!

The reason behind the terrible taste in attire is the annual Save the Children Christmas Jumper Day, traditionally the time to pop on a pullover featuring something seasonal and donate a quid for the pleasure - in order to help 'make the world better with a sweater.'  I love that strapline!

This doesn't necessarily mean running out to the shops to buy one from questionable source just for the occasion, but making do with what we've already got and jazzing it up to be at kitsch as poss.

I've pulled a few decorations together and will sew / pin them on an old jumper just for fun.  Am trying to keep it classy!

Offices up and down the country are venturing into the spirit, hundreds of celebrities are joining in and there's a massive drive at Westfield Shopping Centre's Woolly Wonderland who are donating £10 for every blogger who writes a post and uploads a picture of themselves wearing theirs.  They're running knitting classes, storytelling and a Guinness World Record Breaking attempt at getting the most people sporting a Christmas jumper into one space with Arlene Phillips at the helm.  Liz Burton explains more here and Chris from Thinly Spread is spearheading the campaign and hosting the party - a sort of Bloggers Christmas Do.

It's on Twitter at 1pm (#XmasJumperDay).  You can post a selfie and donate your £1 by texting TEAMTHINLYS to 70050.   It's going to be proper and I do hope to see you there!


In the meanwhile check out this Christmas Cracker.  I've never seen The Killing but this hilarious spoof joining in the fray, convincing the unconvinced  is really worth a watch.  And there's a blog hop with other posts below.

 

Playing Away!

Today. my sons and I are away at an Hotel in Windsor, London ahead of a day out at Legoland that the eldest has won, more of which to come when we can tell you all about it, but, today, also we're all also playing away over at dorkymum's blog.

It is an honour to be asked by Ruth to write something for her precious space. We met at a Save the Children conference and have bumped into each other a few times since.  She's special - a noted campaigner for a variety of charitable causes and issues from around the world and has earned herself a place in the MAD Blog Awards Outstanding category.

She's also a keen supporter of my other blog The Healer and the post I've written for her combines what would be on here - about the kids being chalk and cheese, together with a couple of spooky spiritual insights about them that could easily come from over there.

So while the students are fending for themselves and we're luxuriating, why not pop over to say hello and we'll be home before you know it - tempting though it is to stay away, rather than just play away for a day, so delightful as it is!  My post is HERE.

Save the Children - Build it for Babies Campaign.

Today sees the launch of a something incredible - a Save the Children 'Virtual Clinic' - where you can literally take a look around and choose something small (or large) to purchase - from a brick towards the actual building -  to items of equiment - like a stethoscope or weighing scales, a member of staff and even a well or electricity for it, then add your name to their Wall of Fame for doing so!

They want to build seven real ones, just like this one, at a cost of appox. £150 000 for each, to save the lives of too many babies who perish in their present conditions at an unimaginably appalling rate.

They have made an appeal through the very poweful and influential Love all Blogs entrepreneur Annie Mammasaurus Spratt, who, in turn, invited Bloggers to attend a conference in London last week, to see what we can do to help raise awareness and funds towards what seems like a very realistic, reasonable and feasible target.

After showing us a film of one of their dedicated helpers driving through days and nights in the more remote parts of Africa to get a sort of peanut protein to starving babies out there, they then focused on the outer areas of Bangladesh where they aim to build these Clincs.

Buy a brick for £5

This particular campaign is called Build it for Babies and part of this has spawned into Blog it for Babies, which took place in the pub directly after we left the conference, with Annie, naturally, at the helm, as we, all of us mothers, were so moved to help these poor women whose babies do not survive much past their first few days.

We learned  from Eva Keogan (@nixdminx), first hand, about the 'triangle of filth' that pervades where they live - their toilet 'facilities' near the same river in which they wash themselves as well as their cooking pots. Diarrhoea is rife. Entire families live in a shack and - being too far away from anywhere more hygienic  - this is where their children might be born, yet tragically, but  unsurprisingly, are 'lost.'

Some will attempt what might be a six hour journey to their nearest hospital - but it might be like this...

Save the Children.

 ...in an upturned chicken coop, where her whole family will eventually join a great deal of many other desperate families in an overcrowded and dire quest to save her baby.

It transpires - because I asked them to clarify this awful matter of the word 'lost' -  that most mothers' babies die. Some have 'lost' two, three or four children. One woman Save the Children representative Scott Clarkson met considers herself 'the worst mother' because six of her babies have died.

He told us that children lose their lives after they are born - 50% of them will do so within in the first 28 days of their lives, 50% of those in the first week and many in the first 24 hours.

This is the reason that they have so many children - to allow for their death rate.  Eva Keogan who works in social Media and has used her Nixdminx blog to brilliant effect to help, since being deeply affected by her visit to the area, had tears in her eyes while she also relayed how a local lady had tried to give them her baby to bring home to the West.

She said those who are lucky enough to make it to their their fifth birthday (having escaped pneumonia and other prevalent, deadly diseases) are the equivalent size of our two year olds.

At the time of the conference, one of the clinics that Save the Children has already built to provide care for such women and their babies, has brought down to a big fat 0% the number of them dying.

What can we do?  We can help by supporting their cause to provide a safe and sterile environment in which to bring children into the world, with a health care worker available 24 / 7.  Can we do all we find possible towards providing these other mums medication and education about breastfeeding, nutrition and hygeine?

Take a look at this amazing Virtual Clinic - and if you can do it without your heart bleeding you're a stronger person than I am.  

You can join Mammasaurus’ Blog it for Babies campaign which, next week, stretches to her travelling around the country a bit in order to further raise awareness and funds.  I am lending her my car and anyone who lends any sort of support to this appeal - not just financial - will make it on to a Wall of Fame in our eyes! 

There is now already a #Bake it for Babies book idea with wings being created in the blogsphere . Recipes are being invited and a signature cake incorporating 'a light peanut butter sponge' (to keep within the Save the Children theme!), has just been invented and won the taste trials courtesy of the lovely Jenny from Cheetahs in my Shoes.

There is a plethora of Bloggers Birth Stories abounding - as a way of highlighting the contrast between our comparatively privileged conditions and frequent life saving scenarios vs. their shocking ones. Perhaps you could add yours HERE.  It all helps.

Or go to the Save the Children page giving social media addresses and tips - asking for 30 seconds - 15 minutes of your time, plus see and hear the talks I mention above.

Please do all you can to prevent any more 'lost' souls.

Thank you.

Save the Children.

 

Weight Watcher?

I recently attended the Blogger conference for the charity 'Save the Children' and, while writing up my notes, completely forgot to make myself some dinner and wondered if it was some sort of 'Sign' from the powers that be.

That, or I'm some sort of idiot.

Whatever.  But having been increasingly aware that things aren't what they were physically - Heaven forbid they're not even where they were physically - since having my children and being in my forties co-incided, it seems time to take some action.

At the end of last year the very lovely Liz Jarvis at The Mum Blog wrote a piece called New Year New Body explaining that, in her experience, what works when trying to shift those extra pounds is being part of a group.  She created a Facebook page, loads of people signed up, all eager and enthusiastic -evangelistic even, me included.

Since then Liz has posted almost every week losing 1-21b, which, since the beginning of the year, has totted up to a considerable amount of weight loss.  Most of us have been far less consistent or successful and my posts have been dismal, so when she told us that Weight Watchers would be interested in any Bloggers for it, I thought it might give me the impetus that I so obviously otherwise lack.

There has been a great deal of heartache over the last few years and it's easy for the weight to pile on when you're lonely and sad, up in the nights, distressed and very, very tired (it has been shown that our hormones can play havoc) and there wasn't even a man in my bed to make me at all bothered about it.

But. Huzzah. Now there is someone special for whom I would like to feel more confident about myself again.  Even though he has been around for some months now, the 'good' life of shared bottles of wine and his favourite take away curries have merely served to exacerbated the situation! Intentions shattered, I have joined WW where every excuse I've ever thought of is already covered on their website, where they provide products to help you along and, like Liz, encourage keeping a food diary.

Today, I emptied a sachet of their morning oats into a bowl. Its size was a 'Sign' all right - that eating three or four times its amount and expecting to lose weight is what's really idiotic - and that's without counting adding a rather generous chocolate spread dollop! (You don't get a Klout +1 score for 'influence over Nutella' on Twitter for nothing you know!).

And I fear the adjustment is going to make me so hungry that the chances of me going without my dinner again look pretty slim [- like me, hopefully, within a few months! Ha ha.]

But, then, I think again about those poor malnourished people that 'Save the Children' are endeavouring to help, which is more than enough to put you off your food and realise my chocolate raisin days are almost, probably, finally and thankfully coming to a close.

Disclosure - Weight Watchers have sent me a few samples of their products and signed me up for free.

NEXT - Save the Children - Blogging it for the Babies of Bangladesh.

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