Just in!

Hi,
We hope everyone is keeping well and having fun with the Jubilee Celebrations!! That may be the case if you are living in the UK or are British and living abroad but may NOT be the case in other countries, ha ha. We would love to hear what you all have been up to over the last weekend.

We are very excited to introduce this vibrant range of handmade Fairtrade grass baskets! Having one of these baskets gives YOU the chance to have a piece of AFRICA (Rwanda to be precise!) in your house. YOU can have a piece of history as someone has lovingly handmade this basket. No mass production or factories here!

Buying one of these baskets helps us help those in disadvantaged communities in Rwanda.  Its the least we can do! These baskets are exclusively being showcased on our Facebook page  to see how  we get on with them. We hope you love them as much as us! Just go to www.facebook.com/ConfusedArt to check them out and let us know if you are interested purchasing one.

Just for your interest these grass baskets are sourced through Kigali Crafts. Kigali Crafts trades fairly with Rwandan genocide survivors to help relieve this amazing countries poverty.  

Shout out for H&M!

Well, this is a bit of a shout out for a company I see grow and grow in their ethical and environmental awareness. I am excited for their future! As it is Climate Week, H&M are advertising that if you donate a large bag of clothes for recycling from 12th to 18th March, they will give you a £5 off voucher to use in H&M before 30th April this year.  Well, that's exactly what I did today and was welcomed by friendly members of staff who gave me my £5 off voucher.


As I am really loving H&M at the minute, the voucher didn't last long in my handbag and I couldn't resist buying this Katherine Hamnett 100% organic T-shirt in support of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) oh and some hair clips (to help me emotionally cope with my "in-between" length fringe:). If you want to find out more about H&M's philosophy on sustainability and other world issues click here  !

Let's save the future and have a fab weekend!

Pam

That's Scottish Weather! - 01/03/12

Well, when this post was started on the 1st March, the weather was FAB-U-LOUS however the next day and today it was NOT!  Fear not, I can say both the sunny, slightly warm and the horrendous weather worked in my favour on my fitness quest.

On Thursday, we got lots of jobs done in the garden and round the house from cleaning and tidying to hoovering and getting potatoes planted etc. I also managed to slip in some step aerobics every so often.  It was great that I wasn't intentionally exercising per se but really felt I had a work out AND slept very well that night. Sleep hasn't always been my best friend, I don't know what I have done to offend it, ha ha.

Within 24 hours of the glorious T-shirt (well T-shirt and light jacket) weather, it turned to "pea soup" as my friend described it and then got promoted to wet, cold and windy. As miserable as it sounded, I HAD to go to the shops and my goodness that was fastest I have ever walked with a all terrain buggy in my LIFE!! Again, boy did I feel those leg and arm muscles. 

What I have found out is that exercise doesn't have to be about organised classes or gym sessions, it can be simply dancing round the house, doing the housework, playing with children if you have any or can borrow one or more (preferably with their parents permission). :)

Fitnut, Fit NUTS!

This is more of a personal post as opposed to Con-fused Arts but at the end of this, I should be fitter and more energetic which can only benefit Con-fused Arts!! This month I signed up to a 12wk Fitnut Charity Challenge.  At the beginning, you get an assessment which checks your weight, height, blood pressure, waist measurement, body composition, strength , flexibility and aerobic capacity.  To be honest, I wasn't actually TOO surprised with the results. Flexibility, BMI  and strength - fine, body composition could be improved a bit, aerobic capacity - abyssmal - back of the class, in fact go and stand outside the headmaster's office!

That's the bad bit, good bit is that apparently the aerobic capacity is one of the easier bits to improve on! So far this week, I have been marching on the outdoor steps like a lunatic, taking the stairs and not the lift! Still thinking of cake though! Oh and apparently I will get a pesonalised exercise plan via e-mail in the next few days so I am interested to see what they have in store for me. My young daughter may well come in handy as a weight!

Basically, this is a way of me passing on any useful tips that I discover along the way and also as I have now told you about it, there is NO backing out!!  ha ha!

Just like Christmas cards that we can re-cycle or pass on to others, we can also re-cycle used stamps that we receive on our mail.  Great if you already do this, but not everyone is aware of the good we can do.

It woudl just take a few minutes to cut out the stamps from envelopes and packages (I actually look forward to the therapeutic activity of neatly cutting round stamps), store them and after you have collected a few, they can be sent to various charities.

It obviously depends where your heart lies but there are animal charities such as, Hearing Dogs are taking used stamps CLICK HERE. Other animal charities include RNIB  and RSPB Save the Albatross.

Medical charities include Brittle Bone Society and Leukaemia Care. All these charities will ask you to separate UK stamps and foreign  stamps and send them separately.  As I have a lot more UK stamps, I send those ones away more often and then wait longer until I gather up enough foreign stamps to make it worthwhile sending!

Happy neat cutting (ha ha maybe I need help!) 

Pam

New Years Resolutions - YES OR NO?

Hi,
Firstly, I really want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and not to sound too corny but I urge everyone to grab 2012 like never before and do something with it!

I am sure everyone has differing opinions on New Years resolutions but for a large number of others they can bring a certain stress! Stressing about eating the right food, that you promised the world you would embark on! Stressing about not getting to the gym 3-4 times a week, not quite giving up the cigarettes, the list goes on! To be honest, if I did smoke and wanted to stop, I wouldn't keep endangering my health JUST so I could stop on 1st January!

On the other hand, its a good way to give yourself a kick up the backside and look at what you can change or improve in your life! Personally, I have decided on just a few small things to work on like 1) drinking more water - that I CAN do! No. 2) Accessorising - making more of an effort when getting dressed to go out. (sometimes it is easy to get swapped down in running a house, job, toddler and husband and we know how much work the latter is!) and no.3 is something I am sure we are ALL guilty of and that is overworking and tiring ourselves out. To be the best person I can, I know I need be rested, happy and content.

Whether it is drinking more water, learning a new skill, chilling out more or just being more appreciative, have you decided to change anything from now onwards?