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Thanks to Little Sunflowers

Mar 23rd, 2010
by Dan.
9 comments

This isn’t a paid post. This is a “Thank you” post for Littlesunflowers.com who recently made a very generous donation to Hadrian’s Walk.

Their fantastic contribution will be used by The Joseph Salmon Trust directly in their work supporting bereaved families who have lost a child.

Little Sunflowers is a family run online children’s clothing and gift store for kids up to about seven years old.

Little Sunflowers

I asked Bev, who runs the shop, if there were any products she particularly wanted promoting and she said no. And so I had a poke around for myself to see if there was anything that caught my eye.

If I’m honest I was expecting the usual fair of beautiful designer dresses and stylish boys clothes. And to be fair there is a very impressive array of that sort of stuff in there. But this is a shop that caters for geeks too. Geeks that want to dress their kids in this:

fabric-flavours-enormous-crocodile-t

or this:

FABRIC-FLAVOURS-RED-YODA

or even these:

Kidorable-Dinosaur-Wellies

Marvelous.

And yes, they do do t-shirts in colours other than red, but those happen to be the ones I liked the best. And they do girls clothes too which look very nice and all, but none of them have dinosaurs, yoda, or enormous crocodiles on them.

As I say, I’m a geek.

Little Sunflowers offer free gift-wrapping and free UK delivery (over £12) so are ideal for sending birthday presents to all those nieces and nephews in far flung parts of the country. They also run a very generous loyalty scheme.

But most importantly of all they are generous and kind people, and that sort of thing should be rewarded.

You can visit Little Sunflowers at littlesunflowers.com follow them on twitter @littlesunflower or even visit them at their shop in Horam, East Sussex.

If you would like to learn more about the Hadrian’s Walk then you can visit our website. If you would like to donate then you can do so here. If you would like to discuss becoming a corporate sponsor then email me at dan (at) hadrianswalk.org

Twits, Trustees, and Tweets

Nov 26th, 2009
by Dan.
12 comments

So I’ve got a few more broadly charity related things to get out of the way, and then I’ll stop talking about it for a while I promise.

First of all, remember this guy?

leemag

It’s Lee Sergeant from Quit Your Day Job, the chap who’s growing a Magnum P.I. style mustache in order to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues.

I mentioned back in this post that we’d be popping in on him occasionally in order to see how he’s doing. So lets take a look.

326545

Yea gods! He looks like a cut price Burt Reynolds! Quick…move on to the next one.

Arrrggg!!

Lee has pledged that for any further donations he receives he’ll dress up in even more costumes. I know he’s got an Iron Man helmet so fingers crossed he goes for that one as it covers his entire head.

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The second thing I wanted to mention was that on Friday I was nominated and accepted as a legal trustee of The Joseph Salmon Trust. This basically means that I will serve on the governing body of the charity and share joint responsibility for it being solvent, well-run, and that it delivers the charitable outcomes for the benefit of the public.

It’s a big responsibility, and I’m deeply honoured to have been asked.

Just in case you’ve not been here before I should explain that The Joseph Salmon Trust is a charity set up by my friends Neil and Rachael in the memory of their son who died aged just three years old. The Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss. You can donate here (you didn’t think I’d let a post like this go by without plugging the donate button do you?).

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And finally, the good folks over at Qtag (who very generously donated £100 to the Trust) have asked me to do one last thing for them.

Their sister site, clothes2order.com, are currently running a weekly “TweeShirts” competition where (UK based) people tweet them a message (@clothes2order) that they think would look good on a T-shirt. Every Friday afternoon they select a winner and print and deliver their t-shirt free of charge.

I’ve taken a look at the previous winners and I must admit I’m pretty convinced the people I follow could do a lot better.

For example, scrolling through my tweetdeck I found these these little nuggets from the last day or so:

  • @binarydad Would wish American followers a happy Thanksgiving, but they didn’t say a thing to me about St Swithin’s Day. So fuck ‘em.
  • @outnumberedisme My hands smell like Hot Dogs and Onions. Pretty sure that’s not gonna make my wife horny.
  • @tysdaddy My daughter said she wants “heat-vision” goggles for Christmas, because “you can see farts with them!”
  • @swhittle Sometimes I’m such an idiot I half expect them to redraw the whole IQ curve.
  • @downwithpants Seriously lady, if you smoke a ton of perfume will not cover it up. You just smell like a nicotine flower that bloomed all over my office.
  • @djkirkby ‘Bajamawammers’ is now my new favourite word of all time.
  • @singleparentdad It is true I do like to handle the massive ones, at any given opportunity.

The contest currently seems rather under-subscribed (just type @clothes2order into the twitter search box to see other entries), so anyone entering has a pretty good chance of getting a free T-shirt out of it.

Of course if @big_ben_clock entered they’d win every single time.

Qtag and the art of scribbling on T-Shirts

Nov 24th, 2009
by Dan.
20 comments

Our 84 mile sponsored walk of Hadrian’s wall is looming ever closer. Seven months and twelve days close to be precise.

I’ve started to cast my net around for some corporate sponsorship and the wonderful people at Qtag.com have been the first to step up to the plate with an extremely generous donation of £100. Thanks especially go to Simon Turner from their marketing department who set it all up. You are a gent sir.

Qtag sell wholesale clothing to the general public. By way of thanks for the donation I asked Simon if there was any way to promote his company on the blog. He very kindly sent me a set of Berol fabric crayons and a couple of T-shirts for me to take a look at and review, with the understanding that I’d be 100% honest in my appraisal.

Fortunately we all loved them. It would have been rather awkward if we hadn’t.

The crayons were bright, fun, and easy to use. But best of all they were clean. We’ve used fabric paint on T-shirts before and I’ve always needed to lay down protective sheeting worthy of a microchip factory. But with these crayons you just draw them on the fabric , iron it, and you’re done. Marvellous.

Amy loved making the T-shirts. In fact she was pestering me to do it from the moment the package from Qtag arrived. It must be something about being given permission to draw on previously forbidden canvases. If someone invented special Wallpaper Crayons I’m sure they’d make a fortune.

Here’s a photo of Amy modeling her new bespoke T-shirt:

IMG_3719

The crayons are also cheap. Very cheap. Including VAT the crayons come to a total of £4.11. When you add to that the fact Qtag sell blank white kids T-Shirt for just £1.09 (or if you’re feeling posher a Fruit of the Loom one for £2.75), then you’ve got yourself a pretty good stocking filler.

What’s more, if you buy in bulk (10 or more) you get it even cheaper. Kerry and I are seriously considering getting a small stockpile together for the relentless onslaught of birthday parties we go to throughout the year. That way we get to be the smug parents who give the cool creative presents rather than the ones who obviously rely solely on 3 for 2 offers at Boots.

You can buy the fabric crayons here, and the kids T-shirts here.

The rest of the Qtag website is also pretty impressive price wise – adult Fruit of the Loom T-shirts for £2.30, cotton polo shirts for £3.69. However it’s all pretty plain and simple stuff. You’re not going to find any Fred West or Matthew Perry labels here (or should that be Fred Perry and Matthew West? I get confused). But for the fashion phobic such as myself it’s a good place to stock up on the essentials. It’s also pretty good for getting those plain polo shirts for kids school uniforms (£3.20 to you squire).

And if you’re looking to buy any sort of uniform for a team event (like a group walk along Hadrian’s Wall for example) it’s a great place to go. As is their sister site, clothes2order.com where you can get stuff printed with logos too.

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Disclaimer. As Qtag gave us a donation towards the Joseph Salmon Trust I suppose you could argue that this is a paid post. My review was honest and I’ve also personally donated the equivalent cost of the crayons and T-shirts to the Trust as well. Donation or not, I wouldn’t be recommending Qtag unless I believed in what they are peddling. My only reservation is that I imagine the majority of their goods are made overseas by exploited workers; but lets face it, you’d find it very difficult to find any item of clothing in the shops on the high street that isn’t.

Oh, and I made up the designer “Matthew West” for the purposes of that crappy joke. Sorry