If life gives you lemons....

Homemade lemon cordial....

Ingredients: 4 lemons (unwaxed, organic lemons are best); 1 orange; 500g organic sugar; 12.5g citric acid; 1.5 pints boiling water

Grate the rind of the lemons using the fine holes on a grater. Squeeze the juice from all four lemons and the orange. In a large pot dissolve the sugar and citric acid in the water, add the lemon and orange juice, rind and squeezed lemons and orange (chopped into quarters). Allow to cool completely before bottling.

To drink: dilute the syrup with water, approx. 1 part syrup to 5 parts water. This is a great syrup to use for cocktails and makes a great mixer with vodka. Enjoy....

Earth Hour....

I have heard some interesting opinions, of support and derision, regarding WWF's Earth Hour this year. According to the official Earth Hour website, over 2800 cities from 83 countries have signed up to the initiative, part of WWF's global deal campaign which hopes to inspire regulators to agree on effective climate change policies.

Personally, I feel that the important part of supporting Earth Hour is not switching your lights off for an hour as much as signing up as a supporter on the website and the concept of 'Your light switch is your vote'. As the website puts it 'every single person who signs up to WWF's Earth Hour sends the message that they want action to tackle climate change'. The success of the event sends a message to the governments who will meet in Copenhagen at the end of the year (Copenhagen Climate Change Conference 2009) to decide on how the threat of climate change will be dealt with in the future.

I am going to be switching off as well though, and enjoying dinner by candlelight, I hope you are all doing the same....

More Shoreditch graffiti....

More mobile phone graffiti shots....

Spring inspiration...

I love London in Springtime. It's almost as if the great collective mood of the city shifts and suddenly, after the first sunny weekend in March, everyone is looking around for things to do and places to chill and enjoy any rays of sunshine that the gods of weather may choose to bestow.
Here are some of the things Spring has inspired me to do.... 1.) Take a walk in the woods (photographic evidence attached) 2.) Begin a new, more serious home recycling initiative (more to follow on this later in the week and yes, I am aware that home recycling initiative does not, in any way, sound cool and for that I apologise) 3.) Check out one of London's secret gardens 4.) Grow my own herbs for a variety of uses, culinary and otherwise (I found this website particularly helpful but there is a wealth of information online regarding growing and using herbs) and 5.) Buy a dress, preferably from one of my latest favourite ethical online shopping retailers Adili (http://www.adili.com/).

Would someone like to buy me......

.....a green (in many senses of the word) Robert SolarDAB Radio? There is something so appealing about its toylike design. Once fully sunlight charged, the batteries last for up to 27 hours. It's available on Amazon at the moment for the bargain price of £66.11. I want one!

I did actually have a point besides just expressing my craving. The reason I wanted to highlight this is because, to me, it is a good example of a 'green' product which is both functional and appealing design-wise. More and more we are seeing products which manage to combine both which is, in my humble opinion, an excellent sign that considering the environmental impacts of a purchase is becomingly increasingly mainstream.

How to Shop?

Without getting at all carried away, I do like to have a vague idea of what my cash is contributing towards when I make a fashion purchase (and I use the term fashion loosely to include everything from a fabulous granite-black trench coat for Spring to some good old cotton knickers). I confess that if I see something and fall in love with it, even if I don't know anything about the store's buying policies, I am probably going to get it anyway. But I like to at least try to ensure my buyer's remorse doesn't include any unnecessary guilt.

There are a number of schools of thought regarding ethical shopping approaches. One is, buy whatever you like wherever you like and then make sure you do your research and voice your concerns, with the added credence of being a customer, to the company. Another is obviously being very careful about where you shop and use one of the many 'ethical' stores which are now available, predominantly online. I don't have strong views on which is better. I know that for me it is, in all honesty, a question of cost most of the time. If I could afford to, I would love to order more from ethical retailers online but often this is an expensive route.

Some of my favourites are:

• http://www.peopletree.co.uk/


• www.simpleshoes.com/gb/index.aspx


• http://www.mattandnat.co.uk/
  

"The way to help workers is not to boycott one company in favour of another; it's to shift from being a passive consumer to an active one." - Clean up Fashion

If you are hitting the highstreet though, which I frequently do, then an excellent source of information is Clean up Fashion where you can find info on various well-known retailers regarding how they treat the people making the clothes we wear and some practical advice on becoming an active consumer. Have a look and then make your own decisions on where and how to shop.

Shoreditch graffiti....

I took these pictures in and around Hoxton, on my mobile phone, fully intending to go back and take proper camera shots but alas, London is ever changing and nearly all of these are now gone or painted over.

And so it begins.....

I like stuff. I have way too much stuff, too much make-up, too many handbags, too many pairs of shoes and I know, in my heart…..that it’s wrong. I should, we all should, be living lives of 21st century-style simplicity, eschewing material possessions and Marks and Spencer ready meals and living off the land, shopping in Oxfam and making our own lip and cheek stains out of beetroot juice and rose water. Personally however, I like stuff too much. I love living in London and the opportunities that this allows for the purchasing of and doing of and seeing of stuff.

I am hoping that this blog will be a way for me to exorcise some of my stuff demons. Perhaps writing about some of the things I covet will lessen the coveting. I am not making any promises about the environmental and ethical nature of the things I write about so please, don’t shout at me. I am sure many will think I am a disgusting capitalist pig but to be honest, my conscience is more in the nature of a ladybug than a full-blown Jiminy Cricket so even if you do shout at me, I probably won’t care. I recycle, I work for a non-profit organisation that, without getting into details, I believe does very important work and I will certainly add to this blog any green and ethical information I have or have researched about the stuff that I am writing about but ultimately, this is a blog about stuff that I find interesting/useful/inspiring/worth owning/any combination of these things. I hope you enjoy it…..