It's My Last Day Today

*blows big teary snot bubbles into a man size pack of tissues*

Yes, this is it.

I'm due to have a baby in a few weeks so I have to say (a hopefully temporary) goodbye to the Save The Children shop that I've volunteered in for the past year or so.

Today is my last official day and I'm going to miss it SO much.

I know I bang on about my volunteering work a lot. It's not that I am trying to big myself up. There are so many people who do vast amounts of charity work - they are amazing.  All I do is spend a few hours each week helping out in the shop.

No, it's because I get so much from it and want to spread the word on how doing something like this can make you feel soooo good.

Yes, I volunteer for ME.

There, I said it.

Yes, I decided to volunteer to help a charity but it's become more than that. I volunteer to meet new people, to gain new skills, to enjoy myself, to get something more out of life - something different.

Becoming a volunteer has given me a new lease of life.

All I have to say is that if you have any time whatsoever, please please PLEASE consider helping your local charity shop. Have a look at what Save The Children have to say about volunteering - there are a variety of roles that you can get involved with.

If you'd like to read my journey over the past year as a volunteer then please check out the Save The Children link at the top of my blog.

In the meantime, whilst I'm not working at the shop I will continue to blog about Save The Children as my chosen 'blog' charity. At the end of December I blogged that I was part of the #66cities campaign for the charter to end hunger. Just to let you know that my letters were heard by the MP's and sent to David Cameron and I received replies in January. Just doing something simple like this helps the efforts of Save The Children. I was invited by Save The Children to deliver the petition to No.10 but I was away on holiday unfortunately.

Don't leave it too late. Get involved. Every action, however small, helps.

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today I was excited.

A year ago today I was nervous.

A year ago today I started a new 'job'.

I say 'job' rather loosely. I don't get paid anything for the work I do but I absolutely love it.

My little corner of the charity world

Yes, can you believe it? A year ago today (well, okay, officially it's Saturday this year but let's not be picky) at this time I started volunteering at my local Save The Children shop every Friday. I honestly don't know where the year has gone - I've loved every moment of it. Volunteering gives me such a buzz and I love being able to help out and also share my experiences on my blog.

I was only supposed to volunteer between 9.30am and 1pm every Friday but most of the time I'm there until 4pm when the shop closes. I love the people I work with. I love the customers. Did I mention I love it?

My day can vary so much. Most of the time I'm customer facing - working on the shop floor sorting merchandise and working the till. Sometimes I'm upstairs sorting through donations and even steaming clothes (considering I very rarely get the iron out at home this is quite something!). There is always so much to do and no two days are ever the same.

I'm almost 35 weeks pregnant right now and my last official day at 'work' will be Friday 9th March. I'm gutted. I love that shop so much that they are even mentioned in my will that I made last November.

I am going to go back as soon as I can but it will be difficult for a while. I will continue as much as I can doing good through this blog and that will have to do for now. I'll have an update on that soon.

For now, I'm going to enjoy my last few weeks 'working' and feel ever thankful that I followed my heart and decided to volunteer.

Save The Children #66cities Campaign

This blog post has been a long time coming and for that I'm so ashamed. Being ill most of November and December has meant this has slipped but it's time to make up for it whilst there's still time.

As most of you know, I feel extremely passionate about the Save The Children charity and I volunteer one day a week to work in one of their shops - which I love. So, I was eager to become involved with their current #66cities campaign.

Photo: Save The Children

The lives of over 400,000 innocent children around the world at risk and Save The Children are calling on governments around the world to take life-saving measures to protect these children. The Charter to End Extreme Hunger has been created which outlines specific actions that governments should take to stop starvation as a result of drought, high food prices and conflict.

Campaigners all over the U.K. who are representing their cities have been emailing their MPs calling on them to raise the issue in parliament.

2 days before Christmas I sent a letter to my local MP (Mark Tami) and the Chester MP (Stephen Mosley) to raise this issue on behalf of my nearest city.

If you have a spare few minutes, please contact your local MP to make them aware of the charter and also use twitter and Facebook to continue to spread the word for this important campaign.  We've seen before the huge impact that the blogging community can have with these campaigns.

If you haven't got time to email your local MP, then PLEASE spare 1 minute to sign the petition

YOU CAN SIGN IT BY CLICKING HERE

and then spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, email, word of mouth, carrier pigeon - do what you must!

I'll be blogging again on return from holiday with an update on a response from the MPs but for now, go forth and continue to spread the word...

Make A Will, Make A Difference.

I turn 37 this Wednesday. I know I'm still young (ish) but I'm starting to freak out a bit that I haven't organised a will. It's something you don't really think about when you're younger - you generally associate wills with 'older' people.

It's something that Matt and I said we would do as soon as Mini Cheddar was born as we hadn't already organised one but it's something we never got around to sorting.

Big fat fail.

Not only do we need to sort out where our savings etc. would go, it also needs to include who would have MC if anything were to happen to us both. It's quite an awful thing to think about and maybe this is the reason I've been putting it off.

The thing is, in November there is no excuse. When I started volunteering for Save The Children back in February I found out about something called 'Will Aid' that I'd never heard of before. Basically, each November a selection of Solicitors in the UK will waive their fee for preparing a will and that fee goes to Will Aid. Then all the money raised is divided equally between 9 fantastic charities, Save The Children being one of them.

We decided back in February that I would wait until November to organise our wills so we could take advantage of donating to charity rather than see it go into a Solicitors pocket.  I think the fee is roughly around £85 for a single will and £120 for a pair of mirror wills - depending on the Solicitor.

By visiting the Will Aid website you can search for you nearest Solicitors and contact them direct to make an appointment.

If you haven't made a will yet and, like us, have been putting it off I think this is a great opportunity to support worthwhile causes whilst sorting out your finances and future.

I'm ringing my Solicitor this week to make my November appointment.

To find out more, visit www.willaid.org.

Make a will. Make a difference.

This Has To Stop Now!

Yesterday was just an ordinary Saturday for most people - but not for some big hearted friends and bloggers who attended the Save The Children conference in London, giving up their precious weekends in the name of charity.

I should have been there and I was totally gutted I couldn't make it.

Regular readers of my blog will know that the Save The Children charity is a big part of my life as I give up my spare time to volunteer in my local shop. I can honestly say hand on heart I absolutely love it. I was ill this week so I couldn't go in and I hated not being able to work.

Unless you've been living underground recently you will have heard about the tragic situation in East Africa. Thousands of innocent children are dying each day and it has to stop! A severe lack of health workers in the area means that children die needlessly - one every 6 minutes in fact. Read more about the East Africa Appeal here.

Next week, a fellow blogger, Chris, is attending the UN General Assembly in New York. She is going there with Liz from Save The Children to put pressure on David Cameron to play his part in solving the health worker crisis. There's a target of 60k signatures to collect by this Tuesday so PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION NOW IF IT'S THE ONLY THING YOU DO.

Please don't ignore this post, don't pass it off as someone else asking for help. This is genuinely serious - innocent children's lives depend on it.

Two blogging friends of mine, Michelle and Gemma (who I've both met in person) are asking for 100 people to join this linky by Tuesday. It may seem impossible but I know just how strong and amazing the blogging community is.

Please visit Michelle's blog to read more but basically we want people to sign the petition, write 100 words about a health professional you have encountered in your life (tweet: #healthworkers), ask other bloggers to participate and spread the word in any which way you can - Twitter, Facebook, email, phone or accost people in the street if you have to!

Here are my 100 words:

"6 months ago, Mini Cheddar was struck with the dreaded norovirus and it hit her badly. I can easily say this was the worst moment of my life - watching her unable to hold even a thimble full of water down without vomitting. I was totally helpless. I remember leaving the doctors surgery after my doctor made a swift phonecall to the hospital, running in the house, packing a bag and rushing to the paediatric unit. Dehydration is horrible. Trying to hold my daughter down with a team of nurses whilst the doctor hooked her up to a drip was pure hell."

The thing is, Mini Cheddar had these medical professionals to help her. She had the latest drugs, the very best medical equipment and the knowledge of the professionals which meant she only spent 24 hours in the hospital and we were able to continue her care in a warm and safe home.

The children in East Africa don't have these things that we take for granted. They don't even have fresh water. The situation out there is awful - see for yourself below and don't ignore the crisis. These children need your help...now!

I'd love to see these bloggers take over the baton (apols if you've already been tagged as I'm not really on Twitter much lately):

Mari's World
Real Housewife Of Suffolk County
Reluctant HouseDad
A Matter Of Choice
Mañana Mama
Alysons Blog
Mummy And The Beastie
Doing It All For Aleyna
Looking For Blue Sky
The Syders
This Mid 30's Life

If you're not tagged yet then don't wait to be tagged - there isn't time...please take this as your invite to get signing, blogging and shouting about this. We need to spread this quickly.  I'm so busy at the moment, as you all know, but even I have managed to do this as it's SO important.

Thanks for reading x

Save The Children - They Are Our Future

I have a number of meme's sat in my drafts and I just haven't got around to doing them.  This is different though.  This meme is VERY important.

If you don't want to read this or get involved with the meme then I just ask one thing:

PLEASE SIGN THE SAVE THE CHILDREN PETITION HERE

Back in January of this year Save The Children launched the 'Born To' campaign which raises awareness that no child should be born to die.  It's a startling statistic but 8 million children under the age of 5 die each year from treatable or preventable illness.

We have until 13th June in order to sign the petition which Save The Children will present to put pressure on world leaders at the global vaccine summit.

This week 3 bloggers/vloggers are going to Mozambique to follow the journey of a vaccine from the coldstore in the city right down to a rural community.  They will write, make videos and tweet all about their experiences, the children and the families they meet.

The bloggers/vloggers going are:

Lindsay Atkin
Chris Mosler
Tracey Cheetham

Regular readers will know about my passion for Save The Children and know that I dedicate one day of my week to work in a local Save The Children shop. I absolutely love it.  So when the very lovely Looking For Blue Sky tagged me in this meme I knew I would do it.  I just apologise for not doing it straight away but it's been crazily busy this past week with going away for a couple of nights.

Mini Cheddar has been a delight lately. She's growing up so fast though, it's practically whizzing by. It was a big moment in our house yesterday when we converted her cot into a bed. Still, she has her whole future ahead of her.  So what would she want to do when she grows up?

I asked her.

She wants to be Minnie Mouse - obviously!

With her only just turning 2 in March her drawing skills are fairly limited so Grandma helped her out with this creation:

Now for the rules of the meme:
1. Get your child to either draw or craft a self portrait of themselves now or in the future.
2. Sign the Save The Children Petition and then 'pass it on' to your friends.
3. Write a blog post about it as soon as possible, including info about Save The Children and the petition. We want as many people linked up and signed up to the petition by Sunday 29th May 2011.
4. Tag 8 fellow bloggers.
5. Come back and link up your posts at Red Ted Art.
6. If you have time, visit each others posts and say hello!

And don't forget to follow all the action in Mozambique on Twitter using the hashtag #PassItOn

I'm tagging the following and just hope they haven't already been tagged:

A Matter Of Choice
Alysons Blog
Cafebebe
Doing It All For Aleyna
Hello Its Gemma
Inside The Wendy House
Kate Takes 5
Mari's World

Thanks ladies xx

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