Fab photo shoot pics on the cool new website
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Last year we had our first ever major photoshoot. This was held on Hastings beach and deliberately included lots of shots of the beach, fishing boats, seagulls, the cliffs and the net huts to promote Hastings as much as our products.
I started the company in the winter of 2008 by making my own Thermal Top out of fleece to save money on heating. This product worked so well I soon had a thriving business going with people who either work outdoors or partake in sports outdoors in the winter wanting my cosy tops too. I chose to stick with fleece only as it’s partially made out of recycled water bottles so environmentally friendly as well as saving you money.
I developed the original version of www.SarahsFleeces.co.uk during the spring, going live in July 2009.
During the autumn I took on other people to sew piece work to help keep up with orders.
We use recycled goods and materials wherever possible as we’re an environmentally conscious company, lowering their carbon footprint wherever possible. Even our packaging is made from recycled plastic!
You can follow me on Twitter (SarahsFleeces) and Facebook to keep up with all the latest news and hear about new products as they come out.
For media enquiries please email Sarah@SarahsFleeces.co.uk
Natural remedy for athlete’s foot
Ok so maybe not the most pleasant of topics to write about, but I just ‘had’ to share my amazement and excitement on this one.
The other day in a shop called Emmaus (helping the homeless) in Hastings, I bought a second hand book all about making your own herbal remedies. I must admit I was rather skeptical but willing to at least read all about it.
I discovered that one of my sons had mild athlete’s foot and thought it worth trying out a suggestion from the book, and why not?
- it was potentially cheaper than buying a special cream
- if it worked it was a lot easier than going to a shop to buy the cream
- if it worked I’d much rather use something natural than a medicine
Having said that it was raucous laughter coming from the bathroom as I turned half a squeezed out lime inside out and tried to coat it’s oils and juice all round his toes lol!
Fast forward to three days later and it’s almost completely cleared up – I’m stunned! All the itchy redness has gone and left a bit of peeling skin – what a result!
I almost want some one in the family to have something that needs treating so that I can try out something else on them!
I’m going to try again at growing herbs on our kitchen window sill. I have tried growing all sorts in the past but slugs have always won the day when I’ve ventured into growing outside but that’s another post for another day 
Facebook status updates to Twitter
Here’s one way of publishing your Facebook status updates to your Twitter feed:-
- in Firefox navigate to the Facebook page that you want status updates to come from;
- on the right hand side of the navigation bar (where you see a page’s url) click on the RSS feed button. It’s orange with yellow lines and when you hover over it, it says ‘Subscribe to this feed’;
- follow the instructions to subscribe to the feed in Google Reader;
- once in Google Reader click on the blue link that says ‘show details’, it’s near the top right hand corner of the page;
- at the top of the new page you can see the feed url – copy this;
- go to twitterfeed.com, sign up and create a new feed. In the process of creating your new feed you get to link the account to your twitter account.
Done!
My way of losing weight
Hi All,
My new year’s resolution was to finally shift the weight I put on 8 years ago when having my twins. I’ve shifted bits of it every so often but my attempts have normally fizzled out quite quickly and the weight’s gone back on.
This time it seems to be working, yay, so I thought I’d share it with you
I’m doing various different things so that if I mess up in one area I know I’ve still done ok in the others:-
- I’m parking our car a 10 min walk down a very steep hill away from school so that I get 20 mins of walking at least 3-4 days out of 5;
- I’ve swapped my regular bag of crisps at 10.30ish for several pieces of fruit;
- I’ve cut potatoes, pasta, rice etc right back and swapped it for veg;
- I’ve cut down my breakfast and evening meal portion sizes a bit;
- I’m not eating puddings;
- If I can’t resist something sweet in the evening I’ll only have a yoghurt;
- Because my 10.30 food is much more than a snack I’ve cut back how much I eat at lunch;
- I’ve swapped the four slices of healthy brown bread sandwiches I used to have for lunch for a bowl of home made soup (gorgeous!) and one slice of bread and marg;
- Two or three times a week I prance about in front of the tv doing a quick 15 min exercise dvd lol!
- Every night I do two different girlie sit up things. One is with legs flat, finger tips behind your ears and raising your shoulders off the floor and back, the other is similar but with bent knees and bringing one knee and the opposite elbow towards each other, touching, putting them back and then doing the same thing with the other knee and elbow. This works on both sets of stomach muscles. This is developing some rock hard abs below the flabby bit in the middle! I’m hoping one day I might be able to see as well as feel them lol!
I think that’s it. I didn’t realise I was doing so many different things until I wrote I down! I’ve found it fairly easy to keep to most of the time, although I’ve found if I’m extra tired I can give in to sweet temptations quite easily. Although if they’re not in the house in the first place then it’s easy to resist lol! Also weekends when the family are around much more it can be harder too.
I’ve heard that it’s better to eat more meals and small ones rather than three big ones which is why I’ve sort of chopped lunch in half and made it a healthier version. I’ve found doing it this way, having part two of lunch at about 2pm that I can then easily go to 5.30pm without wanting to snack. Apparently eating like this helps your metabolism increase as if you leave it so long between meals it goes into starvation mode and slows your metabolism down.
The weight’s come off at about 1/2-1lb a week so I’ve lost nearly 3/4 stone so far in two months which I’m really chuffed with, even though it’s slower than I’d like I think the key here is that it’s a way of eating that for me is relatively easy to maintain. Which means that in another two months I should have lost about another 3/4 stone, which will be 1 1/2 stone! I’ll be so pleased if this happens and I can then keep it there! I’ve also noticed a distinct reduction in the ‘love handles’.
I’ll post again at the beginning of May to let you know how I’m doing
Bye for now
Anyway
I think this is an awesome poem so I thought I’d share it with you.
“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self centred;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build Anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.”
By Mother Teresa
Cash Saving Tips No.6 How to save time on jacket potatoes
Aren’t jacket potatoes great? I love them!
I realised a while back that I wasn’t cooking them as often as I’d like too due to them needing 1 1/2 hours in the oven. I knew you can cook them in the microwave in about 15 mins but they’re just not the same without that lovely crispy outside!
One day I had a brain wave…I cooked my jacket potatoes in the microwave as normal then popped them in a hot oven for about half an hour whilst the rest of my dinner was cooking. Then they were all ready at the same time and had a pretty crispy skin too!
If you’ve got any time saving tips like this please do share them with us all below
If you enjoyed this tip you may like these ones too:-
What Now?
Leave a comment (below)
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Email Sarah@SarahsFleeces.co.uk
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I have a dream…
Do you ever allow yourself to dream about where your business may be one day?
The other day I was with a friend and we got talking about what our dreams for our businesses are, you know the “if money were no object” type of dreams?
Having spent five minutes in wonderland I decided that now was a good time to start noting these down. So here we go.
“In my ideal world I would like to see my company:-
- have premises to work from local to my house as it’s on the doorstep of lots of local people without jobs;
- become so big that it makes a difference to the economy of my town, Hastings, East Sussex;
- be this big and still be ethical, green with a low carbon footprint;
- be this big and still be about the little people not the fat cats;
- train men and women who have few if any qualifications how to sew and become qualified in sewing;
- give my employees a chance to get more qualifications such as their maths and english GCSEs;
- give my employees a hope for the future and a better chance in life both for themselves and for their children;
- give opportunities to people like single mums who can only work so many hours per week or earn so much per week before it effects their benefits with a long term view of enabling them to get out the of benefit trap;
- give flexible working hours to allow more people to be able to work;
- provide employment to those members of our society that might otherwise be over looked, like the older generation and the disabled;
- produce thousands of ‘green‘ products;
- help loads of people save money on their heating bills with our warm clothes like the Thermal Tops;
- help bring manufacturing back to England;
- provide an environment where those who thrive on deadlines can do so and those that don’t can be protected from that which holds them back;
This may seem rather fanciful and unobtainable but unless you’ve got a goal you’re never going to know if you’ve hit it as my Dad said to me a long time ago.
Also these ethics are just a part of me, it’s the way I live my life already. Our company is already doing most of these things (except the premises and qualifications bit) but on a small scale.
So if you’re reading this and am loving my list like I do you can help by:-
- promoting us, I can post you fliers or business cards or you can email me with your own idea;
- buying our products;
- emailing me shops you know of and their website address that might be interested in stocking our products;
- passing this post on to people you know who might be interested in our products or who might be able to help this become a reality;
- or if you’re feeling flush and are looking for an investment opportunity feel free to email me!
I love dreaming but I love the action plans that come out of them even more!
Latest new products and news
Hi Everyone,
How’s it going? All set for the winter months?
Here’s the latest news:-
- We’ve just topped the 350 individual products mark recently so am feeling very proud of ourselves;
- We’ve got ourselves into another shop local to us (The Pier Shop in Hastings) and our products are selling well there so far;
Our most recent new products are :-
- Socks, the double layered variety, which I’m going to be thoroughly ‘road testing’ (literally) this winter as I’m also a lollipop lady at my boys’ school!
- Full length Ponchos for snuggling up in front of the tv in, unless you’re into camping and then they’re an absolute must;
- Trousers have been added also and coming soon are quilt covers (to go with the pillows), cardigans and seat belt shoulder pads!
Bye for now and keep in touch
Sarah
The process of designing a new Cardigan for a customer Part 2
Hi All,
Following on from Part 1 this is the next stage in the process of designing a bespoke cardigan for one of our lovely customers.
I came up with three basic alternatives on how the cardi could look based on what my customer and I had discussed previously by email. We discussed it lots more (see the comments at the end of part 1) and have come up with a variation of design number 3.
So I’ve drawn a new version, design 4:-
Let’s see what happens now…
Sale starts tomorrow!
On Thursday we’re going to have our first ever…
20% off SALE!
By popular demand it’s going to be on all hats
It’ll run for one week only (4-11th Nov) so pass on the info and get in there quick to get your winter hats while the going’s good!
There’s cat, mice, rabbits, dogs (ooh gorgeous ears!), sharks, teddy bears, crocodiles, camo, single layered hats and for those who *really* need it the Super Warm double layered hats.
Something for everyone and ideal pressies at less than a tenner!
