Charitable giving and possibly being a hypocrite while shopping and generally in life*

Warning - this is going to be a wordy, rambling mess of a blog post - I was pondering it the other day in the car! It also has nothing to do with Swirlyarts but 'person behind the blog' and all that :)

As you may well know I do like a good charity shop - both to buy from and also to donate to. I had a huge amount of fabric to donate the other day and it goes into the fabric bins at my local supermarket. There is normally only one bin but this time there were two - one for a cancer charity and one for The Salvation Army. Given the choice (as I was) I chose the the cancer charity as I really don't like The Salvation Army stance on LGBT issues (the article is on Huffpost Gay Voices so there may be some bias there but you can see more on Snopes here) However I have been into their charity shops, have bought from them in the past and even donated fabric to their bins so maybe a little bit of hypocrisy there? There is a very small charity shop in Burnley that raises money for the Catholic Church. I go there although I'm an atheist and don't like certain aspects of the Catholic Church or organised religion full stop. More hypocrisy.

I'm keen on sustainable fashion where the workers are paid a decent amount of money but I also shop at Primark. I like the idea of Fair Trade food but often buy non Fair Trade food even though we can probably afford most things Fair Trade. I don't like Nestle's stance on lots of things but I do like Aero bars and Quality Street. I have friends who boycott Nestle but I don't even though some of the things they do are horrible. More hypocrisy.

Maybe I am over thinking things (me?? Never!) Anyone else a hypocrite?? Thoughts and ramblings of your own are welcome!

*and the longest blog title award goes to.......

Charity shop finds - part several thousand!

It seems ages since I have written one of these 'ta-da' bargains posts (although I can't actually be bothered to look back through my archives and check) so here is the first one of 2014 :) It's a goodie!

A large print* of The Chinese Girl by Tretchikoff, several books and some clothes :) These were gathered by visiting four charity shops although I didn't purchase anything in shop number 4 and I resisted lots of pretty cups, some pyrex and a funky ottaman.

The ASBO fairy tales appealed to me as I love fairy tales since a lecture about them when I was training to be a teacher - did you know that Red Riding Hood was once a morality tale about how young girls shouldn't wander round the woods by themselves as they might get raped by men (the wolf!) The next two books are for Anya to read as she seems to be enjoying more fantasy books at the moment (and I will probably read them too) The green one is Nights at The Circus by Angela Carter and I last read it for my A-levels many years ago! I wasn't keen on it then but I'm interested to see if I like it again. The second to last one will be an interesting read and the Caitlin Moran one is for a friend as I already own a copy and I said I would buy copies for my friends when I see them cheap!

Next the clothes :) The orange and black thing is a cross between what I would call a 'posh sweatshirt' and a top. Those thick kind of sweatshirts that posh women wear with chinos and loafers. I like the colour and the thickness of it and it has a big chunky zip at the back :) The blue stripey thing is a jersey dress and stripes are always welcome in my wardrobe, especially in blue and white. Then there are two school skirts for Anya (she needs to stop growing!) and the bottom dress is a summer dress for Anya - it has pretty cute out flowers - a broderie anglaise type thing but in large form!

Any bargains recently?

 
*I'm not sure what kind of print it is - it's certainly not on paper and seems a bit more like it's printed on wood. I'm doing some research into it :) I did read this very interesting article last year about the girl who was the model for this work.

Coffee, cake and cards for charity

Macmillan Cancer Support organise the worlds biggest coffee morning once a year and every year there is someone I know who organises one locally. My friend Nicola did just that this morning so I went along and took some cards and gift tags with half of the money I made going to the charity. I didn't contribute much - people were more interested in the cake, and rightly so - but over £100 was made :)

The yummy cake table! You can see why people were interested in the cakes!

And my little set up on the sideboard :)

It's National Wear A Tea Cosy On Your Head Day

I'll bet you didn't know that did you? It's run by the company White Stuff for their charity, The White Stuff Foundation so it's all in a good cause. They are selling tea cosies for £3 with all proceeds going to the charity and once you are done wearing it on your head today, you can use it as a tea cosy or sew up the sides and use it as a hat! We don't really do tea pots in this house (I'm a tea bag per cup girl) so I will be sewing mine up to wear :)

Me and the girls messed around with some tea cosies last night and got some cool pictures that I know you are just dying to see!

I don't think I will be wearing the chicken one or the house one but I will wear the striped White Stuff one :)