Here we are at The Cookery School for a blogging cook along with Master Chef winner Tim Anderson. For great inside tips he is @cheftimanderson on twitter.

I’m starting the year with a resolution to continue supporting the good works that bloggers can do by becoming part of the Mom Bloggers for Social Good with 400 founding blogging Mums.  I know I am in great company and hope that we can make some noise in 2012 for all these good causes.

Mom Bloggers for Social Good is a global coalition of mum bloggers who currently span eleven countries – United States, Canada, UK, India, Spain, Nigeria, Singapore, Netherlands, Malaysia, Jamaica, and the Philippines  – who care about spreading the good news about the amazing work non-profit organizations and NGOs are doing around the world.

When the campaign partners need to reach the masses about new initiatives, advocacy campaigns, or fundraising efforts we will work collectively to spread the word through our social media and blogging platforms to spread the word.

Here’s where you can follow the campaigns in social media:

But did you know Lush has a small collection of Spas around the UK?   They seem to be quite a well kept secret but they’re well worth discovering as they are a completely different experience, offering a range of treatments which are both visionary and architected to create an escape from the stresses and strains of every day to leave you invigorated and refreshed.

The Spa is a world away from many other places I’ve been to and is more of the kind offered by boutique hotels than high street beauty bars.  Great care and attention is paid to the decor and antique furniture and the walls are adorned with retro framed prints of birds.  Everywhere you look there are life affirming Lush products including oils, massage bars and even different types of tea.

I tried The Good Hour massage which is designed to iron out muscular tension using a massage bar of your choice – I chose the Hottie bar with ginger and black pepper (and you get to take it home too which is an added treat).  They all have a base of Shea butter which is great for creating a lasting moisturisation for the skin; perfect for keeping Winter skin supple and protected as well.

The massage has it’s own sea-themed soundtrack which mixes voices and ambient sounds which makes a refreshing change from the usual panpipe muzak which usually gets put on at other spas.   My masseur, Anna, sat and talked me through the treatment for about 10 minutes which meant I could ask her to target my knotty shoulders and stiff lower calf muscles.  She talked about the vision for the spa and how the treatments were all aimed at the body and mind and then started the great unknotting process.  A day later, I can still feel the benefit of the treatment and would definitely go back again.

To begin with, the room is darkened and candles flicker around the room to create an atmosphere of relaxation, this is accented with a bowl of aromatic sea scents and a gentle light that gradually changes colour.  The masseur uses the a jelly disc which is chilled to help circulation and also complement the massage bar.  You can expect some intense pressure to release tension and also a great sense of wellbeing at the end of the hour.

And to finish off, tea with a drop of Rum and biscuits, well what’s not to like?

The Lush Spa can be found at;

123 KINGS ROAD,
LONDON
SW3 4PL
T:020 7349 9648

There’s lots more information about the Spa locations and ranges of treatments and vouchers at this link here.

Not believing in Father Christmas is a symptom of Secondary School in our house and the Year 7s have been coolly discussing their lack of belief.  While it’s more poignant than painful to sense this change of perspective that my 11 year old and her friends are experiencing, I feel like there is a small window of opportunity to redeem this sense of wonder that surrounds Christmas, if only to a tiny degree.

When Polar Express came out a few years ago, we went to see it at the cinema and it was a really sweet and life affirming film.  ’Of course you’ll never stop believing in Father Christmas,’ I said when bright eyes looked up at me beseechingly as we left the theatre.  So hoping that Arthur Christmas would have the same effect, albeit few years on, off we went to Westfield for an Orange Wednesdays treat; and yawned our way through the film.  It just didn’t measure up.  It was an average story and we left deflated and resolutely unfestive!

Trying again with the animated film format, we watched A Christmas Carol after a lazy Sunday lunch and it was great – scary, spirited (literally) and of course, it’s one of the great Dickens’s stories.  It still hadn’t quite hit the spot.

Presented with a free day off school (or rather the November 30 strikes) I decided I would take direct action myself and book a slot in the grotto and a skating session for my daughter and her best friend.

‘What? The (groan) grotto?  We don’t want to go there – it’s rubbish!’

‘Don’t be silly, there’ll be loads of kids your age going – school will be shut so what else will there be to do?’

‘I’m only going if we can go skating…’

And so the morning arrived and we went to ‘The Grotto’.  I think a trip to an abattoir would have been better received, but I remained resolute and unperturbed as I joined the queue and told the friendly Elves I would be back to collect the girls in 40 minutes.

‘You can’t let them go in unaccompanied I’m afraid,’ said the Elf-in-Charge.  Damn, I thought, I’m going to have to sit through this myself?!  And so in I went as well.

We sat through a 5-D move extravaganza (whatever that is) and then the girls went to meet Father Christmas.  He was very jolly with a South African accent and a red nose, there was also a professional camera set up to capture the moment and pictures were on sale for £15 a pop at the end.  And who said Christmas wasn’t commercial? I thought.

They did get gifts.  They were shoved in a bag and they proceeded to the ice rink to get their boots on and risk life and limb on a giant ice cube.  45 minutes later, with rosy cheeks and smiles, the girls changed back into their shoes and I took them for lunch.  Their gifts were colouring books, and to my surprise they both set about colouring in the pictures with gusto – all world weariness shoved aside and a small piece of childhood reclaimed, if only for a moment, made it a pretty great day to still believe in the good old Christmas spirit.

So that’s it for me, who cares if Father Christmas really does exist at all, it’s all about recapturing the spirit of true childhood that matters, and that goes for us all, whatever our ages.

 

Poetry is one of the best ways to discover language and it’s also to be enjoyed which is why we love poetry in hour house; be it Edward Lear, Shakespeare, AA Milne, Oscar Wilde or even our own witterings, it’s all part of story telling and an essential part of connecting as human beings.

Most of all it should be fun and that’s why I think this new app is a great idea because it combines the novelty of an app with some of the greatest poems written, with readings by actors who are loved by children for their great film work; Helena Bonham Carter and Bill Nighy, and it’s also beautifully illustrated by Natasha Law.

About the app:

Designed and conceived by former actress and mother of three Allie Esiri and writer and mother of five Rachel Kelly, the iF Poems App aims to introduce poetry to school-age children in a creative, fun way. Inspired by their own children’s love of reading (but also their incessant desire to play on the iPad) this collection will entertain as much as it educates.  Ten per cent of all sales of the App will go to Save the Children’s work helping children the world over fulfill their potential. 

From Lear’s The Own and the Pussycat to Belloc’s Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burned To Death to Yeats’s An Irish Airman Forsees His Death, the breadth and scope of poems will help your child understand the solace, joy and beauty of poetry. Beautifully illustrated and read by two of Britain’s finest and most loved actors, this magical collection of 230 poems is the perfect tool or Christmas present for tech-savvy parents and grandparents.

Helena Bonham Carter says: “There is little that is as deeply satisfying than the apt poem. It’s like chocolate for the soul. Except less fattening. And unlike most delicious things in life it’s actually good for you. It resolves the nervous system, captures the elusive experience of being alive so we may always have it and never lose it. Give your child an appetite for poems and they will never be bored. Get this app, and with poems in your pocket you’ll be armed with beauty and food for the soul and you will never be lonely. I think as a child I was a bit scared by poetry until someone told me it was a song that didn’t need the music… Some people say that a good tweet is a haiku. A text could be a poem too… It’s just making magic with words…”

The iF Poems app for iPad and iPhone is already available to download and doing quite well (which means it must be good!) priced at £1.99 for the iPhone and £2.99 for the iPad version in the UK.

10% of all sales goes to help fund the work of Save the Children. 10 downloads of the App for iPad would buy a mosquito net to protect a child from malaria, or buy a blanket for a newborn baby living in poverty in the UK as the winter comes around. A few more than that would provide a child in the UK with educational books or toys to help them with their development while the App helps your child with theirs. ‘Click here to download the App for your iPad.

Set in 1960s Mississipi, it unveils the domestic lives of society there and sheds light on the absurdity and tragic consquences of deep seated racism. The story pivots around Skeeter, a young upstart who is determined to be different not just by nature, but by her own personality and independent lifestyle and Aibileen, a house maid who has lost her son.

Skeeter is unlike her other friends who are all intent on marriage and homemaking and yearns for a career of her own after finishing college. She applies to her local newspaper to become a journalist and is given a job on a newspaper which isn’t exactly what she wanted; she’s to become the ghost writer for the Miss Myrna cleaning-hints weekly column. Aibileen is a professional maid and surrogate mother to her charges who she brings up in a unique style.

Skeeter turns to Aibileen, her best friend’s maid, to research her column and gather advice on all things household related and then comes the slow dawn of realisation; Aibileen and her friends have more than tips to share, they have their own version of events and life in Mississippi that span generations and date back to slavery. Skeeter has found the inspiration for her first book hidden in plain sight. She begins to surface the stories from the other side of household help; by those that are employed, virtually as slaves, banned from using toilets inside the houses of their white bosses yet given the responsibility of raising their countless offspring. It isn’t long before Skeeter learns that what she is doing is illegal yet she is unperturbed and her ambition drives her on. She finds herself a publisher who she begins talking with and who then mentors her through the book writing process and encourages her to push the boundaries of racial divides, prejudice and motherhood.

Unlike Mississippi Burning which was horrific, this film is layered with the complexities of women’s relationships; the erosion of dominance and respect among groups of friends in a changing socio-political landscape, the employer-employee set up (more master slave in some circumstances), confidantes and keepers of secrets, intergenerational dissonance and the quasi mother-child bond that comes between childminders and their wards. There’s a lot more to this vignette than just interracial struggles, it’s at the cusp of the American feminist movement, desegregation, Vietnam and the swinging 60s and for a mainstream film, it does a good job of leaving the audience asking questions and delivers a few laughs along the way as home perms go wrong, dressmaking is way off vogue and cooking leaves a lot to be desired. It’s as if all the women are aching for change and await a catalyst.

This film ticks all the boxes for a classical emotional rollercoaster, without being too over the top, and much like Driving Miss Daisy or Fried Green Tomatoes, it will definitely sit on the poignant yet fearless shelf of moviedom.

There are some really choice scenes in the movie; my favourite being the ‘Shit Pie’ incident. Sissy Spacek is great as Mrs Walters, the mother of the spiteful and vacuous Hilly Hollbrook; Emma Stone makes a good impression as the upstart writer Skeet. The full cast is here.

The film struck a chord with all of us at the screening because it’s about storytelling, and how bravery and unity can help overcome diversity. It resonates heavily with how many of us use blogging to share and tell stories as part of highlighting causes and also how others have used social media to find their voices and make changes. With that in mind, it’s worth looking at the social media camaign that goes along with it here.

About the film
As friendship is so vital to the story of “The Help,” so was friendship vital to how the film became a reality. Director/Screenwriter Tate Taylor and Kathryn Stockett, author of the book “The Help,” were childhood friends who grew up together in Jackson, Miss., in the 1970s.

“The Help” is set in Mississippi, and although a fictional story, it takes place during one of the most important eras in our country’s cultural history—the changing times of the 1960s.

Director and screenwriter Tate Taylor knew from the beginning that “The Help” had to be filmed on location in Mississippi. He wanted to capture the period of time in a very honest and entertaining way and that could not be accomplished on a movie studio back lot.

Taylor explains, “Mississippi is a character itself. Everyone here has some eccentric, eclectic characteristic to them. It’s a fun place. Just look at the storytellers who have come from the South. A lot of their fame and accolades are just because they were writing about what life is like here. They didn’t invent anything. They are commenting on the South. There is no other place quite like it.”

Tate Taylor (Director/Executive Producer/Screenplay by) was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and graduated from the University of Mississippi. After spending time in New York he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his film career. Taylor has established a mentoring program based in Mississippi with Kathryn Stockett, author of “The Help,” that provides creative and structural mentoring for writers and filmmakers.

Kathryn Stockett (Author of “The Help”) was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and creative writing, she moved to New York City, where she lived and worked for 16 years. She currently lives in Atlanta. “The Help,” Stockett’s first novel, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 103 weeks, six of those weeks were at number one.

This new film from DreamWorks Pictures boasts an illustrious cast, including, in alphabetical order, Jessica Chastain, Academy Award® nominee Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emmy® Award winner Allison Janney, Chris Lowell, Oscar® winner Sissy Spacek, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Academy Award® nominee Cicely Tyson and Mike Vogel.

The film is written for the screen and directed by Tate Taylor, with Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan producing. Executive producers are Mark Radcliffe, Tate Taylor, L. Dean Jones Jr., Nate Berkus, Jennifer Blum, John Norris, Jeff Skoll and Mohamed Mubarak Al Mazrouei.

I found The State of the Blogosphere really useful when I first read it a few years ago and typical of social media back in the good old days; it’s free, shareable and full of golden nuggets of useful information.

I’ve been a contributor to the survey too and each year my circumstances have changed, as I’m sure have yours. So if you aren’t signed up but want to be a part of it, you can do so here at this link.

The more bloggers who take part, obviously means a better piece of research at the end of it. The full study will be published on technorati.com on Monday, November 7 2011. I think we’ll see quite a few changes this year, especially around use of other social media, SEO and paid content. I also think there will still be a hard core of hobby bloggers who do it for the love of it and to get their voices heard. I’m keen to learn why people blog as well. Some of the questions in the survey are quite leading but it was very well thought out, it does take about 20 minutes to fill it out but still, I think it’s very much worth the effort.

On Friday November 4, Technorati Media CEO Shani Higgins will unveil the findings live, exclusively at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles, the world’s largest blogging & Social Media Conference attended by 3,000 or so bloggers, Nov. 3-5, 2011.

I’m emptying all my piggy banks to see if I can afford the flight…

If I don’t see you there, please follow the hashtag to join the conversation.

When: 17 September 2011

Where: Save the Children, St Johns Lane, London, EC1M 4AR

Time: 9.30am for tea and croissants, 10am start, 4pm finish.

Children welcome

Save the Children’s blogging conference is for all bloggers and vloggers. It’s going to be a fun packed and informative day with sessions from leading bloggers, prominent You Tubers and special guests.

Whether you’re a You Tuber, a parenting blogger, food, politics blogger or travel blogger we’d love to see you. We’re putting together a day packed with brilliant workshop sessions for all levels of experience.

Join our campaign

Come and spend the day with your blogging friends, learn new skills, meet Save the Children’s healthworker heros and join our healthworker campaign.

Health workers are critical to saving lives: they are the single most important element of any health service. Without them, no vaccine can be administered, no life-saving drugs prescribed, no family planning advice provided and no woman can be given expert care during childbirth.

We’ll be providing lunch too. Workshop details below.

Register now using the sign-up form to the right of this page.

9.30am: Arrive for tea and croissants

10am : Welcome and introduction

10.10 :  Amanda Mealing, actor and Save the Children Ambassador, talks about her experience visiting our work in Sierra Leone and hosts our live video chat with a healthworker in the field.

11.00 :#Pass it on:

Hear from our three mums who followed the journey of a vaccine from a warehouse in Maputo, Mozambique to a rural clinic. Together we reached just under 30 million on Twitter, had over 150,000 You Tube views, had hundreds of bloggers up and down the country blogging, we met politicians and encouraged world leaders to pledge enough money to pay for vaccines. With Chris Mosler, Tracey Cheetham, Lindsay Atkin and Liz Scarff

11.30:Tea break – sponsored by Netmums

12.00: First workshop sessions:

1) Blogging 101: Everything you need to know about blogging but were afraid to ask

If you are new to blogging or want to know how to set up your blog from scratch and how you can blog to support Save the Children then this session is for you. This roundtable discussion will be led by our expert bloggers.

• Chris Mosler, http://christinemosler.wordpress.com
• Nickie O’Hara,  www.iamtypecast.com
• Kate Gunn – representing Netmums,  http://katetakes5.blogspot.com
• Jennifer Howze -  http://www.britmums.com, www.jenography.net
• Elinor Shields, Mumsnet - http://www.mumsnet.com/
• Sarah Blakemore, Save the Children

2) Get Vlogging: Inspirational stories of how to use YouTube for social good

This roundtable discussion will enable you to get top tips on vlogging from the experts and get inspired as to how you can use your skills to support Save the Children. Our speakers:

• Lindsay Atkin, http://www.youtube.com/user/liliesarelike
• Myles Dyer,  http://www.youtube.com/user/Blade376
• Kristina Horner,  http://www.youtube.com/user/italktosnakes
• Liz Scarff, Save the Children

13:00:  Lunch break: we will be providing lunch.

14:00:  Second workshop sessions:

1) Taking your blog to the next level

Roundtable discussion: this session is designed for those who have been blogging for a while. Learn how to build a loyal following, create quality content and build an audience around a particular niche topic. Our speakers:

• Eva Keogan - www.nixdminx.com
• Sally Whittle - www.tots100.co.uk , www.the-mads.com ,www.whosthemummy.co.uk
• Maggy Woodley - www.redtedart.com
• Josie George - www.sleepisfortheweak.org.uk
• Tracey Cheetham - www.tchee.co.uk
• Saira O’Mallie – Save the Children

2) From floods to famine: multimedia storytelling using photography and film

This practical film session is hosted by Rachel Palmer our multimedia expert. Rachel will give a fascinating behind the scenes insight into both our life-saving work and her job producing and commissioning photography in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

From Niger to Somalia Rachel’s job is to commission and shoot incredible photographs that we can use to bring the world’s attention to events like a forgotten famine or under-reported natural disaster. This session will be practical and you will come away armed with top tips on how to film content for your blog, how to shoot for your edit and what makes a good visual story.

• Hosted by: Rachel Palmer, Save the Children

15:00: Gareth Owen: When disaster strikes- dispatches from East Africa

Gareth is our Director of Emergencies, when a humanitarian disaster strikes Gareth is the first to know. But how do we do what we do? Gareth will be focusing on the current crisis in East Africa.

15:55:Closing statement and thanks.

16:00:Finish.