The Macmillan Worlds Biggest Coffee morning is Friday 30th September and I will be having a sale from 10am-9pm, ALL DAY at 45 Broadmarsh Lane, Freeland, OX29 8QP, selling fair trade jewellery, scarves, belts, accessories, handcrafted cards and pictures and donating 10% of sales to Macmillan. Tea, coffee and cakes will be available with all donations gratefully received. Children are welcome at this event so please feel free to bring them along. Cash, cheques and Paypal are accepted forms of payment for goods. Cash only for donations. Please do pass the word about the sale to anyone you think might be interested. Perfect time for doing some Xmas shopping for your friends, and every time they wear a SagoJago piece of jewellery, or a scarf they will know that they’ve helped Macmillan at the same time!
Witney Wangers are bra recycling for ABC, Against Breast Cancer so please dig out any unwanted, old, grey, broken bras and bring them for recycling. The bras get sent to a textile recycling company and then wholesaled to companies in West Africa to help support women to make an income, and the company give us money for ABC per kilo of bras recycled. Since June we have collected over 2000 bras and raised about £100! Bring your bras, again, tell all your friends. We are collecting till the 1st October when it’s Think Pink day in Witney.
Thank you in advance for your support!
Played piano again at Burford Garden Centre yesterday and although it seemed busy as I walked in it then seemed to go quieter. I had a little break around 1pm this week, to have some food and a cup of hot chocolate, delicious it was too! Carried on playing and had some lovely comments from people as they were leaving. People are saying it’s very relaxing and that it’s the nicest music they’ve heard at Burford. This is from people who are obviously used to hearing other people playing there. As I was leaving the staff made some lovely comments too to the same effect, that it’s the loveliest music they have had for ages, so I can’t imagine what the other players are like that play regularly. I mentioned to Rachel, the restaurant manager, that I also sing and that it’s a shame they don’t allow singers. She was shocked and said they should definitely consider people singing. I guess they don’t usually allow it because they might get all sorts of odd singing going on, but I know the stuff I sing would be well received. She was going to see about me going in on a weekend to sing and play as well! Very exciting. This would be a good platform for me to showcase what I do, in terms of people wanting to book me for weddings etc.
Very happy that these developments are coming thick and fast! Just hope I can keep up with it all!
Freeland Oil Buying Group
Are you interested in saving money on your heating OIL fuel bill? Do you have a tank full of oil sitting idle because you switched to gas? If you’ve answered yes to either of these questions then would you be interested in joining the Freeland Oil Buying Group? The purpose of this group is to get you savings on your OIL by group buying it as a village, and not always waiting until you’re tank is empty (when it can cost you the most to fill it up), but throughout the year when the group can negotiate the cheapest prices. Group buying not only helps the environment by having less oil tankers coming into the village, but it can spread the cost of your oil buying throughout the year as well, saving you money as you go. By buying as a group we can achieve good discounts that you can’t secure as a single purchaser. The power of the people buying together is the way to go! If you have oil sitting in a tank this could be sold to another oil buyer in the village in times of an emergency. They do this in Wootton and it has been so successful, and they have saved so much money, that The ONE Show came to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W43yr4qU38Y. So if you’re interested in finding out more please contact Hannah Jago on 01993 880250/07810143283 or email sagojago@yahoo.co.uk
An order will be placed this Friday so please message me asap if you need oil, don’t wait till the prices start going up on the run up to Xmas!
Had a very last minute invite to the Victorian day at the Woodstock Museum today, 11-3pm. Typical that it rained between 2-3pm so we packed up and left and then more people turned up as it was coming out sunny!
It was a fairly good sale, although quiet. I did point out to the organisers that it is always quiet in the summer as people go away, but I did a fair few sales so that’s always good. I’m also doing a sale there on the 26th November for the turning on of the Xmas lights in Woodstock, and have been asked to sing and do some carols too, and a bit of singing generally, in exchange for a pitch, so that’s even better. The whole feel of the Museum is lovely, there’s lots to do and see and my children thoroughly enjoyed it! There were activities for them today and also a punch and judy show, very well organised, even if there weren’t lots of people.
It came about recently that I had the chance to discuss not using my phone so much. It has got me to thinking that we use technology so impersonally and this in turn creates huge barriers between us and other people, resulting in a lack of communication, a break down in relationships, and in turn our relationship with the outside world. I have no doubt that technology can enhance our daily lives; we are now able to speak to people on the other side of the world with Skype and in times past a letter would have had to suffice. The excitement that is gained with a letter arriving in the post is far more memorable than pressing the on and off button to see the person though. I remember losing touch with my best friend, Tina, who lives in Oregon. I wrote, years ago, to the post office in Oregon to track her down. One day a few weeks later a red envelope landed on my door. When I turned the envelope over and saw her address on the back I burst into tears and wept with joy, I had found my friend again! We now have regular emails and facebook messages but we never write anymore and I have lost that feeling of receiving her envelopes, I will start writing again.
I’m off on holiday soon and have decided to leave my phone at home, and give the relevant hotel numbers to those who need it, my family and my children, in case of an emergency. I do not need to be looking at my phone to see if anyone has text me, emailed me, phoned me. If I’m on holiday it needs to be a time to switch off from the world, recharge the batteries of life and enjoy the tranquility of a new space, a new place, a new experience, without the interruptions of the phone ringing, and my thoughts not being where they should be, with my loved one, enjoying a romantic place.
My boyfriend recently told me that he’d been out with his brothers and mum at a pub, singing karaoke and that all night he’d been texting on his phone, to me, to work people even though it was late in the evening. Social time should be just that and so should work time, but we let technology eat into that time, with our friends and loved ones, and means we don’t allow ourselves time to unwind at the end of the day, to leave work at work and then we wonder why the stresses of work become just that, stresses. If we dealt with work at work and let ourselves enjoy our social time more then we would handle the stresses of work more effectively and enjoy the social time properly without being absent in that time. The moments that we share with loved ones are precious and if we are busy on our phones replying to messages that really can wait then we take ourselves away from our loved ones, even if only for a minute, it is a missed minute with them and time is precious. None of us knows when our moment will come to leave this earth but if we spent more time enjoying our loved ones, technology free we would appreciate that time better, and enjoy it, rather than wishing we’d had more time. We have the time, we just don’t use it effectively when our palm is glued to our phones.
So I urge you all to put down your phones for at least one hour a day, in the evening preferably and spend it with someone you love, your children, your family, or just doing something quiet by yourself. It is remarkable how easy it can be to enjoy the quietness and the space to let your brain unwind from the day, without distractions. I’d love your thoughts.
Today I went for an audition at Burford Garden Centre to play the piano in their cafe. I felt quite nervous before going, even though I already play in Hacketts Restaurant once a week. This was a proper interview and audition! Despite feeling nervous I went in relaxed, being myself and talked about the sort of music I play. I listened to what they would like played as well. They don’t want people to sing and having played there today I can see why. It is a very relaxing place to be, with quite an open ceiling so the sound travels well. I played a few of my favourite pieces, slow and fast pieces and a bit of jazz, to show the diversity. Elaine had been sat watching me and I wasn’t aware of that, so when she came up she said I look really tiny sitting at the piano, but that the sound was big, just right, and carried well, she said I have a lovely touch, I was very pleased. She liked what I had played and offered me the job there and then. I thought it had gone well but you can sometimes never quite tell, she might not have liked the sort of music. When Juliet came to book me some days in, she said the staff had all immediately commented on how relaxing my music was, very classical romantic and I hadn’t thought of it before but that is exactly the sort of music I play, not the typical lounge music that most artists play in venues such as this one. I had been doubting the sort of music I play to be the sort that people want to hear but this verified it to me that people like all sorts of music and has encouraged me to stick with what I know, rather than try to play what I don’t like just to please other people. Juliet and I put 5 dates in the diary for September and filled out various bits of paperwork. I am getting regular gigs now and hopefully I will get some more work from this venue, Elaine said lots of people phone up for details of artists, so I need to order some more business cards to make sure I have plenty. The dates I’m there for September are the 2nd, 7th, 13th, 22nd and 28th, 12-2pm so come have a listen and eat some delicious food too.
Barry from Witney TV interviewed me today for the bra recycling scheme and has put together a great piece about the project I’m running. Today we also added Beautiful Creases and Pirate Fitness to our list of retailers who have a bra bank, to recycle bras and raise money for ABC. To date we have raised £45 for the charity, which is 45 kgs of bras. We get £1 for every kilogram of bras donated and 17 bras is roughly 1kg, so that’s approximately 765 bras so far, give or take depending on whether they’re big ones or small ones! This is a huge amount of bras so far and I’m in no doubt that with this next push of advertising we could reach £100 easily.
Go to www.witneytv.co.uk to see our clip that was filmed today! Bring your bras to any of the following shops: Papillon, Eve, Renaissance, Estilo, Sassi, Clanfield Tavern, Beautiful Creases and Pirate Fitness. If you take your bras to Beautiful Creases they will also give you a loyalty card, free, which is to the value of £10 and gives you great money saving offers, as they support ABC regularly. Bras can be in any condition as if they’re not resaleable they get shredded to make pet bedding and padding for products. The bras, if they are saleable, get sent to wholesale companies mainly in West Africa and women sell them to make an income for their families, so as a business woman in this country it’s great to know we’re collectively supporting business women in Africa too. If you can’t get to a retailer or outlet in Witney please feel free to send the bras directly to me, in a jiffy bag, to Witney Wangers, 45 Broadmarsh Lane, Freeland, Oxford, Ox29 8QP or drop them to my house as I have a recycling bin with ABC stickers outside my house. Put them in a bag and then pop them in the bin. Please do go on my Hannah Jago page on facebook and check out the event, Witney Wangers and spread the word to all your facebook friends, or I can email a poster to put up at work or in the local post office or shop. This scheme can run and run, people always have unwanted bras and rather than putting them in landfill we can recycle them and raise money for charity at the same time. Thank you for your support!
I seem to be getting some SagoJago bookings finally, the summer has been hard to get bookings, lots of people go away or don’t have much money, but holding a party of your own means you get a percentage of the sales we take on the night, to spend on yourself, FREE! Free jewellery or scarves are always good to have, as presents, or as a raffle prize at a school event etc. The supermarkets offer so many free items these days that it is hard for me to understand why people don’t want FREE jewellery and goodies for themselves, just for having a party and getting together with their friends, that is a true reward!
Tonight I am attending the Clanfield Tavern ladies shopping evening, from 7-9pm. There will be a few other stall holders I believe, and as the villages around Clanfield are pretty remote and rural hopefully the turnout should be good. The idea is the pub is bringing the shopping to the customer, rather than the other way around. We shall see how busy it is, but either way it will be a good evening.
If you’re interested in booking a party or a school event please call 01993 880250 or email sagojago@yahoo.co.uk as soon as possible.
Last weekend Kidlington held its annual Gala Day and to say it was a washout was an understatement. It rained all morning while we set up, in the hall luckily but we all had a sense of how quiet it was going to be. I had a superb pitch right by the doors as people came in and right next to a school lollipop stand where kids are stood, with parents looking at my stuff. It was reasonably quiet and then in the afternoon the sun came out and things picked up. It’s always hard at events like this for sole traders because there are always lots of charity stalls doing tombolas and the such like and this day was just like that, so people spend their money on those stalls rather than with the independent stall holders. Regardless of this I managed to have a fairly successful day, selling a few cardigans and scarves, and lots of people showed interest in my knitted wiggly scarves. All in all it wasn’t a wasted day. I even managed to book a SagoJago party for November which is always a bonus!
Today is my second open day of 2011. 10am-9pm. I’m hoping it will be better attended than last months open day, 7 people came. Out of the 400 or so facebook invites I sent and the 500 or so emails i sent out this is not a very good return. I also gave out loads of invites at school and not one mum from school came! I did take this very personally at first and was very upset about it the next day. It had been sports day on the same day so I don’t know if people just forgot or perhaps it was just that people didn’t have the money. I almost don’t mind if people don’t buy anything, just turn up and have a look. There may be something that people need in the future, for a present etc and I want people to feel they can call me and pop in to buy something as and when they need to.
So, today I think it may be a bit better attended. I’m up bright and early to get the house ready, lay everything out and Mark Smith is arriving about 8am to set up his jewellery as well.
