As January draws to a close the mood is (hopefully!) about to get all romantic and to help inspire you we’ve popped a few ideas for valentine’s gifts on our home page. Our favourites? Our beautiful rose heart bath melts are always well received – what better gift than a relaxing soak in the bath! And for the men – our ‘Grow your own Chilli Garden’ makes a fun gift – and is something they can enjoy all year. Just make sure you are not the one who has to do the watering!

Following conversations with our courier company and the Royal Mail we understand that there is currently a lot of pressure on the delivery system. Our courier had it’s biggest day for collections ever on Monday and then again on Tuesday.

As a result we have suspended our Next Day service as although we will continue to send orders out the day after the order is placed (and often the same day) we cannot control what happens after the parcels leave us.

We hope you understand our position and that all your deliveries arrive in plenty of time this year.

Happy Christmas to all our customers…

A nice mention of our Sranrom hand cream set in the Sunday Express ‘S’ Magazine today. It is part of their Gifts for under £10 feature and makes a perfect stocking filler!

We’re proud to be supporting the Rainforest Foundation’s 12 Days of Christmas Auction this year by donating a set of bambu bowls and an EarthLust bottle. The auction is on ebay and started on the 12th November (for 12 days!). Our products have already had a few bids and everything raised will go towards the protection of the world’s threatened rainforests. We’ll let you know how much they raise. www.ebay.co.uk/12days

We’ve just done a Christmas Makeover at our shop The Inner Yard. Lots of colour going on this Christmas! Here is a picture of how it looks – you can try and spot some of the lovely things that will be coming onto the website over the new few weeks…! You can see more pictures at our shop website.

We’ve added some lovely new EarthLust bottles to the website over the weekend including the stylish Urban Farm collection. New designs include Rabbit, Artichoke, Squirrel and ‘Rooster‘ (well – they are American!). My favourite is the Rabbit (I love the eau de nil coloured bottle) but I think the Rooster is also going to be very popular as there are a lot of people out there who love their chickens!

We’ve just started receiving fruit and vegetable deliveries from a local branch of Riverford Organic after seeing them at the village fete. Much of the produce is grown locally and the selection changes each week so delivery day is quite exciting (is that sad?!).  It’s also great for the kids to see carrots and potatoes with mud on! But my favourite part of it is the lack of packaging that we now receive. Most things come in open boxes that we return at the end of the week – such an improvement over all the plastic packaging you get from the supermarket. Visit www.riverford.co.uk for details of your local branch.

Just a quick post to say we’re really sorry if you’ve tried to order this weekend and found our store closed. We haven’t yet got to the bottom of why this happened but promise you our web guru is on the case.

We are definitely OPEN for business and will have many lovely new things coming onto the website over the next few weeks to help make your Christmas shopping that little bit easier this year.  We’ve also got Zoe joining our team this week to help Deborah in the warehouse – not great timing after the store has been closed for a couple of days but I’m sure we’ll be able to find something for her to do on her first day!

We hope we haven’t caused you too much inconvenience and that you are still wanting to browse through all our lovely things (and hopefully find something to buy too!).

We've had a Facebook page for a couple of years now but haven't really publicised it (or I have to admit added much either!). We've now put a link on the website so hopefully you'll take a look - we are at www.facebook.com/greentulipuk or just click here. A couple of the posts have links to interviews I have done recently - one for My Daily where we were chosen to be their Boutique of the Week. We'll also be posting details of what new products have arrived on the website and anything else we think you might be interested in!

We've also just set up a Facebook page for our shop The Inner Yard (near Devizes in Wiltshire). That will feature sneak previews of what is coming in and pictures of what we have been up to! You can find that here.

Now I just need to get my head around twitter...!

It’s rare to get an unsolicited email that actually puts a smile on your face but when I was contacted by tapwater.org recently I genuinely thought ‘What a great idea’! They have basically put together a ‘tap water map’ highlighting cafés, pubs and shops that will let you refill your reusable water bottle for free.  There are currently 1020 refilling stations around the UK with more being added all the time. There is even one in the very rural Wiltshire village we live in!

Visit tapwater.org to see your nearest refilling station and there is also a free iphone app so you can check your nearest station when you are out and about.  They do sell reusable water bottles on the site but I’m afraid they are not quite as stylish as our beautiful EarthLust bottles!