Easy2Name Blog

And it’s pancake day again, yay!!! We’ve been thinking about it all day and what we are going to put on them. Chocolate as well as the traditional lemon and sugar seem most popular in the Easy2name office.

Pancake day, or officially Shrove Tuesday signifies the last day before the start of Lent. Tomorrow many Christians will be giving up something up until Easter Sunday. Originally pancakes were created from the need to use foodstuffs up ready for lent, including eggs and butter which were banned for Lent. The tradition has continued over hundreds of years. The earliest traces of pancakes though go back to Ancient Greece.

Shrove Tuesday is celebrated all over the world, with different takes on the pancake.

In Greece, the day is called Apocreas which means ‘from the meat’. Meat there is forbidden during Lent. Greek pancakes are called tiganites, they are generally thicker than our British pancakes and are often topped with honey and cinnamon, and sometimes with cheese, nuts, fruits or vegetables.

In Sweden it is called Fettisdagen (Fat Tuesday). Traditional Swedish pancakes can be a little more interesting. They have the usual thin pancakes, called pannkakor, which often come with whipped cream and jam and are eaten for lunch on Thursdays with pea soup! They also have plättar which are more like little English pancakes, and are fried several at a time in a special pan. The Sweeds are also known for having pancakes with saffron and rice or äggakaka (eggcake), which are very thick pancakes often served with lingonberries and bacon!!

In Iceland the day is called “Sprengidagur” which translates to Bursting day! Their pancakes are known as pönnukaka. Generally they are quite small, thick and brown in colour. They cook them in a spaciel pancake frying pan, which is never meant to be washed!

So what will you be having on your pancakes or giving up for Lent?

After posting William Shakespeare’s peoms on Valentine’s Day and celebrating the bi-centenary of Charles Dickens last week. We wanted to look into our best British writers.
William Shakespeare does top the list of book sales having a minimum estimated sales figure of 2 billion!!
Charles Dickens comes further down the list, but with probably over 100 million sales to his name, he certainly is a national treasure. Agatha Christie isn’t far behind Shakespeare in terms of sales, her 85 books have also sold around 2 billion!
Other classic authors include Barbara Cartland, Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, C.S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jeffery Archer, Roald Dahl and Catherine Cookson to name but a few. And how can we forget our most recent addition of J.K. Rowling with her fantastic tales of Harry Potter.

Tell us who your favourite is in the poll below, if they aren’t on the list let us know in our comments.

The History of St Valentine’s Day

Saint Valentines Day is celebrated every 14th of February honouring early Christian martyrs called Valentinus. Pope Gelasius I first recognised it in 496 AD.
However St Valentine’s day first became related with love and romance in the High Middle Ages around the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, when courtly love blossomed. By the 15th century, the day had developed into an occasion in which lovers expressed their affection for one another by giving flowers, confectionery, and/or sending cards. This tradition of sending gifts has continued for hundreds of years and which today we refer to as sending “valentines”.

To celebrate today, we wanted to share with you a couple of poems and really like these by the famous literary genius William Shakespeare.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

Another charity close to our earts is Help for Heroes.  Numerous gifts and cards were purchased from their shop for Christmas and we support them where ever we can.

They are currently selling some lovely valentines cards, so if you haven’t bought yours yet
check out their shop

Today is our Queens Accession Day, marking 60 years on the throne (only the second ever monarch to do so).

A lot has changed since 1952 when she became Queen, during her reign:
-There have been 12 British prime ministers,
-12 U.S. presidents
-6 popes
-She has visited 116 countries
-We’ve seen several wars
-Landed on the moon
-Decimalisation
-There’s been a number of Royal Weddings
-England won the World Cup
-Concorde took off
-Test tube babies started being born
-The Channel tunnel opened
-A New Millennium dawned
-Harry Potter was created
-The internet was born including Twitter and Facebook!

Back in the 50′s the average price of a house was just £2000!

Celebrations are to be low key today, with big plans set for the first weekend in June.
Check out the offical website for http://www.thediamondjubilee.org// for all the latest news and events that will be happening. What are your plans?

We are certainly very proud and appreciative to the Queen for her service to the country over all these years.

With the temperature plummeting at the moment, as low as -11 in some places and snow highly likey to be on its way.
Easy2name would like to give out a few tips on surviving this cold snap.

Firstly, check out the BBC weather website to keep up to date with the latest forcast for your area.
www.bbc.co.uk/weather/

The Met office here in the UK has now issued a Level 3 Cold Weather Alert across the whole country (affecting the ill and elderly) but further a field in Europe it is even colder, temperatures have gone down as far as -14C in Berlin and -20C in Warsaw.

*Wrapping up
Wear layers to keep warm, layers shouldn’t be too baggy nor too tight. You want to create a thin layer of air between each layer of clothing for insulation. The warm air that is trapped between each layer will keep your warm. If a layer gets wet or you get too hot, just remove it. Also wear more wool layers than cotton, as they will insulate better if they get wet. Don’t forget you hat, gloves and scarf too.

*Out Playing
Children should always be supervised when out and about in the cold. No one should go alone. Ensure you go sledging in a safe place, make sure there are no obstacles on the sledging path, you are not near a road, pond/lake/river or crowded area. Young children should wear protective gear, helmets, pads and water repellent clothing. Don’t go down the hill head first, always sit up facing forward so you can steer and ensure the area is well lit, don’t go out in the evenings.
Never go near frozen ice to skate, it may not be fully frozen.

*Car Essentials
Pack an essential bag for your car in case you get stuck. Your kit should include:
-A first aid box
-A Blanket
- A Shovel
- Some rock salt
- An ice scraper
- Water
- Non perishable snacks.

We hope this helps, and wish you a fun but safe time this winter.
Easy2name

This year Easy2name are supporting the fantastic Hounds for Heroes charity by donating £1 for every Off to School Set sold on our website. This charity aims to provide specially trained assistance dogs to injured and disabled men and women of both the UK armed forces and civilian emergency services. Have a look at their amazing work at www.houndsforheroes.com.Let’s help them raise £100,000 to purchase and train 5 Labrador puppies to serve as service dogs for injured men and women from the armed forces and emergency services. Providing a higher quality of life to those injured and to show them that a dog can make everything better.

This charity particularly stands out to us, we are huge dog lovers here at Easy2name and one of the team has a husband serving in the armed forces. We wish the charity every success, they truly do some amazing work.

Check out this video to see the work they do

Our beautiful new puppy dog will be joining Wellie guarding the office.

As Old English Sheepdogs they have a great, loving personalities and behave like giant puppies throughout their lives as they are so playful.

What’s in a name? Being in the name business here at Easy2name we do come across unusual names but chose Maddie as all of our dogs have been named after the Wombles. Remember – ‘We are the Wombles of Wimbledon Common!’ The first one was called Womble, then Wellie (after Wellington) and now Maddie (after Madame Cholet).

Maddie’s pedigree name is Mellowdee Maybelline so we sometimes call her Maddie-May which has a bit of a ring to it. She has markings around her eyes which appear like eye liner too.