This year, we’ve adopted a lovely reindeer called Bernard from the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre in Scotland. He’ll still be living there of course (there’s no room in the office) but he is now officially part of the family.
We’ve grown so fond of Bernard and his pals that, with your help, we want to adopt more of them. For every 50 people who click our Reindeer Love counter to show their support, we’ll adopt another reindeer, until we have a total of 20 in the BD paddock.
Our donations will go towards their food, healthcare and upkeep for a whole year, so with just one click, you could make a reindeer very happy. And not just for Christmas.
After an incredibly busy week, it is now Friday evening and, instead of making a quick getaway from the office, we’re finally writing this post to introduce the four newest additions to the BD paddock (the reindeer we’ve adopted for the click milestones of 400, 450, 500 and 550).
In the time it has taken us to get round to writing this, we have now reached an amazing 600 clicks! Thanks to everyone who has clicked so far.
So, with another reindeer already in the bag (so to speak), we take great pleasure in welcoming the following four lovely lady reindeer to our growing herd.
Normal-coloured young female.
Birthday: 5 May 2007 | Mother: Sequin
Very pretty like her mother, Fern loves to handfeed and is very tame. We have also adopted her mother, Sequin. Our first mother and daughter pair!
Light-coloured female.
Birthday: 9 May 2002 | Mother: Polo
Sequin is pretty and friendly and grows nice antlers, although she can be a bit greedy.
White female.
Birthday: 28 May 2006 | Mother: Nugget
Lulu (yes, named after the singer) is very friendly and grows pretty antlers. In fact, one of her previous antlers is now adorning our desk.
Dark-coloured female.
Birthday: 8 May 2004 | Mother: Cherry
Tjakko’s name is Swedish, pronounced “Choco”. She is tame and friendly, loves Ikea and is a big fan of Ulrika Jonsson.
Well, we finally just got round to ringing the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre to adopt our next four reindeer (sorry, we’ve been very busy this week). We asked the lovely herder who spoke to us to pick some females who are calving (that means pregnant).
When looking through the list of our current adoptions, we realised they are all male! This wasn’t intentional – the Centre normally suggests males for adoption because you’re more likely to meet them if you visit the herd in Scotland, as the females tend to stay further away on the mountains. But we figured since we have 8 boys already, it would be nice to adopt a few girls.
Our adoption packs will arrive in a few days, at which point we’ll post again to introduce the newest members of the family.
Thanks to everyone who has shown their support and clicked our Reindeer Love Counter, we’ve now had enough clicks to adopt a total of 11 reindeer! (And that’s not including Bernard.)
The last time we rang the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, just before Christmas, we adopted 7 for our first 350 clicks. That means we’re due for another 4 adoptions, so we’ll be calling them today.
We are now over halfway to our target of 1000 clicks and 20 reindeer! So if you’d like to help us get there, send your friends the link to this blog and invite them to join our Facebook group.
Love from everyone at BD, Bernard, Borneo, Brae, Crann, Grunter, Minto, Sholto and Vuoma.
By the end of Christmas, we’d reached over 350 clicks on our Reindeer Love Counter, so as soon as we got back to work at the start of January we rang the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre to adopt 7 reindeer – our first batch of new adoptions since Bernard!
We spoke to Anna, one of the herders we met in Scotland back in December, who told us the reindeer were loving the 2 feet of snow they’d had up in the Cairngorm Mountains.
Due to postal problems, there was a few days delay in receiving our adoption pack but it finally arrived today. As well as our certificates of adoption for each reindeer, it also contained several photos of the herd and a two-page letter from Anna about our reindeer and what’s been going on with herd recently. They also sent us a load of pens, erasers and mug coasters adorned with reindeer!
So, here’s a bit about each of our new adoptions:
Young black Christmas reindeer (one who attends Christmas events).
Birthday: 15 June 2005 | Mother: Gypsy
Borneo is very friendly just like his mother and loves attention. He was born a little later than most reindeer meaning he is smaller than most reindeer his age.
Dark-coloured Christmas reindeer.
Birthday: 6 May 2003 | Mother: Twister
Brae has become increasingly tame and friendly and has a very cheeky personality. His nickname is ‘The Steam Engine’ because at events he always wants to charge on when pulling the sleigh!
Large normal-coloured breeding bull.
Birthday: 21 May 2003 | Mother: Burgundy
Crann is the dominant male in the herd, but is very friendly. His antlers this year were 52 inches from base to tip and weighed 9.2 kilos! (We actually got to hold one on our visit.) He recently appeared in the Daily Mail.
We’d like to say thanks to artist Ken Bushe, who kindly let us use his beautiful illustrations of reindeer in the header of our blog.
We stumbled across them online when researching reindeer and it turned out he actually did these during a visit to the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre.
Ken is a really interesting and talented guy, we recommend checking out his work.
If you’ve looked through the photos of our reindeer pilgrimage to Scotland (scroll down if not), you probably admired the black reindeer t-shirts we were sporting for most of the trip. Before we embarked on our quest, we had them specially printed with our ‘Not just for Christmas’ logo to raise awareness of the mission. And also just because we thought they’d make cool t-shirts.
We didn’t have much time to get them made, so were delighted to discover a printing place literally yards from our office in Shoreditch, called Dot Productions.
It’s run by a lovely lady called Dot who told us we could email her our design and pick them up the next day. She provided the t-shirts as well so we didn’t have to buy any ourselves.
Now, when you get a custom t-shirt printed (especially in a run as small as two) you might well be presented with an unfashionable, itchy, shapeless sack of a t-shirt with your design seemingly glued on by a toddler.
So imagine how happy we were when our last-minute printing job had actually been done brilliantly! Dot uses really nice, silky t-shirts that fit us perfectly and looked fantastic. On top of that, after telling her about our mission to adopt reindeer, she gave us a massive discount. We told her the reindeer would be very grateful.
Thanks Dot!
After only beginning to let the world know about our blog yesterday, you kind people have already clicked our Reindeer Love Counter up to 250! Thanks for supporting us and loving reindeer.
We’ll be ringing the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre first thing on Monday morning to adopt our next 5 (since 50 clicks = 1 adoption) and then we’ll update the blog to introduce our newest adoptions.
We’ve also started a Facebook group. Please join and spread the word to help us adopt more!
We woke up early this morning and had a hearty breakfast of Scottish porridge and an English cup of tea. After a short taxi ride past the beautiful Loch Morlich, we arrived at Reindeer House, home to the Reindeer People, set beneath an incredible view of the Cairngorm Mountains.
We walked in to the greatest (and only) reindeer gift shop we have ever seen and introduced ourselves to some of the Reindeer People, Peter and Anna, who welcomed us through into the ‘House’ portion of Reindeer House. We had a chat (mainly about reindeer, unsurprisingly) and got to hold one of the antlers of the herd’s most well-endowed reindeer (antler-wise), Crann.
It was GIGANTIC. It weighed 4 kilos and was half as tall as me!
We couldn’t believe that this thing was actually attached to an animal’s head. Along with another one! Peter informed us that Crann had cast it that very morning and the other antler was still on his head, meaning he was now lying down resting his totally unbalanced head on the ground. We had to stifle a laugh at this point because it gave us a very funny mental image. (more…)
At long last, we are sat in the bar of our hotel. We’re absolutely knackered. It’s incredible how sitting motionless on a train can do that to you.
Upon our arrival, we were greeted by a friendly barmaid called Leigh, who checked us in before explaining, in detail, how to unlock and lock our room door. After assuring her we could manage, we went upstairs, found our room and dumped our luggage, and decided to head downstairs for something to eat.
We couldn’t lock our room door.
After a 10-minute struggle we admitted defeat and went to ask Leigh for help. How embarrassing.
Since the Mackenzies kitchen was now closed for the night, we weren’t able to sample some Scottish cuisine, so settled instead for Chinese (which was still local cuisine in a manner of speaking, as it was just down the road).
We’re going to bed now (in our separate beds) to get an early night so that we’re well-rested and full of energy tomorrow for our mountain walk to see the reindeer. We can’t wait! Just one more sleep!
As we (Matt & Dave) write this, we’re sat at our desk (well, our respective desks – we have one each), about to embark on our 8 hour journey to Scotland. Yesterday, we were but humble advertising creatives. Today, we become noble reindeer pilgrims.
We don’t know if there will be internet on the train, so this may well be our last post until we’re in Scotland! Wish us luck.
*UPDATE*
The train has internet! We’ve been travelling for nearly 4 hours now… and we’re only halfway there. *Groan*
Ah well, at least the views are nice.
The blog owner requires users to be logged in to be able to vote for this post.
Alternatively, if you do not have an account yet you can create one here.
Powered by Vote It Up