We are privileged to live on a lovely, exclusive estate that oozes community spirit. This is demonstrated perfectly every Halloween when a high percentage of our neighbours go that extra mile to decorate their homes, streets, and themselves (!) to ensure our children experience the best ‘Trick or Treating’ possible. This year was no exception, as Halloween fell on a school inset day so many of us could celebrate all day long 🙂
My family, along with the family of my son’s best friend Samuel, decided a while ago to organise a Macmillan Coffee Morning as we both like baking and it’s for a good cause. Why Macmillan Cancer Support? On Christmas Eve last year my mum was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 2016 has been a year full of chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions and appointments; the advice and support given to my parents was invaluable, so this was a way to ‘give something back’. Unfortunately we left it too late to hold our event on the ‘official’ coffee morning, so instead decided that Halloween would be a good opportunity (the chance to make ‘scary’ cakes was an added bonus!)
On the day we (Huw, Sonia, me) decorated the gazebo and tables, laid out all the lovely cakes that had been made especially for the occasion, while the children set up a colouring competition table (of which we have just picked our 4 winners 🙂 )
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- Winner: 5 and under
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- Winner: 5 and under
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- Winner: 6 and over
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- Winner: 6 and over
With ‘spooky music’ being piped out the window of the kid’s ‘chill out’ playroom, we welcomed family groups throughout the afternoon – with many making the most of the lovely sunshine we were blessed with to sit and relax for a while. It was a fabulous Halloween event to be part of.
It wouldn’t have been possible though without the support of many individuals and local businesses. We do need to include a list of all those lovely people in this post, so let me single a few out now. During the day we were indebted to Elaine, Joseph, Millie-Mae, Samuel and Toby for helping out and ‘encouraging’ people to step inside! Our local Scout group kindly loaned us an events gazebo, which happened to be the perfect size for our driveway! HSS donated the use of an electric heater. A lovely neighbour, Lisa, provided an atmospheric fog machine as well as sturdy tables. On the day we had homemade cake donations from Nicky, Claire and Natasha x My good friend Anna at the Professional Crafters Guild designed us a poster, while the lovely people at Caketoppers sent us Halloween icing toppers, which looked amazing and made easy work of assembling all those cupcakes! Beyond the Bean sent a lovely bottle of Sweetbird’s Pumpkin Spice syrup that proved very popular with both coffee and hot chocolate orders.
And finally, High Street stores and garden centres offered us decorations, ingredients, vouchers, and table wear – so a big THANK YOU to our local Co-Op, Sainsbury’s, Home Bargains, Tesco Express, WHSmith, M&S Simply Food, Bickerdikes, Wilkinson’s and Morrisons.
Our biggest thanks though has to go to all our ‘customers’ who made sure we were kept busy from 2pm when we opened, to 8pm once we’d sold out of cakes. So much effort went into Halloween costumes – both child and adult – it was brilliant to be a part of such a great night in Fairfield Park!
So I guess the last thing to mention is the amount of money we raised for Macmillan Cancer Support? In our heads, before the event, we had a target of £200. Well we exceeded that … we managed to raise the amazing total of £400.36. We are totally chuffed with this 🙂 As for my mum, who came along to support us twice during the day, she has now finished treatment and has started a 3 year ‘watch and wait’ 🙂
