Macmillan Wonderland 'Apres Ski' Party!

This year I decided for my Birthday I was going to throw a party, and after I saw this advert, I knew exactly what the theme would be!...

          

I thought it would be fantastic to raise money whilst also having a jolly good time, and on sunday the day had finally arrived!

I printed off lots of vintage skiing travel posters, as well as the bunting Macmillan had provided. I also created the 'Frosty Ski Slope' cocktail which was basically an amalgamation of what we had left in the cupboard ;) But actually tasted rather nice!

Of course we had to have some gingerbread men too! Which I let the guests decorate themselves.

To raise some extra cash I decided we should have a raffle and sell tickets to all of the guests.  As well as some of my friends and family making donations, I also had some amazing support from some wonderful makers and companies!

We had some lovely Christmas cards donated by claireabellemakes, Jenny Jackson and OhhDeer who also donated 2 cute notebooks.

Claire makes these cute scrabble themed Christmas cards which you can buy in her etsy shop.

You can buy these cards from OhhDeer.com.

These super sweet 'Pigs in blankets' cards can be bought here.

This awesome hat was donated by The Purly Queen. Isn't it wonderful? And perfect for the Apres Ski theme!  You should stop by Cheryl's etsy shop and check out her other lovely hand knitted products!

I decided to group the prizes to make as much money as possible on each ticket, so we had 3 winners and I let them pick a prize from every shelf, meaning that they won 5 prizes each! And here are our winners...

Macmillan also created a downloadable printout to guess how many marshmallows in the hot chocolate, but I changed it to 'snowballs in the jar'. Each person paid 2 pounds to take a guess.

As per usual with our parties, I had to customise the chalkboard in our hallway for the occasion!

We also had a nice backdrop for photos which my Aunt and Cousin originally painted for our wedding, but it came in very handy for this party too!

I had also bought some fake snow. You just add water and it grows, its amazing! We decided to do some slow-mo films with the new iPhone 6 camera, which hopefully I'll put up on the blog at some point too.

We played 'the peg game' where we secretly attached 4 pegs to 4 peoples clothing, then announced that if you found a peg on yourself you had to peg it to someone else without them noticing.  The people with pegs on them at 10:30 had to drink a 'dirty drink'.  I had a brilliant idea to avoid loosing which was to lock myself in the toilet a few minutes before the end. It worked fantastically, except I had made a mistake earlier, which was to peg a 'non drinker'. I had said that anyone not drinking could nominate someone else, and of course I got nominated! Duh!  Anyway, here I am with my fellow peg-ees drinking a rather disgusting drink.

In the end we raised a whopping £350.60! Which I was really pleased with, and I think everyone had a great time too, which was a bonus!

Have you done any fund raising this year? Would you hold an Apres Ski party for charity?

Laura xXx

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It's Christmas Time...

Oh my goodness, is it that time of year already? Only 5 days until Christmas! Well at least I have finally finished all of my Christmas shopping, phew! How are you doing with yours?

We are getting pretty into the festive spirit here. Last weekend my parents hired out their village hall to have a lovely Christmassy day with (nearly) all of the family, 21 in total. My mum designed and built the wonderful gingerbread house above, although we were told we were not allowed to eat it, as it was to be displayed again at a later date! Unfortunately the house had other plans, and because of the humidity in the hall where we were also cooking dinner, it had a rather slow and painful death.

For my birthday on Friday Chris bought me some Nerf Guns. God knows why! Fortunately he also organised a surprise trip to Champneys Spa, so he was just about forgiven. Anyway, my Dad had the idea to put these to good use at the party by making a shooting range game.  He painted some cut up wrapping paper rolls white, and we got everyone to draw their own little snowman character on them. Then we arranged them in a triangular formation, like skittles, and took it in turn to see how many snowmen we could nock down with 6 bullets.

Everyone had a go, including the grandparents, and everybody hit at least 2 down, which was pretty impressive! But I'm not going to lie, the snowmen didn't turn out quite as attractive as I had hoped...

I particularly like the picture below, as my Dad looks incredibly silly, and so does Chris even though he is a bit blurry. Isn't that what Christmas is all about?!

Here is a picture of me with my Aunts dog Tilly. I'm not overly keen on dogs, but if I was ever going to have a dog I think I would choose one like Tilly, she is the sweetest, and she wears silly hats with me! But she does not like crackers very much!

So I think I am going to be pretty busy in the run up until Christmas, as I am sure you all are, so I don't expect I will have time to post again until afterwards.

I hope you all have a fabulously festive time and get exactly what you are hoping for from Santa! Don't forget to make the most of the mince pies and mulled wine!

Laura xXx

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The Creatives Christmas Party

Last Saturday I travelled up to London with Rachel, Harriet and Luke for the long awaited Creatives Christmas Party! 

Emma and Stacie had been incredibly busy organising this special day for us all, and their efforts really showed!

As we walked in the door we were greeted by a plethora of delightful and delicious edible treats. My personal favourite was the apple cake, but it was also lovely to start the Christmas season off right with a good old mince pie!

There was also the opportunity to decorate our own gingerbread man, so Emma and I decided we would decorate ours to match our own outfits. What do you think?

We were lucky enough to be given a goodie bag each, I was amazed by the wonderful sponsors generosity! Scroll to the bottom of the post to see what I got.

There was also a fantastic prize draw which caused much excitement! Again the sponsors had been incredibly generous, just take a look at the spread below.

I was very lucky to have picked the ticket which won me some amazing Smug goodies!

I won 3 prints, including this gorgeous piece by Harriet! My walls are pretty bare at the moment, so I am looking forward to framing these and deciding where to put them!

I also won 2 Wrap magazines a guinea pig hanky and a Smug bag. I think I did pretty well!

As promised earlier, here is a sneak peek into the delights that were hiding in my goody bag;

First of all I was stunned to pull out a Dr Haushka Powder set and Bodymilk! I have always loved their products and the companies natural and ethical ethos, so I was super chuffed!

In the picture above you can also see a (rather delicious looking) card by hiya pal on the left, and Christmas gift tags by Hollie McManus  to the right.

This little pocket mirror by Sweetoxen is the cutest! You can buy your very own from here, it would make a great stocking filler. I also love this pretty feather card by Emma Margaret's Doodle Designs.

Above you can just about spot a chirpy christmas robin card by Nikki Miles. Also pictured is a festive christmas light pendant from bottled treasures. Teapigs also gave us some delicious looking teas to try!

This pretty 'dream big' keyring came courtesy of Auntie Mims in a association with Stacie Swift Illustration.

The contribution from Ladybird Likes didn't disappoint either, with a cute heart brooch and 4 motivational postcards! 

This rather sweet mammoth card was given by Ohh Deer, illustrated by James Barker.

We were so lucky to have had some amazing sponsors for this party, if you haven't already you should check out all of their shops, I'm sure it will help with your Christmas Shopping!

Huge thanks to Stacie and Emma for organising the day. It was great to have a chance to catch up with some people I had met before, as well as meeting a whole new bunch of lovely creative people!

Laura xXx

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