Church Flower Festival

The Flower Festival is finally here after all the preparation by many different people. I thought I'd share some of the lovely arrangements with you. (All proceeds from the weekend go to the Parish Church).



Village Hall Flowers



Baginton Songsters Flowers



Lucy Price Lunch Group Flowers



Sunday School Display



The Small Person's Flowers on Display



Coffee Circle Flowers



Women's Institute Flowers



Church Choir Flowers



Friendly Club Flowers



Church Donations



British Legion Flowers



Parish Council Flowers



Art Club Flowers

I also wanted to show off the lovely flower arrangement created by Kathryn, one of our Toddler Group Mums, to be displayed in the Church as Todler Groups contribution. Don't the children's creations we made over the last couple of weeks look wonderful?



Just like a wonderful little fairy cove :)



The Smaller Person's Flower Fairy

You can find previous displays here and here.

Alexandra's Church Flowers

Alexandra's Sunday School always makes a contribution to the Church Flower Festival. This year each child is creating their own mini flower arrangement in red, white and blue in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. They are also drawing a little portrait of the queen to stand with their flowers.

The fower arrangement is set in wet oasis in a tupperware pot (!) which is covered in a dark blue satin ribbon. We've used covered florist wire to form a cross bar above for the crown, and have fixed the points where they cross with a double bow in red organza ribbon.

All of the visible space of the oasis has been filled with white Daisy Crysanthemums. We made four red organza ribbon bows, and four blue organza ribbon bows each on a twist of florist wire. The Small Person slotted these in between the flowers all around the sides.

To finish the whole thing off, I cut some more of the mirror mosaics left over from the crown decorating, but in double width strips. They are self adhesive so the Small Person stuck these over the top of the wire. I think she's done a rather lovely job!

We had a few flowers left over, so we tied them with some left over ribbon and took them around to Grandma.

The Small Person's mini portrait of the Queen is, as always, very good. Such a little artist! We just need to take them down to Church tomorrow morning before we go to dancing.

We've also been busy scarecrow building and Mr Bogert has been baking brownies to be sold with other refreshments at The Old Rectory.

I'll be showing you more from the weekend event throughout the next week, including our super duper fantastic scarecrows, and the Toddler Group Flower arrangment put together by Kathryn. It's going to be a busy weekend!

(Also, this morning we had a check-up for the Smaller Person following his hypospadias repair last October. The plastic surgeon has given the all clear, we don't need to go back again unless a problem arises!  Yay!)

Toddler Group Tuesday

Coming up on the 23rd June, we have our Village Open Gardens and Scarecrow Trail. This is an event that takes place biennially, you can see details from the last one here and here. It also coincides with our Village Church Flower Festival in which all of the village groups and organisations are invited to display a flower arrangement. Toddler Group is always asked, and the previous three years, I have been the one to put the flower arrangement together. This year though, I have asked one of the local mums if she would like to do it and she has said that she will. She is part of the local gardening club too, so should have some good ideas.

I have tried to include a craft project for the children each year that can be displayed with the flowers. Kathryn has also offered to arrange not one but two craft sessions with the results to be displayed in church.

This week Kathryn had us all making pretty Paper Flowers.

For this craft you will need:
 - A Paper Plate
- Scissors
- PVA Glue
- Glitter and sparkly bits
- a Pencil
- Coloured Paper

Sorry, I don't have any photographs of the process (it was rather manic at the group this morning!), hopefully the instructions will be clear enough.



Pre-prepared supplies (you can just see the card blanks and cut out ties in the background for our Fathers' Day craft too).

First, draw a flower shape on your paper plate and cut out.

Cut some leaf shapes from green paper and stitck to the back of the paper plate flower so that they can be seen sticking out from the right side.

Fold an A4 sheet of coloured paper into quarters. Draw around your childs hand (or if they're old enough, they can do this themselves.) and cut out through all 4 layers. You now have 4 coloured hand shapes.



Kathryn helping cut out some paper hands.

Glue the hand shapes to the centre of your flower.

Make a tube from a piece of coloured paper. Glue this to the centre of your flower on top of the hand shapes.

Glue as many sprinkles and shiny bits to your flower as you like.

Look how lovely they look together and this is only a few. Here are some on their own to show a bit more detail and how very different they all are:



This masterpiece is the Smaller Persons. He was most interested in drawing around his fingers (I think the pencil tickled!) and of course, sticky messy glue and lots of sprinkly glitter is always a winner!

Next week, Kathryn has arranged for everyone to make Flower Fairies.

As it is Fathers' Day coming up this Sunday, I did put some quick cards out for the children to make. It wouldn't be right not to include the Dads in our crafty creations!

There are various versions of this card all over the internet (and I think possibly in one of the Small Persons craft books).

You will need:
- Card
- Scissors
- PVA Glue
- Patterned Paper (scrapbooking or wrapping paper is ideal)

Fold and A4 sheet of card in half to form the base of your card.

Draw a tie shape on the wrong side of your selected patterned paper, cut out and stick to the centre of your card.

Cut a 1-1.5" strip of coloured card from the short edge of an A4 sheet.

Fold this strip 1/3 of the way across at an angle so as the top corner point touches the bottom edge of the strip. Repeat for the other side. This is your collar.

Glue this to the top of your card as shown so that it overlaps your paper tie.

Cut 2 small rectangles of card. Glue them to the back of your card at angles to form 'sleeves'.

Cut a 1cm wide strip of card from the short edge of an A4 sheet. Write your special message on it and glue in place across your finished card.

These cards also have glitter all over them. This wasn't part of the inital plan, the glitter shakers migrated their way over from the flower table, and why not? Add a bit of sparkle to Dad's day!

Happy Daddy's Day!

Well, the flower festival went off without a hitch. We had some splashes of rain earlier in the day, but it stayed dry once the festival was open. Unfortunately the turn out was a bit disappointing. There weren't as many stalls as advertised in the newsletter, and the signs to draw passers by in were far too small to read. Oh, well. The flowers survived the night and still looked as they should, Everyone else's flower displeys were very pretty, we spoke to people we know from around the village, Alexandra bought some dressing up things with some pocket money from Grandpa, and we all had lovely cake and tea at the old rectory. Mmmm, lemon cake. Love it!

Anyway, getting to today. Little bit and I took Rob a cup of tea in bed and his prezzy and cards (that's right, more than one). Alex gave him a box of homemade marshmallow fudge (from her Usbourne cooking cards kit) and a book entitled Things-to-do-with-Dad.

Despite the fact we only have the one child, Mr Man was given 3 cards! The handprint card was made at home with Mummy, the boat was made at nursery with the teachers, and the picture of Daddy card was made at toddler group, again with me. Can I just state for the record, Rob does not have ginger hair, Alex just thought it would look nice :)

Having been the super organised (and very tired from early mornings, and over worked from volunteering to help with everything - but loving it) wife that I am, I did not get the bacon out of the freezer for his special fathers day breakfast, so we piled in the car and went for breakfast at the supermarket cafe. Very filling. (Little bit only stole one egg from daddy, one rasher of bacon from mummy, and baked beans from both of us, so not too bad! It's all about the food with my girl.)

These are the cards I made for my Dad and Grandad. They were a little bit last minute. There I was thinking about how organised I'd been, getting the fudge made with Alex and her cards etc, when I suddenly realised I'd been so busy helping her with her fathers day things, I hadn't done any from us! woops!

We called in on my Grandad (Alexandra's Grandpa) when we got home to take him his gift and cards. Alex made him a coaster to put his mug on from those little plastic beads you iron together. He started on his home made fudge straight away. He has a sweet tooth (or twenty).

Rob's choice, we took a trip to Coombe Abbey (again) for a picnic. It was quite busy, but we found a bench at a nice spot near the lake by the hotel. We stopped for dessert at the ice cream van on the way back to the car! (Yup, that's me sitting on the steps looking all moody. I wasn't, I swear!)

We finally managed to catch my dad in (for once) on the way back from Coombe. He also got fudge and a homemade coaster from Alexandra. They were all trying to juggle, quite unsuccessfully.

I made maple pork medallions and mash for proper dinner at tea time. I haven't washed up. I have no intention of washing up. Instead I'm going to curl up with my hubby, the best daddy in the world, and watch a movie. I can get back to the real world tomorrow.