Firstly let us just say how truly fabulous it was to welcome so many of you to our November meeting, we had such a great turn out we were blown away by it!
This month we kicked things off by welcoming Maralyn Pollard from St Albans and Hertsmere Womens Refuge to present her with a cheque for £1,200.00 which we raised from our Burlesque Evening back in September. Maralyn thanked us all on behalf of the Refuge and ensured that the money raised will really help towards the amazing work they do.
Our President, Lia Nelissen & our Secretary, Emma Golding presenting Maralyn Pollard of
St Albans & Hertsmere Womens Refuge with the funds raised from our Burlesque Evening
Lia and Emma advised the Group that the Committee met recently and have organised almost all of the Group activities for the coming year and there are some exciting ones ahead! We do still have a couple of months free so if you have any ideas, then we would be more than happy to hear them.
As we will not be having a meeting in December we have decided to have a Christmas get together on the 18th December. This will be held in a restaurant in St Albans, we were looking to steer clear of the traditional Christmas dinner as no doubt we will all be having our fair share of these and can get a little repetitive. We have provisionally booked Bar Espresso in Victoria Street (next to the Station), they can seat 30 people so we will have the place to ourselves. Lia will be sending out more information for those who have expressed their interest for the evening in due course.
The next activity we have planned for our January meeting is going to be Fit Steps. This will be a fun keep fit class that is based around some Strictly style dance steps so it should be a fun way to shake off that Christmas excess and kick start the year off in style! You will need to come along in your comfy workout gear - trackie bottoms that sort of thing (I know it is unheard of from us usually glamorous gals to be seen out like this but hey we're all in it together!) We will advise you closer to the time on anything else that you need to know.
As you may or may not know, Lia and Emma have their own businesses (Vintage Vi and Oh Sew Vintage respectively) and they will both be trading at various Vintage fairs in the coming months, so keep checking on the 'Local Events' page here to keep up to date.
Rebecca pulled out all the stops with the Trade Table again this month and you wonderful ladies brought along lots of gorgeous wares to sell. It was a great success.
Rebecca once again urged us all to bring along our wares to sell at meetings (15% of sales is donated to our Group), even if you are selling on a friends behalf. It is another way to get exposure for your own talents as well as making money for the Group.
One final reminder that Memberships will be due for renewal in January 2014 and will be £34.70 per year.
For this month's activity, the fabulous Nadine Gibbon from Spinney Cottage Flowers showed us how to put together tea cup flower arrangements.
Nadine Gibbon's beautiful arrangement - we had a lot to live up to!
After being slightly stunned at the gorgeous arrangement Nadine put together in about 2 minutes, we all rolled up our sleeves to get stuck in and give it a go...
... and what a fantastic job we all did!! Every single person produced an absolutely beautiful arrangement and had lots of fun in producing it, battles for foliage, matching our colours to tea cups, the worries of whether or not that age old question of 'does size actually matter' was actually true; the results were excellent!
We would like to thank Nadine for this fabulous workshop and I think it has really inspired us all for ideas for our Christmas Tables this year and I'm sure our friends and family will all be very impressed with our efforts!
Well our first year of meetings has come to an end and I think we can safely say that Herts Belles St Albans WI has been a huge success and we look forward to seeing you at our Christmas party, for those who can't make it then we look forward to seeing you all next year for lots more fun workshops and fabulous fund raising events.
Merry Christmas to you all and ta ta for now
x
