‘Festival of Trees’
Francis House 2012
Back in December 2011, whilst looking around the shops, I noticed that a little pop up shop had appeared in the Lowry. It had just opened for Christmas and was full of amazing Christmas trees that had been decorated by different companies. The trees could be bid for, in order to raise money for Francis House.
So at our February committee meeting, I explained how we could get involved and help to raise money for Francis House Children’s Hospice. We all thought that it was a very good idea. I made the call to a lady called Mary, who explained that the tree and lights would be donated to us. All we had to do was decorate it.
On a cold October night, we met at the Angel Centre to discuss how we were going to decorate the tree and the colours that we should use. We chose purple, green and silver (the Angels colours with a festive twist.) The following week, we got together with our rolling pins, cooky cutters and baking trays and made our salt dough decorations. A cup of salt and a cup of plain flour mixed together with cold water is all you need to create the dough. Once it had come together in a dough, we we began to cut out our angels, stars, stockings and tress. We took them home to slowly bake on a low heat and then the fun began, painting the shapes with silver paint and tying with silver ribbon.
Steph made some felt angels and stockings, Jean and Joan created knitted decorations and the main baubles and bells were made by Maria in purple and green. Everything looked amazing.
Then the big day arrived in November for the tree to be decorated and Suzanne worked hard to decorate our tree. Jenean and her daughter took the pictures that appeared in the advertiser and showed off our brilliant tree.
By the end of the day, I tree was sitting near trees by the Midland Hotel, Manchester United and Coronation Street. There were many more tress, including ones decorated by Emmerdale, Manchester City and John Lewis just to name a few. There were also trees decorated by schools and nurseries.
Soon, the wait was finally over and the shop was opened by Manchester Uniteds’ Red Devil and Francis the Mouse from Francis House. Over the next four weeks, bid were made on all of the trees and in January, we found out that the Salford Angels tree had received four bids and had raised £145.00. In 2012, the pop up shop raised a total of 25, 500 for Francis House, all of the money going to help patients and their families.
Well done to all who took part this year, and to Mary and all the volunteers for all their hard work.
For more information on Francis House, please visit: http://www.francishouse.org.uk/