Beechy and Jules: charity events at the Elms, Retford: 2010 SCBU

Friday 23 July 2010

In aid of Bassetlaw Special Care Baby Unit

Amount raised: £1441

Running total to date: £21122

Anyone who attends our events regularly knows by now that we like to support local causes and organisations so that we know exactly where and how our fundraising monies are being used.

This was the case with Bassetlaw Special Care Baby Unit where we knew of two families who had been involved with this department.

It can be a traumatic time if you have to be parted from your baby in hospital so a photo can be a great comfort - SCBU were looking to replace their camera with a new digital one so we were happy to help with this.

We decided to go for a pastel baby themed colour scheme with pink and blue teddy bears in boxes holding balloons as table centres.

We also had other teddies (checked for elf and safety compliance!) which were all for sale with their own matching boxes. These were very popular as they made great presents for babies or young children (we also sold a lot to young at heart adults!) and they soon sold out.

Once again Aunt Margaret (mum's sister) was the chief balloon holder and advisor. It's a sitting down job and someone has to do it!

So the balloons were
blown up and the tables looked lovely dressed with the pastel colours. Katy spent ages folding the napkins into exotic shapes (who was to know that her Saturday job waiting on in a restaurant would prove to be so useful?!) - but has never offered to do it again as she got fed up with having to do so many! We even had teddy bear confetti shapes which Julie had lovingly spent hours cutting out! (Not individually you understand but with a shape cutter...)

Ian and Julie always spend ages working out the seating arrangements as it is sometimes like trying to do a jigsaw to fit everyone in.

They are very organised and always have a table plan so we know where to direct people to if Beechy is not meeting and greeting at the door.

There were more smaller bears on a table in the entrance foyer and these were also for sale along with the larger ones used as table centres.

Some of them had plasters or bandages - well they were in the Special Care BEAR Unit! (Some may say that Julie and I get a bit carried away sometimes - others may say that we need to be carried away...) Julie wanted to make little beds for the bandaged bears but we managed to talk her out of that!

The large poster in the entrance was made by our niece Rianna.

The bears were very cute so here are some more bear pics...

We had a great band for the evening called Simply Soul.

And Ben once again entertained us with his 'Shooting Star' disco.

Thanks Ben - we really do appreciate you giving up your time for us every year.

So we all enjoyed a good evening of eating, drinking and dancing.

We had a good buffet with a choice of curry and rice or another meat option with chips and jacket potatoes...

We have no idea what we were doing here...

And once again we had a great raffle with wonderful prizes - I can see whisky, wall shower, hair drier, flower arrangement, fruit basket, spa day and racing tickets in these pics - and that's just a small part of it!