First Post / Hadfield Carnival

Hello there and welcome to my first ever post !!!

As mentioned above I hope to use this blog as a means of an "online newsletter" for everyone to see what I'm up to with regards raising sponsorship for my Big Event next April. I was hoping to have my web pages up and running but due to a few technical hitches (which I won't go into as extremely boring) they are on the back burner for now.

Sunday just gone (18th) it was our local (Hadfield) Carnival. After a week of gorgeous sunshine and high temperatures the weather changed for the worse on Sunday morning. I should have known, of course, just as on my first ever car boot sale a fortnight earlier, it was just bound to rain on my first ever stall at a carnival!!! When we arrived at 8 am to set up, you could not see the tops of the hills for heavy cloud. All morning we kept our "mental fingers crossed" that the sun would break through, but no, by the time noon came when the Carnival was officially opened and the crowds poured in, so did the rain. It was a nuisance trying to keep everything dry but it made for an interesting day to say the least. Of course the day wasn't a total washout; we met some very nice people and were pleased to have so many lovely comments on how nice our stand was (despite the weather's best attempts to sabotage it) and most importantly we managed to raise 140 pounds for the Charity.

Thank You's

I'd just like to add a big thank you to the ladies on the card & papercraft forum for your donations of all the beautiful cards and embellishments. They truly were a sight to see. I can't tell you how excited mum and I were to see them it was Christmas come early!! You will be pleased to know you had many 'appreciative buyers'. Also a big thank you to "Boots Pharmacy" in Manchester, I was so pleased to hear from them, I know stores/companies receive tons of requests. Boots kindly donated 3 huge bags of samples some of which were used in the gift baskets at the Carnival and the rest will be put to good use over the next few weeks.

Some photos of our 'pitch'

Optimistically, we borrowed the gazebo to shelter us from the blistering sun (lol). We had no idea how it went together but were assured it was easy 'just join the numbered poles together' we were told. Famous last words - what numbers?? Of course they'd all fallen off and it was anybody's guess what was supposed to go where. A dummy run would have been a good idea but we'd only got hold of it late the night before so it just wasn't possible. We would have been there all day without the organisers coming over to give us a quick lesson. We felt rather sheepish for a while but only a short time later a couple of other stall holders came over to ask us 'how we'd put it up' because they were all having the same problem !!!