Christmas Shopping Day

We raised another £72 at the Christmas Shopping Day at St Catherine's Mill in Leeds.  We spent most of the day freezing as the heating wasn't on in the building, but we were kept warm by a steady stream of cups of tea from Helen the organiser (thanks Helen!).  Here's a picture of Sarah manning our stall.

We've also had more generous donations from Sam and Oliver (though that won't get Oliver excused from bag packing duties when we organise a supermarket bag pack in the New Year!) and we're positively steaming along towards the £750 mark.

This is probably going to be our last fundraising event before Christmas now - so we'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and thank you all for your *awesome* support so far.

We pop our Craft Fair cherry!

Last week's orgy of crafting continued at a ridiculous pace.  We made jams, lemon curd and relish...

...and sparkly scented soaps!

We had our first stall at Adel Primary School's Christmas Fair on Saturday.  We took a grand total of  £65 over the two hours of the fair, selling our cards, cupcakes, soaps, salt dough decorations and preserves.  We were quite happy with this, considering one of the other stall holders we spoke to said she'd only taken £2.50!  Here's some pictures of stall in action.

Sarah also took our stall to the Hollybush Christmas Fair on Sunday (Sophie was off talking about robots at the Science Museum in London) - and took another £69.50.  Add to this another £11 for the cupcakes, salt dough decorations and relish sold to our friends and family, our grand total for the weeked came in at £145.50.

We've also received lots more generous donations from Keith & Lorna, Alice, Penny and Alex & Jem - thanks to all of you we've now exceeded £500 towards our total...that's one seventh of the way!

Just keep crafting!

We've been crafting like crazy this week, painting our salt dough decorations, crocheting snowflakes, cooking up delicious-smelling soaps and cakes...and worrying about candle supplies that still haven't arrived! However, there's been plenty else to do so yesterday's miserable afternoon was spent making Christmas cards instead! It always takes a surprising amount of time to hand-make cards - not sure that twenty will go that far at the fairs this weekend, but everything counts, right?

 

If you're interested in purchasing some handmade Christmas cards, or cards of any sort in fact, head on over to our cards page, get some inspiration for a bespoke card or stationery and let us know what you'd like at saschannelswim@gmail.com!

Prices start at £1.50 per card, and all proceeds go directly to Aspire.

We are the ASPIRE SEALS!

Oh HAI! We found out our team name today - we're part of the Aspire Seals team!

Salt Dough Madness!

We've got our first two craft fairs at the end of this week and to ensure we make the most of the Christmas crowds, we have been creating our little hearts out making salt dough decorations!

Phase 1

Phase 2...still work to be done!

Wreaths

Crocheted

This week we'll also be making soaps, candles, cards, cakes and whatever else we can make time for! We'll be in Leeds at Adel Primary School Christmas Fair on Saturday 3rd December and Hollybush Christmas Fair on Sunday 4th December selling our creations - if you're in the area, please come down!

As with most things we'll be featuring on the blog - if you would like to order your own festive decorations, please email us at saschannelswim@gmail.com!

Let them eat CAKE!

Our fundraising got off to a cracking start this week, with some very generous donations (thanks Danielle, Mike, Steve, Paul and Dad!) and our first cupcake orders!

I baked chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes, topped with chocolate Lego men, and traditional Victoria sponge cupcakes, filled with raspberry jam and topped with vanilla buttercream.  As they were for Harry's 4th birthday party, I added some Peppa Pig sugarpaste toppers as Harry is a big Peppa Pig fan!

If you've got a special event coming up, or you just want to treat someone special, then we're taking orders for cupcakes now! Prices start from £8 for 6 large cupcakes - see our cake page for flavours.  Here's some pictures of this week's creations to get you salivating...

Hungry for cake now? Email us on saschannelswim@gmail.com to place an order!

Getting started...

Hello!

We are Sophie and Sarah, and we're swimming the English Channel as part of a relay team in summer 2012 in aid of spinal injury charity Aspire. Through its projects and programmes, Aspire offers practical support to the 40,000 people living with a spinal cord injury in the UK so that they can lead fulfilled and independent lives in their homes, with their families, in work places and in leisure time.

We're going to be raising money for Aspire in a variety of different ways, including car boot sales, craft fairs, cake sales and clothes swishes. We're also going to be training our little hearts out over the next nine months, getting ready to face a tough slog in the chilly Channel!

You can support us by... 
- following our training and fundraising here on our blog
- following us on Twitter @sas_swim
- liking us on Facebook
- donating on our JustGiving site
- donating by texting 'SOSA86' and £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070 (eg. 'SOSA86 £3')
- sending us an encouraging email at saschannelswim@gmail.com!

Disclaimer: it will definitely NOT look like this.