Busy Busy Busy!

Bloomin' heck - we've been busy bees recently.

We had another epic car boot sale adventure - we were going to the Aiport Car Boot at Leeds Bradford airport, but it turned out it was cancelled (after we'd got up at 6:30am on a Sunday)...so we went for an epic breakfast at a local greasy spoon - £1.50, with a brew. Noms!

...and eventually found our way to the Otley Car Boot.

We raised a stonking £110.46 - and returned home with a near-empty car. No idea where that 46p came from though...

Time to find more stuff to sell. Thanks again to everyone who has donated items for us to sell so far - you're all fantastic!

Sophie also held a miniature bake sale in the Engineering Department at the University of Liverpool this week - raising another £76.10 selling delicious (even if she does say so herself) cupcakes.

We've now also got a Youtube channel - we'll be posting videos of our outdoor training, our trips to Dover and our other vaguely interesting exploits. Check it out here.

Our first video is Sophie's somewhat impromptu outdoor swim (hence why she's wearing her pants and bra) in Wales a few weeks ago. The water was about 7 degrees, which seemed to bother Phurba less than it did Sophie! Brrr!

We've also got lots of exciting fundraising events coming up - check out our 'Upcoming Events' page to find out more.

Team Hoodies are here!

Our amazing team hoodies have arrived - don't they look fantastic?! We are definitely going to be the best dressed team at the first training session in Dover.

David from our team created the design - I love the seal's little smiley face.  Hopefully we'll all still be smiling like that when we finish our swim!

We do now have one very grumpy dog though...

Thanks go to Caroline and Meg at Supply Our Society - if you're looking for hoodies then they're your girls!

We've also received more generous donations from Andrew, Hannah & Tim and Becky - thank you, you lovely people!

Guest Bloggin'

We were asked by Kirsty, the Communications Manager (and Facebook supremo) over at Aspire, to write a guest post on their blog - and here it is!

Good stuff!

Car Booty!

Our 2012 fundraising has well and truly begun! So far we've attended successful car boots sales in Otley and Port Sunlight, and tried another couple in Liverpool and Birkenhead with limited success: they were cancelled!

However, we've been encouraged so far (having raised another £89), and are busy collecting plenty more booty for when the sun comes out and the fairs get busier!

And a huge thank you (many huge thank yous, in fact!) to all the lovely people who have donated - Sam, Oliver, Maria and Ingrid, Professor Hon, Jenny (good luck to you & Nat in Tanzania), Mark and Linda! Your donations have spurred us on to training like madwomen - thank you!

Training is going well - Sarah managed a mammoth 6400m IN ONE GO, and Sophie has been going to a Masters swim class where Lucy and Ryan have been putting her through her paces.  We're hoping to get back to swimming in the great outdoors really soon...brrr!

An Appeal...

Holy smokes, we're going to be swimming the Channel THIS YEAR! It's been a bit quiet round these parts of late, but now we've recovered from Christmas and burnt off all the excess mince pies and tofurkey, we're ready to throw ourselves head-first back into fundraising.

As part of our efforts, we’re going car booting. If you have any items that you would be willing to donate for us to sell on, please let us know – it doesn’t matter how big or small, and we'll even come and collect large items (if you're in the Leeds or Liverpool area, obviously!).

Are you having a New Year clear out? Do you have any unwanted Christmas presents that you don’t know what to do with? Garage positively over-flowing with stuff you don't need anymore? Then donate it to us!

You can contact us by email (saschannelswim@gmail.com) to organise collection of your items.


What else have we been up to? We spent New Year in Edinburgh with our lovely friends Alex & Jem.  We even found time to go for a swim. In the Firth of Forth. In December.

The water was a shocking 6 degrees Celcius, so it more turned into a shrieking contest than an actual swim.  I'm not sure either of us got wet any higher than our armpits...but it resulted in some pretty hilarious photos!

Before....

During...

After!

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!