Snow days, birthdays and charity days

Snow Days

This week has been an odd one. We had the threat of “The Beast From the East” hitting the UK. We were all on alert for the worst snow in years.  It didn’t quite hit us like they said it would, but Weds night the snow came and came and it continued into all day Thurs and some of Friday.  Ewan and Tom’s school closed both Thursday and Friday and I am in the lucky position that means I can work from home.

It has been freezing, and the snow was unusual in that despite how cold it was overnight, the snow was still snow, and not ice the following day.  Compared to most countries, this was nothing, but for this country, everything ground to a halt – our bin wasn’t emptied, there was no post and even Amazon couldn’t deliver.

Its all gone now luckily, in fact, we have had both fog and a torrential downpour today!

Charity fundraiser planning

Eddie is doing the Virgin London Marathon this year for The Ear Foundation.  As he is doing it for charity, he has got to raise £1500 for them.  This is no easy thing.  We’ve both been sharing his page, but it’s not easy to get the money raised, as so many other people are also fundraising.

We decided to organise a charity horse racing night.  I can’t believe how much hard work it has been.

Room Hire

Just finding a venue was difficult luckily there is a venue not too far from us that offered us the room for free if it is for charity (a lot wanted to charge us £150+ which obviously impacts on how much goes to charity from the night) here is a link to their facebook page – if you are local to Ilkeston, Derbyshire please consider using them for your event!

It’s a big room though and we are under pressure to fill it.  Due to timescales, we didn’t ask people to buy tickets in advance, but to let us know that they are coming.  Lots of people have said they are interested, but there are not too many people have said they are actually coming.

Flyers and Facebook Events

We designed our own flyer on Canva – this isn’t a sponsored post! honest! but if you need to create a graphic (poster, social media, a website to name but a few) Canva makes it very easy, even for the complete beginner.

Here is the result of my efforts! I was actually quite proud of this!

Raffle

Raffle prizes have been another nightmare job.  I have found companies to be fairly tight these days.  They must get loads of requests, but so far out of lots of lots of companies (around 30) I have contacted, Derby County Football Club and Glee Comedy Club are the only ones to give us actual prizes. So we have got to buy prizes in.  Whilst I have no idea what prizes people will like,  I am thinking of chocolate and alcohol…….I mean who doesn’t want chocolate and alcohol!!!

Next week, I will write a post on whether the night is a success or not. I will fill you in on what I have learned (so you don’t have to make the same mistakes!)

Birthdays

This week it’s Eddie’s birthday.  I wasn’t sure whether to get him a Go Pro (he is vlogging his marathon training on youtube – have a search for Runbudarun if you are interested!) or a new Xbox One.  In the end, I asked him and he said Xbox so I have been looking into the Xbox One S  and  Xbox one X and comparing not only the different price points and also the specs.

In our house, it’s a well-known fact that out of me and Eddie, I am the technical one.  I mean, I am not that good (I know my limits!) but I am the one who sets things up, orders PC’s, fix them when they aren’t working etc.

Imagine my face when I went into Game at the East Midlands Shopping Outlet, when the man behind the counter spoke to me as if I was some sort of idiot.  I had made it fairly clear that I wasn’t thinking of getting the X, purely because we don’t have a 4k TV. Although the processor is far better, in my opinion, I didn’t think that was enough to justify the difference in price.  Plus we have a gaming laptop and PC if we want that sort of power. But he just spoke ‘over me’, and tried to tell me I was wrong.

I felt so mad that he was so sexist/ageist!  The last time that happened was when we were buying the gaming laptop. I was talking to the salesman in Curry’s and he actually turned around to talk to Eddie rather than me. He assumed it was for him and not me (which ironically it wasn’t!!!)

Anyway, it’s his birthday on Wednesday and I still haven’t got him a pressie yet.  Ewan is away on a rugby tour next weekend, so it’s going to be a busy week in the evenings. Never a dull moment!

Have a good week 🙂

xxx