We have recently be running a series of coffee mornings for anyone to come along to. Today we had a Christmas fare shopping morning. We had many visitors, many of whom were old friends from our old Monday morning Tot’s & Toys session. It was great to re connect with people again. It has made us really understand the value or relationships with people and we are encouraged and plan to continue these coffee mornings. It will be interesting to see where this leads. I think we have to remember that we should value people above all else.

Back on Friday 30th of November Tracy, Ann and team from Tea and Toast ran a slightly different coffee morning than the norm. This particular morning was a table sale/coffee morning & Raffle that made it’s focus an opportunity to raise money for Breast Cancer. The team would like to thank everyone who made it happen, especially:

Jemma for the amazing pink ribbon cake
Jo for the Teddy donation
Ellis hairdressers for their donation
Sheer Indulgence for their donation

In total £111.00 was raised and they made the Southend Echo:

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This last saturday we saw the Haven have their 3rd annual Art Exhibition at the W.I. hall in Rochford Square. When i arrived i was blown away at the numbers of people there. But when you look at the quality of the work it is not surprising. Now you must remember that there are some people that have only been painting for a short while but their work was being sold! There was also so much of it that it was hard to take it all in.

The Haven open day Art Exhibition

If you want to go along to the haven or are interested to know more then why not pop along. Details can be found here.

We stayed in Dedham for only an hour (enough time for me to indulge in a cream tea. Yum!) Then on to Flatford Mill. Having never been before i didn’t know what to expect, but what a beautiful place it was.

If, like me, you did not know, this was where Constable painted the Hay Wain. Below you can see the picture that i took and then the original piece of art.

There were some that simply took the opportunity to be in the sun and take in the country side, however there were many that did spend the afternoon painting/sketching. Below you can see an example of one persons work. Mike kindly agreed to let me post this on here. A truly amazing ink and pencil drawing. The photograph below that is the view he had.