Caravans, Charity Tea Party, Clothes & More Friday 5!

Heading over to the linky party to join in with:

Firstly - over here in England we have another Bank Holiday Monday coming up so a long weekend - HURRAY!!  So as lots of teachers and students will be getting away, I came up with the idea of these little caravans - which will be part of a new activity I am currently working on for my TpT store.

Please feel free to use if they can be of any use to you - just remember to give a credit back to my store or this blog :)

I helped out this week with a wonderful charity garden party at a friend's house and the sun shone and it couldn't have gone better.  We raised over £300 for our two chosen charities and I think I came back with less than I took!

This photo shows part of the craft competition I introduced this year - where for £1 you could buy a pack (every pack was the same) - which contained some material, some bias binding, two buttons, a small zip and some embroidery thread - the objective was then to make an item which could be sold on the stall using some or all of the items (which could be combined with other things too) for £3.  Everyone who attended the garden party was given a voting slip where they put down the letter of the item they judged to be "best in show" and after three hours the votes were collated and I announced the winner - who received the princely sum of £5.  The competition raised over £25 for charity and everyone had fun making and judging so all in all a good success :)

I've recently been buying a few more very cheap but good quality second-hand clothes that will be useful for cutting up for the material and buttons/zips - thank goodness for table-top sales where everything is always £1 or under!!

I blogged about this yesterday - but we have been growing and finding out about carrots so if you want a freebie resource click on the button above to be taken to the blog page where you can get a copy :)

Finally, a bit of a shout out to the Celebrate the Small Things crew - who also post on a Friday - if you have something to celebrate you can let them know and they're such a supportive bunch you'll get lots of replies and comments :)  Thank you Lexa, Katie & L.G !

Click on the button to go there!

My post for this will be going up tomorrow so see you then!

Now it's your turn to share some of the things you've been getting on with or let me know what you think about the craft competition I ran?  Or what are you doing this weekend?  Or any good charity shop or table top purchases recently?  I'd love to know :)