Wednesday 30 May 2012

Wedding Wednesday No.4 - The People

So where have we got to? I’ve told you about the proposal and the venue, the shoes and the dress so I suppose I’d better tell you about the people involved. For me there are 4 Bridesmaids, I’d always imagined just having 2 but the reality of choosing between my friends made that impossible so I decided on 4, Tammy & Yzelle are 2 of my best friends from school. I have known Tammy since we were 4 and Izzy since we were 12 and along with another friend, Lyndsey who is doing my decorations, we were inseparable for many years. The other 2 are Becca and Sara who I lived with in halls at university and continued to live with until I graduated, along with Anika who will be doing a reading at the ceremony.

For Andy there will be 2 Best Men, Tim who is his younger brother and Tom, his best friend since he was about 12. Andy and Tom were also both Best Men at Tim’s wedding last year. The three of them are very close and although Andy doesn’t get to see them as much as he’d like, I know that he would be lost without them.

We’re up to 4 Bridesmaids and 2 Best Men, and as I’ve already mentioned my amazingly talented friend Lyndsey of My Idle Hands will be creating our decorations for us and Anika will be doing a reading during the ceremony. In addition, Andy’s friend Mark will also be doing a reading and another Mark will hopefully be playing the guitar during the ceremony (Andy hasn’t actually asked either of them yet but I don’t think they’ll read this!). Tim’s wife Kate has kindly agreed to help me make the favours – her sewing skills are far superior to mine and then my brother Jon and his girlfriend Kirsty are going to act as Usher & Usherette on the day to greet people and get them to their seats.

Obviously both sets of parents will be there every step of the way and my Daddy will be walking me down the aisle, which, other than the actual marriage bit, is what I am most looking forward to!

Sunday 27 May 2012

Weekend Walks No.4 - Leigh Hill... again

Having not been out for a walk for quite a long time, partly due to the horrendous weather and partly due to being unbelievably busy, we decided to repeat a walk we'd already done. Today has been pretty hot and we knew that much of this walk was through woodland so would be nice and shady.

Stats as follows:
Date: 22/05/12
Start Time: 11:30am
Length: 9.2miles or 14.78km
Time: 2hrs 23mins
Average Speed: 6.09km/h
Temperature: 27C

Route url: Leigh Hill

I bought my boots for the trek 2 weeks ago and this was my first walk wearing them, for the most part they were great, really comfortable and no blisters at all. However, about half way round the walk the front of my ankle/shin began to feel quite bruised. I think the tongue of the boot is quite stiff and was digging in so I'll need to look at how I lace them in future.

Other than that the walk was great, beautiful sunshine, blue skies, not many people around... lovely!

We stopped again at the Wotton Hatch pub for a drink as it's a nice halfway point. No lunch this time, just a drink in the garden before setting off once again.

On the way back we came across an injured mountain biker; luckily he had a friend with him and an ambulance was on it's way - it looked like he'd broken his arm and collarbone... OUCH! When we reached the tower at the top of Leigh Hill they were just giving directions to people to go and find him so hopefully he hadn't been waiting too long.

By the end of the walk we were both pretty hot and thirsty so we grabbed an ice cream from the tower before making our way back to the car.

Once again I had a bit of a technology fail, this time with the camera - it was fully charged and ready to go except I forgot the memory card... oops.

Hope you've all had a lovely sunny Sunday!

Monday 21 May 2012

Monday Mumbles No.3

I've had a pretty busy few weeks so apologies for the lack of posts. Here is a quick update, some of which I'll be blogging about in more detail later.
Had my first wedding dress fitting - very exciting! And took 2 of my bridesmaids to get their dresses - the look gorgeous in them!
Baked loads of cakes to sell at work for my fundraising - made £100.

Had our European conference at work so last week was mad, lots of late nights and early mornings.

It was my friend's son's first birthday party on saturday and I baked his cake.

We went out for lunch on Sunday with some friends to a lovely pub called The Black Swan near Ockham Common.
So that's it, I'm shattered and in need of another weekend already. Got this afternoon off work though and off somewhere exciting...

Friday 4 May 2012

Fundraising Friday No.2

I am now up to 39% of my fundraising target (Jo is Trekking the Sahara KANTAR) , which is brilliant! So far my efforts have been fairly minimal but I am about to step it up a gear, over the next few weeks I will be raising money by collecting unwanted clothes, gifts and homeware items from friends and colleagues to sell on ebay. I am offering up to 50% of the profits to be returned to the person donating and the remaining 50% will be added to my fundraising total. I’ve already had several people tell me they’ve got some stuff for me and I have a number of items at home to sell too, so I am hoping to have quite a bit of stuff to advertise. I know ebay doesn’t always yield the highest profits but anything is worth a try, and if it brings in even £50 it will still be worth it.


I will also be making a whole range of sweet treats for our company’s annual conference which is taking place in a couple of weeks and asking for donations in return. I am hoping to make this a regular event at our monthly company meetings and perhaps even for client meetings too. I’ve got 70 people to cater for at the conference so some careful planning is required but the company has offered to pay for the ingredients so I just have to make it all. I’m really looking forward to getting in the kitchen and creating some yummy cakes and biscuits to share with everyone.

And finally we are having a quiz with all of the other companies in our group in June and the entry money (£100 per team of 6) from any team from my company will go towards my fundraising target, so I am hoping to get at least 2 teams to enter, which will mean a big boost to my total.

So what do you think? Have you seen any other creative fundraising ideas you’d like to share?

Thursday 3 May 2012

Thursday Thanks! No.5

Just a short one this week but a huge thank you to 2 amazing friends of mine, first up is Miss Sara Lapworth who is ebarking on a mad charity event of her own very soon - more on that here: Pete's Stilt Walk. And secondly to Mrs Tammy Gould, one of my oldest friends - thank you.
I'm currently in the middle of organising my next fundraising initiative which I will tell you about tomorrow.

Don't forget to keep your donations coming: http://fundraise.unicef.org.uk/MyPage/Joanna-Crowley-Jo-is-Trekking-the-Sahara-KANTAR

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Wedding Wednesday No.3 - The Dress!

Last time I was going to tell you about the dress and got side-tracked by shoes (as so often happens with me!), but the time has come.

I knew from the outset that I didn’t want your run of the mill dress (think white, princess style and sparkly – well that just isn’t me) I’m short so long dresses just drown me, also, I like to be individual – I don’t want to wear something a hundred other brides around the country are wearing. I’ve always loved the idea of having a vintage dress (I adore the style and silhouettes of the 50s) but because usually you only find vintage stuff in teeny tiny sizes I didn’t think it would be an option for me. So the search started.

My first experience of trying on dresses was at the National Wedding Show at the NEC, I’d gone with 2 of my bridesmaids and another friend who is getting married soon and hadn’t really expected to try anything on, but I found a couple of dresses that met my wish list (basically anything not full length – shorter styles seem to be in this year luckily!) so I thought I’d have a go, I was also convinced to try a couple of longer dresses but none of them wowed me and my thoughts about having a shorter dress were confirmed.

I also visited a ‘conventional’ bridal shop (http://www.fromthismomentbridal.co.uk/) with 2 of my bridesmaids (the other 2 than the ones I went to Birmingham with) where the girls were really helpful and I tried on about 5 dresses. One of the dresses was lovely and just what I wanted – strapless, tea-length and very simple – I went away confident that it could be the one. However, I still wanted to look at some vintage dresses so made a couple of appointments in London and headed up there with my Mum for a look.

I made 2 appointments, the first was OK, as I knew they would be the dresses were mostly in very small sizes so I could only try on a couple and the girl was pretty unhelpful as far as suggesting dresses that would suit me or even those that might fit so I spent quite some time aimlessly looking at the 2 racks of dresses not really knowing what to do. Before the appointment I had also received a very lengthy email from the establishment letting me know what I could and couldn’t do – it sounded very stern! Eventually we left and I wasn’t feeling too inclined to return for another try at a later date.

The second appointment was a complete contrast, we opened the door to the little shop (Fur Coat No Knickers) and were immediately in awe of all the beautiful things on display – dresses, accessories and sparkly things dotted every surface – it was like an Alladin’s Cave of vintage wedding awesome-ness. The girl behind the counter greeted us with a smile and immediately dashed off to get us some champagne – I like this kind of welcome! We spent a few minutes perusing the splendour before being whisked behind the curtain for dress-up time…

The Fur Coat No Knickers Shop

They’d already picked out all of the dresses they had in my size and was told that I should try ALL of them on whether I thought they were of interest or not, so I did! First I was given a waist nipper and layered petticoat to lay the right foundations and then after a bit of cooing over my shoes it was time for the dresses. Oh the dresses…

They were all so beautiful and definitely not your average wedding dress, there was silk, lace, sleeves, strapless, broderie anglaise, sequins and so much more and I tried them all. Some of them were definitely not me but there was one that definitely was. On the hanger it didn’t look like much but when I put it on it came to life, it fit me like a glove, was the perfect length and the colour was gorgeous. Some alterations were suggested to make it even more gorgeous and I was sold. The deposit was paid and I had a dress! Woop Woop!!