Messy Church

On Sunday we went to messy church, which they have in Weston village hall every now and again.  It was quite relaxed and informal.  They gave us coffee and croissants and the parents chatted while the kids did bible themed crafts, all related to a particular story, Moses today.  They wrote their name in heiroglyphics, did paper weaving, made mud bricks and made these origami frogs.  I need a picture really to describe the frogs, but I bought a memory card for the camera from Tesco and when I put it into the card reader in the computer, it kept crashing.  So unfortunately no picture of the wonderful legless frogs.  I was quite inspired by the whole origami thing and I wanted to make the frogs with legs like they did at the art room (in Long Eaton) but I guess these frogs were just the right difficulty level for kids to make.  They did jump too.  After that there was a story which they got the kids to act bits out of and some singing.  All in all I'd recommend messy church to families with young children as it is fun, friendly and informative, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting an origami master class.

How to sell a house

I've noticed that there are a couple of houses locally that have been on the market for quite a while with Haart.  So what have they done to help get that sale?  They have changed the old 'for sale' signs for posher 'for sale' signs.  I'm no marketing expect but I don't see the point of that.  I mean, its not like you get to keep the for sale sign when you move in.  Mind you when we were trying to sell our house, I was in the process of making a scarecrow for the scarecrow trail and the conservatory was full of straw and papier-mache heads, and maybe that was part of the reason it didn't sell.  I always thought that when people look around a house they ignore what's in it at the moment, because that's not what its going to be like when they buy it, and imagine how the house would be if they lived in it, but maybe I'm wrong.  Perhaps superficial things like a posher for sale sign really do make the difference.  It has been a little while since they started using the posher signs and neither house has sold, although I have noticed that another estate agent has started using the same type of sign.

Yesterday it was non-uniform day at school.  The children had to bring in a Easter egg for to donate to the great Easter scramble in exchange for coming to school not in uniform.  This went off without a hitch partly because of the carefully chosen Easter eggs (ones that they weren't so keen on so they wouldn't be too upset about giving them away) and also despite my husband saying that if he was at school he would have worn his school uniform and eaten the Easter egg.  It was a relief to get to school and find that it was actually the right day and that they hadn't come not in uniform when all the other children had.

 

Mothers Day

It was a family service at church ton Sunday morning, so the vicar Tony made his sermon family friendly.  He asked for a child volunteer out to the front.  There was a shortage of willing children, so he got his daughter to come out.  He demonstrated the reading from the Gospel by giving her clothes to wear (over the ones she was already wearing) with a word on them.  Eg the first one was a t-shirt with the word compassion stuck to it.  A couple of items of clothing later, (which shamefully I can't remember what words they had on them), and out came a pair of boxer shorts with the word humility pinned onto them.  At this point Charlotte refused to wear them, so Tony opened it up to the whole church and asks if anyone, of any age would like to come forward and wear them.  No one volunteers.  So a couple more items then he finishes up saying that they all come under the umbrella of love.  Then he picked up the boxer shorts again and asked again if anyone will wear the boxer shorts of humility.  At this point I started to feel a bit sorry for him, so looked again at the boxer shorts and did a quick mental size calculation and thought I was probably a bit fat for them and I'd be stood at the front trying to squeeze into the things or even worse, they'd split or something, so I figured it wouldn't really be a good idea.  After all they are the boxer shorts or humility, not humiliation.  Very similar word but quite a different meaning.  They gave all the women a nicely wrapped polyanthus, but I was near the back so by the time it got to me there weren't any left so I got a leftover one with less flowers on that they didn't wrap.  It may be a leftover plant with little flowers but I shall love and nurture it anyway.  We said this really lovely prayer thanking God for our mothers and for the many things that our mothers have done for us which we may not even realise, which really struck a chord with me.  As we left Tony asked again if we were all sure we didn't want to wear the boxer shorts of humility.  


I didn't go out for dinner or anything like that as my mum lives miles away and the kids were away too.  Someone sympathised.  Someone else said having break from the kids was a great mothers day present. I bet all the pubs or restaurants were busy and crowded anyway, so I don't feel like I was missing much.