Activities at Lucerne House Care Home

Towards the end of last year, our residents, visitors and staff were all busy, making items to sell at our Christmas market. We had a great time, making all of the various items and have proudly raised over £600 which will be split between the Alzheimer's Society and Parkinson's UK.

With that in mind, we needed a new project to build towards. We can now reveal that we are hosting a summer fete, at Lucerne House, with a date to be determined for June or July.

Today to begin preparations, our residents, visitors and staff have been crafting our bird houses. These have been sanded and received their first coating of paint. We will finish painting, assembling and varnishing in the coming weeks, ready to sell at our fete.

We have lots more to craft and make in our crafts sessions, which will resume next week and run on a weekly basis right up until summer.

Thanks to everyone who helped with today's efforts.

Happy Birthday to the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.

Born on January 8th 1935, he grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elvis changed the landscape of Rock and roll with his first hit Heartbreak Hotel in 1958. He went on to have major success with classics including "Love me tender", "Devil in disguise" and "Jailhouse Rock" to name a few.

To mark this occasion, residents have enjoyed an Elvis celebration afternoon, with an Elvis Quiz, an Elvis tribute performance from Alex, Head of Activities and sampling the Elvis Sandwich which consists of banana, peanut butter and bacon on toasted bread.

Our residents said they had a lovely time and particularly enjoyed it when the care team joined in for a boogie.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Virtual Christmas Jumper/T-Shirt and Outfit competition. Our residents have loved seeing all of your entries and feel such a special connection with the community from helping to pick the winners.

It was a very close decision and as always they would love to have awarded all of you as winners.

It was such a close decision that we did have a two ties. We have decided to award 6 prizes and can reveal the winners below.

All of the winners have been notified and will receive their prize very soon.

Thank you all, once again for supporting this event. We will have more opportunities to engage in our virtual events, next year.

Merry Christmas to you all.

This month we have loved welcoming back the children, parent helpers and teachers from Alphington Primary School to our Christmas grotto.

Our grotto was open to Foundation, year one and year 2 and had various activities to enjoy, including making reindeer food, writing cards to Santa and an elf scavenger hunt. To top it all off, children were greeted by our resident elves, in their workshop and then got to meet Santa who gave each of them a gift.

On Thursday, the weather was very poor but we were delighted to bring Santa and his elf helpers to the school to the year 2 classes. This meant that all the children were able to make their reindeer food, see Santa and receive there gift. Thank you to the school for enabling us to do this and a special thank you to the helpers at the school on Thursday, who helped the children make the reindeer food and share the magic of Christmas.

We have had such a lovely week and feel truly blessed to have such a lovely connection with our community and school.

We have had the most amazing evening at our first ever Lucerne Christmas market.

We had lots of stalls, showcasing the amazing craft work our team and residents have been making, as well as other items to purchase including the body shop, homemade mince pie flavour fudge our head chef made, cakes, bratwurst, hot dogs, jewellery made by Chloe and so much more.

We would like to thank Elaine Bowler for her body shop items, our head chef for all his baked and cooked items, Sue Broom for all of her help with activities and events in the lead up to the market and her donations to the raffle, Amber and Amelia for selling the jewellery, Chloe and Sasha for serving refreshments and to Simon for helping to clear up once it was all finished. We also thank all of the visitors and friends of the home for their donations and contributions to the market and raffle.

The raffle has been drawn and we will be contacting the winners in the coming days to collect their prizes.

With all of the purchases this evening, though a final count is yet to be fully completed, we can announce we have raised over £400 which will be split and donated to the Alzheimer's Society and Parkinson's UK.

Finally, our activities team have done a great job with this event and their efforts today have been brilliant, but, we must particularly highlight our amazing Kirsty Pillinger. Kirsty has been the driving force behind this event, supporting residents to get involved through crafts, baking, setting up, stock sorting, making labels and more. She has been an inspiration to the home and we want to thank and congratulate her for an amazing, first of many we hope, Lucerne Christmas market.

In December, we have loved welcoming back the children, parent helpers and teachers from Alphington Primary School to our Christmas grotto.

Our grotto was open to Foundation, year one and year 2 and had various activities to enjoy, including making reindeer food, writing cards to Santa and an elf scavenger hunt. To top it all off, children were greeted by our resident elves, in their workshop and then got to meet Santa who gave each of them a gift.

On Thursday, the weather was very poor but we were delighted to bring Santa and his elf helpers to the school to the year 2 classes. This meant that all the children were able to make their reindeer food, see Santa and receive there gift. Thank you to the school for enabling us to do this and a special thank you to the helpers at the school on Thursday, who helped the children make the reindeer food and share the magic of Christmas.

We have had such a lovely week and feel truly blessed to have such a lovely connection with our community and school.