mountains of cake

We had a wonderful last event this afternoon - a room full of lovely ladies eating all of the cake and crust-less sandwiches, drinking tea and pink fizz. Thank you everyone who came and donated towards our now incredible 81% of the total! Can't believe we have got here already, and it feels amazing!

The gorgeous ladies from The Body Shop came to make us over (picture of me and hot honey Emilie - wow - new purple eyes look is, um, startling??!) and give relaxing hand massages: thank you so much!

The mountain of cakes from Blueberry Hill was staggering and delicious! Thank you Ella and Rachel for making our do so special! Home made jam for the wonderful scones; heart-shaped vicoria sponges; melting double-choc brownies to name but a few treats. Want to plug them again: http://blueberryhillcakes.co.uk/

Thank you also to Paul the bakery in Clapham Junction for the lovely fruit tarts. Yum. Also, of course the most fab chocs ever made - L'Artisan Du Chocolat provided that last wafer thin mint. But not in a gross exploding way. And thanks to hosts Charlie and Mary who were brilliant yet again.

Apologies for the terrible photography, but you get the idea!

cake, cake and cake

Just can't wait for the ladies afternoon tea on Sunday this week - those gorgeous ladies from the Body Shop will are coming to give us hand massages and makeup lessons which I cannot wait for! Thank you Body Shop!

The wonderful Ella and Rachel from Blueberry Hill (http://blueberryhillcakes.co.uk/) are sending us sumputous treats. When Rosie, Jo and I saw them in the summer at the Battersea foodies festival, they blew us away with their delicious stall, and taught us how to make hazlenut meringue treats and coffee martinis - yum! Thank you Blueberry Hill Cakes!

We are also hoping that Paul, the lovely french bakery, will be giving us some pastries too - yes please Paul!

We will be bringing some ladylike crust-less sandwiches and suchlike, and everyone will get a goodie bag! Fantastic!

We are hoping to have our recipe book printed and ready to go by the weekend too - fingers crossed!!

Chloe

cake!

there is a good reason we called this blog mountains, molehills and cake - CAKE!!

thanks to all at the Albert Embankment office for making, selling, buying and eating cake like there's no tomorrow this morning - we raised a fantastic, and unexpected £107!

it has taken our total above three quarters of the way to the mashoosive target, and I am so grateful to burst through that barrier. Its real progress, and it feels like we are on the final stretch now.

proof of cake:

I regrettably didn't get any shots of Jo's hundred of gorgeously iced cupcakes, Aunty Sylv's delicious lemon drizzle or country loaf, Dee's pals incredible choc creation covered in roses and gold, Janine's extremely tasty (I would know - i ate two) gingerbread and white choc shapes, Robbie's irresitable (Susanne...) muffins or any of the lush choc brownies... or the others if I missed any I apologise!

how are we getting on?

We had a fab afternoon, with Amanda and Sam birlliantly hosting a family fun party at a Scout hut in leafy South Croydon. Their friends all brought their kiddies and we played, ate, watched the best puppet show by Mary which kept everyone (parents included) rapt for half an hour and then made puppets.

Everyone was generous with sponsorship and advice and really kind with good wishes - Thank you everyone who came to have a nice afternoon and support our adventure, and raise some more money for Marie Curie!

We are now just about at the two thirds mark of our fundraising total, and still have some events to go as well as this awesome book coming out next week. Can't wait!

Chloe

supper club saturday night

REALLY looking forward to getting cracking on the prep for tomorrow night's supper club - Rosie and I are cooking for 18 wonderfull guests, including our folks and the amazing Barry and Paul, as well as lots of Charlie and Mary's friends.

We have managed to come up with the impossible - a menu that doesn't cost the earth (otherwise there'd be very little point in doing it), seems quite flash and not too difficult to make. Only thing left now is not to mess it up by over-salting, burning, drying, losing, spilling...

• starter: stuffed mushrooms and a cruchy rocket and radish salad - and a glass of dry white wine
• main course: coq au vin, braised red cabbage, greens and potatoes gratin (with the coq au vin replaced by a red onion tartlet for our one marvellous veggie guest) - and a glass of light red wine
• pudding: red fruit cheesecake with jelly on top - and a glass of fuity white wine
• cheese course: with apple, celery and homemade chutney - and a glass of deep red wine
• coffee and THE most amazing and beautiful chocs very kindly donated by L'Artisan do Chocolate - their salted caramels are to die for.... scrummy

that should keep the gang entertained for a while....

Thanks again to Charlie and Mary for hosting this wonderful event - it's going to be super fun!

Chloe

pub quiz report and total!

WOW!

In total we raised £1369 at the incredible mountain mensa pub quiz!

what am amazing night - a room full of generous, fun and joyful people came together to enjoy the fantastic quiz that Robbie had put together for us. Jim was a fantasic MC - keeping the questions rolling and egging everyone on - Thank you Jim - we love you!

The Emily's round, (bronte, earheart, dickinson, blunt, etc) in recognition of cousin Emily's birthday went down well. Tom also wanted some halloween dressing up, but Rosie and I thought perhaps that might be squeezing in a theme too many...? Thank you to Tom for doing the great music!

51 (same number as our last pub quiz - spooky?) lovely people came, and made the raffle an incredible success; with the beautiful Emilie snatching the top prize - a gorgeous French Connection frock. The handsome Joe won second prize - tickets to see the (see it to believe it) Elvis in concert show at Wembley; and another 10 lucky people won other prizes including the extremely rude Ann Summers "goodie" bag... don't tell your mother.

The quiz itself came to a nail-biting tie breaker situation between The Fogies and Dave's a Trosser for first place. Happily Robbie had prepared some exquisite and weird questions for this eventuality which saw The Fogies win with an anatomy question, luckily for GP Gerard! Well done brains of Lambeth!

The promises auction was a feast of generous favours from the many and multi-skilled people in the room - from cake baking to salsa to holiday accommodation to carpentry; won by generous and lucky bargain-hunters. Some items didn't fetch nearly what they were worth, but that's the thrill of an auction house; and every little helps our fundraising. Barry, our high-excitement and hilarious auctioneer, kept the crowd whipped to a bidding frenzy. Including poor gesticulating Joe, who didn't realise he'd pledged for an adult CPR course. But how handy...

Thank you again to everyone who came and made the evening such a success! Together we raised an amazing £1369 for Marie Curie which will tip our fundraising progress to 50% (once you have all paid up via www.justgiving.com/chloeandrosiedickinson please)

xxxxx


Chloe

deadlines?

there is a little confusion over these fundraising deadlines, but I think Dee and the team are going to give us a little leeway as we signed up so late, and they kno we are good for the money!

arghhhhh fundraising panic!

I just had a lovely phone call from a Marie Curie lady calling to see how the fundraising is going. She was dead helpful in suggesting things Rosie and I could do, and supportive when she heard of our current ideas.

but

she told me that we need to have £6K in the bank by 24th November

arghhhhhh - i had thought it said December - 5 weeks for 4 grand! I know we can ask them for an extension if we are completely stuck, which we wont be, but

argghhhhhhhhh - stop shopping, get collecting and planning the events!

Chloe

MCCC Pub Quiz!

Rosie and I are able to up our fundraising total to 26% today after an amazing pub quiz fundraiser last night.

Staff from all depts, volunteers, friends, family, friends of friends, bosses and even ex-staff came together to raise a staggering £489!

Thank you so much to everyone!

It was fun (well, I had fun and thats all that matters) and we raised a great amount.

The winners were "I'm a darby girl, in a darby world" (i loved that name, so you are keeping it). Congratulations to Penman, Patrick, Adam, Janine, Dan, Rebecca and Sam. They were graceful enough to cheat just a little bit by having slightly too much expertise on the team (wink wink). This meant the other teams would feel slightly aggrieved and not at all dumb - very well played I thought. We sort of knew they would win anyhoo.

Coming second were "three idiots and an iphone" who despite their name were fantastically close, and as far as our ajudicators understood, didn't cheat by using an iphone...

The winner of the best team name ever is "are we there yeti?" which is clever and hilarious, yet so simple. Nice job! Sadly you win nothing for that.

Chloe

first supper club!

Last night saw our first supper club - it went really well and Rosie and I had a great time cooking up a storm - thank you to our marvellous guests for being such fun and eating and drinking till we had nothing left!

Also happy happy birthday (tomorrow) to Rosie!

We are almost at 20% of our fundraising target now, which is so exciting.

Chloe

event planning

We are putting together a great programme of exciting events, although some of the details still need to be sorted out - let us know if you are interested in coming to any:

• A pub quiz for Marie Curie staff: Mountain Mensa - Thurs 13th October in Vauxhall, including a fab raffle and auction of promises*
• Supper clubs in South London and Croydon on 3 dates in November
• Pub quiz for friends and family - hoping the fabulous Tom and Jim might compere! (still being planned for either late Oct or early Dec), also with some amazing raffle prizes and an auction of promises*
• Ladies afternoon tea with pampering and treats in Clapham, date still to be confirmed but we think sometime early December, to reward or prepare you for all the xmas shopping 

so excited!

* auction of promises is going to be AMAZING

Chloe

Week two - the kindness of strangers

Am a little overwhelmed by the kindness of some shops owners and managers in Clapham Junction today, even after the rioting and adversity ther this month.

I asked them for some help with raffle prizes. Kiehl's in Northcote Road were so helpful and nice, giving us some incredible goodies to raffle or auction, as well as offering to host a evening event in their store. Thank you!

The Body Shop ladies were really enthusiastic to help out too, with their time, expertise and skilled hands (hand massages) - so I think we might have a ladies cream tea and hand cream afternoon in the pipeline...

The gorgeous gift shop Huttons gave us some lovely things, Sainsburys and Cooperative also kidly contributed to the supper club fund and All Bar One was also generous, and hopefully there is more on the way! Thank you Clapham and Wandsworth!

Chloe

a big ask

To any shop owners either local to South West London, or from further afield - please help our massive challenge by offering to donate goods or vouchers for our ambitious supper clubs; printing for our books; or lovely raffle prizes! Or anything else you can think of!

We could offer amazing plugs in our marketing, lots of nice mentions in our social networking activities and even some hot photos at Everest Base Camp showing off with your banner or tee-shirt!

roll up, roll up!

Chloe