We celebrated St Patrick's Day with Irish Cream Liquor, Guinness and lots of Irish music. 

Thank you for the chocolates which were kindly bought by a resident's family as a token of appreciation for looking after their mum. Your mum was a pleasure to look after and the chocolates will be enjoyed by all the staff here at Hope Green. 

Thank you so much for the Easter eggs which were bought for our wonderful team here at Hope Green as a thank you from a family for looking after their father during their stay here at Hope Green. As a team, we appreciate this kind gesture, and we will all enjoy eating our Easter egg!

Home baking at our home is such an important part of our activities and our residents love getting involved.  Every week we have a different recipes to try and residents on both floors have a go at making them.  This week our residents in the Blossom unit make biscuits and enjoyed measuring out, mixing and getting a little messy as they put together the mixture which our Cook, Moira then baked for us to enjoy with a cup of tea.  They were delicious.

We have celebrated Mothers/Mams/Mums with lots of conversations, some brought laughter and others tears, but it was so lovely to be able to provoke such good memories of our mums, those special ladies who made our childhood great. This was displayed in the lodge, with quotes from our lovely residents, things such as "I had what I'd call a real Mam" or she always smelt of talc were some of the memories. Other memories were a little more emotional as one of our residents never remembers her own mother, as she passed when she was young, but has so many special memories with her dad.

Residents at Bowerfield House have been enjoying lots of activities. Some of the residents favourites were flower arranging, pizza making and we celebrated Mother's Day and St Patrick's Day in style with our Irish queen Helena. It was a great week with lots of fun and laughter. 

Since it was national foot spa day we thought we would catch the opportunity to pamper ourselves using the foot spa. Many of the residents had a lovely soak and had masks applied to feet as well as a scrub, many residents were very tickled when they had their feet scrubbed but they all said they enjoyed the pamper treatments. 

As part of our preparation for Mothering Sunday we held a morning of Decoupage which everyone really enjoyed. Preparation was key as we had to press and store our flowers four weeks prior to using them but the wait was worth it, our jars and vases looking stunning. 

St Patrick's Day was celebrated at Brunel's regular luncheon club with a St. Patrick's Day themed menu. For starters there was an Irish leek and potato soup with homemade soda bread, followed by Irish stew with colcannon mash and carrot and swede then finished with a desert of Baileys cheesecake and a cheese board. This was then followed by an Irish coffee and all washed down with a few glasses of Guinness obviously, for those who could manage it. 

Stanley, one of our activities team has been working with some of the residents who are less able to attend group events and activities within the home. He has taken a tablet to the residents in their rooms and they have begun to enjoy painting on the tablet. This has been a huge success.