It was an extra-ROAR-dinary Chinese New Year celebration for everyone here in Amber Court. Residents and staff enjoyed the yummy Chinese foods tasting. Also, we made some Chinese lanterns to decorate the home with the help of our very talented residents and staff. Happy Chinese New Year!

Since it is National Pizza Day, we all gathered and ate different flavours of pizzas. We really enjoyed the day, we shared stories of our favourite pizza flavours and memories we got about pizza. We had a good laugh whilst socializing with each other.

February is a season of love, especially on 14th of February. We celebrated this day by having a lovely full course dinner prepared by our kitchen chef and also a nice table setup made by our staff and residents. We invited some of our resident’s spouses to have a diner date with their love ones. Jimmy, one of our residents, and Christine (Jimmy’s wife) have been happily married for 47 years. Also, we had Christine(resident) and Stuart (Christine’s husband) they’ve been together for 64 lovely years. This is a memorable day for them specially on their situations.

We celebrated Valentines Day with a delicious selection of cakes for afternoon tea, served in our best China Cups here at Troutbeck.

We had fun making decorations and trimming up our bar area, we made a Tree of love and asked staff and residents to write a message to hang on the tree. We read about St Valentine, read Poetry and sang our favourite love songs. The day was enjoyed by all our residents and staff.

Here at Troutbeck our residents and staff participated in writing some words of advice for Valentine's Day along with some messages for those within the home.

Staff at Windmill Court were overwhelmed by a special Staff Appreciate Day organised by the people living with us here in St Minver. Each staff member was presented with a card which had a packet of sweet peas attached, along with a lovely thank you note .

Our residents also attached lots of different works to describe the staff which included; understanding, kind, caring, patient, thoughtful, safe , cheerful and fun. Michael Fox wrote a wonderful speech and delivered this at the presentation on behalf of all of the residents living with us.

For Chinese New staff and residents made their own Chinese zodiac badges to celebrate the year of the Tiger. We laughed and had fun discussing the different traits and if they suited any of our personalities. 

We are sharing the Valentines Day love here at Carmel Lodge, even our work men have been included in our treats.

Valentines Day at Hope Green was a lovely celebration with residents and staff gathering together to decorate the home with flowers, balloons, hearts and ribbons. There was some lovely music playing in the background which gave the opportunity for anyone to sing along whilst busily making table decorations in our craft club and in true Hope Green style there was of course some dancing, tapping of feet to the beat and clapping too. Happy Valentines Day from us all.

There is a magnificent yew tree between Carmel Lodge and Hope Green care homes.

You may know that yew trees are traditionally grown in church yards. This is not symbolic, but practical in times gone by.

Yew trees were needed to make bows and arrows, before guns were invented. At this time, (before the enclosures act) most of Britain was common land, grazed by all animals. However Churchyards were always walled, to keep the animals out. Yew trees are highly poisonous, so it makes sense that they were grown where animals could not eat them.