Ashmead Care Home paid its very own special tribute to Dame Vera Lynn who sadly passed away at the age of 103 recently. During the day the home was filled with the voices of special personal memories of VE day, along with the sounds of music and laughter as everyone remembered the lady who became a symbol of hope during the war for so many people.

Episodes of Dads Army and music from Dame Vera played in all of our lounges and dining rooms throughout the day and everyone living in the home enjoyed a traditional themed buffet to add to the celebrations.

We love creating our own gifts here at Belmont Care Home and thought it would be a lovely idea to make bracelets for birthday gifts in Park Suite.  We had a few different boxes with beads, glass balls and colourful stones and started to create our own designs.

Here is Robert, in the process of creating his own design.  We hope the birthday girl likes it.

Kents Hill Care Home welcomed ambulance crew staff, post office workers, district nurses and physiotherapists for there 'Take a break with us' week.  They received many thanks, gratitude and comments of bringing together the local MDT's in the recent hot weather; the cake and drinks went down well (particularly the cold drinks)   

We had some fun in the activities lounge with the parachute. There was lots of laughing coming from the room.  Everyone held a colour in a circle and then we popped a ball in the middle and flicked up the parachute to see which colour the ball landed on when the parachute came back down to eye level. There was much debate whether it was one colour or another.  We got quite competitive

We were so grateful to receive a wonderful donation of afternoon tea from Lakes & Dales Co-operative.

A huge donation, of everything anyone could need for a wonderful afternoon celebration. Sandwiches, scones, cakes, and non-alcoholic fizz to make it a wonderful celebration.

We had a party in all of the dining areas, with bunting, music and a great atmosphere. 

A wonderful afternoon, had by all. 

We wanted to decorate our activities lounge and when we found some old vinyl records which were really scratched and not fit for playing anymore so we decided to get a little bit creative.  

This was a great activity, a bit messy but lots of fun was had by all, and the path outside got a great clean once we were done. 

We are so happy with the end result of this, and our residents love this and comment on the colours. 

We have enjoyed looking at different activities in August and have done some local reminiscence.  We started with research on the history of the local area and used this as a talking point which gets everyone sharing their own stories and opinions.  

So far we have had chats on The Lambton Worm, The Empire Theatre, Hylton Castle and St Peters Church. We even decided to draw the Lambton Worm in arts and crafts for us to remember the story and hang up in the activity room.

We had a visit from Michaela from Musical Memories, dressed in her flares and jazzy top  in August who entertained us from outside the home.  We all sat next to windows around the home and outside patio's enjoying the songs of Abba which Michaela had prepared for this week for us.  We had a great time singing and clapping along to the music and enjoying some of our favourite songs. 

All day you could hear us humming along to Dancing Queen 

Here at Barnes Court one of our favourite activities is home baking.  So far in August we have made sweet and savoury dishes but our favourite so far has been our cheese pasties.  There was not a single pasty left uneaten.

Our other favourite baking is coconut haystacks they go down a treat in the home.