Christmas meeting and cocktails

December is always a special time for us SHWI-ers. Secret Santa and our Christmas quiz always gets us in the festive mood. However, this meeting was to be our last at Electric Works and we wanted to celebrate. 

Our last meeting at Electric Works - December 2015

Electric Works has been great for us. It’s allowed us to expand to 135 members. We’ve been able to accommodate disabled members and guests easily. We’ve had a ceilidh, cheerleading, crafting, parties and a market. But it’s time for us to move on, but not before one last go on the helter skelter!

Our main entertainment for the evening was Ed, Cocktail-Maker-in-Chief at The Broadfield and all-round spirits connoisseur. He showed us how to make three cocktails, the history behind it and we all got to taste. Hiccup!

Ed shows us how it's done

I also put together my annual Christmas quiz which this time was a picture round of clips from Christmas films. Congrats to the winners!

Winners of the quiz

Secret Santa is always popular with our gang. Members who want to take part bring a wrapped gift worth £5 and get to take away one themselves. I saved mine until Christmas Day and was thankful for some special festive beers. Thanks Santa!

Our Secret Santa presents

We also invited Jo and Theresa from the Young Women’s Housing Project to have a photo with the big cheque totalling all our fundraising from 2014. They gave us an update on where they money we raised has gone and how this has benefitted the women and children they support. We’ll be inviting our charity of 2015, SAYiT to do this same early in 2016. 

Jen and Kirsty hand over the cheque

I was very emotional to see the big pile of food we collected this month for local food banks. Members really dug deep into their pockets (and cupboards!) and brought Christmas puddings, mince pies, stuffing and gravy to make sure the vulnerable people in our community had a great holiday too. This month, I took the donations to St Thomas’ Church in Crookes and they were very grateful so thanks to everyone who helped. 

Our donations to the food bank

Here’s to a successful and happy Seven Hills WI in 2016 at our new home!

Kirsty Bowen
President

Making new friends

It can be hard walking into a room of 80+ people for the first time. Three years ago, we wanted to make meetings seem a little less daunting by having a New Members Evening - an opportunity for ladies who have just joined the group to meet others in a smaller, less intimidating room. Our meetings are anything but formal, but there does seem something a little bit more relaxing about meeting in a nice pub with a glass of wine.

Our third New Members Evening took place in the University Arms and we had a good turnout of approximately thirty ladies ready to chat. We'd prepared an ice-breaker to get people started that was totally non-compulsory. The idea was to find a person who had the characteristics on the bingo grid.

SHWI Bingo photo from our Instagram profile @sevenhillswi

Some of our committee members were present to answer any questions and a few organisers of our popular spin-offs to encourage new members to join our craft, book and running groups. We hope the women who came had a good time and will hopefully find someone to sit with and catch-up with at the next main meeting.

If you're a new member, we'd love to hear your feedback from the event or if you're from another WI, tell us how you make newbies feel welcome.

Finally, a big thank you for committee members Anna P and Jen for organising the event. 

Kirsty
SHWI President