July 2025 – Freedom Fields Festival at The Farm Animal Sanctuary, – Men’s gifts theme for shoeboxes.
The Farm Animal Sanctuary
The Freedom Fields Festival is being held at The Farm Animal Sanctuary near Evesham from the 25 – 27 July. Food and drinks, live music, celebrity talks, wellness workshops, shopping, kids’ area and of course the 600+ recued animals. Tickets and more details of the event can be found on their website or Facebook page.
During August they are hosting some Children’s Art Mornings – details and tickets on their website. https://thefarmanimalsanctuary.co.uk/events/
On 6-7 September they are holding their Autumn open weekend. There will be lots of stalls selling food and gifts at the Sanctuary. I’ll be there on the Sunday with a stall selling handmade gifts to raise money for the Sanctuary.
Link to Hope
July is Men’s Gifts month – the Link to Hope calendar says Men enjoy presents to e.g. work gloves, DIY tools, tape measures, belts, ties, handkerchiefs.
There are various suggestions in my July blogs from previous years, but in addition to the suggestions in the calendar I always add a few safety razors to both the family and elderly boxes. I bought some men’s insulated gloves earlier this year from B&M so I’ll add them to some of my boxes. If you have a What! store near you, they usually have 4 pairs of cotton work gloves for under £1.00 – great to divide up between boxes.
Socks are another useful item to add – especially if you can find thick work socks for a good price.
Free items
As well as my £10.00 challenge I’m going to see how many items I can get from recycling websites such as Freecycle and Freegle to fill a shoebox. I don’t expect to be able to get all the contents for free – especially the toothbrushes or sweets but I’ve already got several of the other essential items such as soap, candles and holders, wool to make hats, and fleece fabric to make scarves (I’ve previously got hats and gloves off Freegle), and lots of other items including toys, ties, sewing kits, mugs, scissors etc etc.
Bargain Buys
If you have a Lidl Plus card, you can get 2 scented votives in glass for £1.00. My local Morrisons has kids’ thermal beanies in black for 50p, and ladies knitted gloves 50p a pair. They also have some sage flannels for 30p. The quality of the flannels seems good – better than the Home Bargains ones which work out at 25p each, and if you only need one or two works out cheaper. The sage coloured ones seemed to be the only ones at that price.
Dunelm have a set of 3 tea towels for £1.00 – they aren’t the greatest quality but would probably be okay once washed. They are available online in their sale, and my local Dunelm has lots in store in red or beige. The other bargain I spotted as I was queuing to buy some tea towels were some of their Chocolate Orange scented candles in jars – they had been reduced to 50p at Christmas, but they are now marked down to 25p! I went back the next day and bought more 😊.
Proper Job still had a pack of ladies’ ankle socks with coloured toes and heals – 5 pairs for £1.00! I went into 2 stores and each only had one packet left on the shelf. Also not reduced but seem good value – Poundland had some more packs of 6 HB Pencils with erasers for 30p so only 5p per pencil. They also have some A4 drawing pads for 30p and some for 50p. If you have a Nectar card Sainsbury have 50 HB pencils reduced from £3.00 to £2.25. And finally, Asda had small garden hand forks reduced to 30p – they are plastic, so I’ve only bought one to try in an elderly box.
Till Next Month
Update – Asda have Frisbees reduced to 29p and individual skipping ropes reduced to 49p.