October 2021 – Spooky Sanctuary, and Shoe Box deadline approaching.

The Farm Animal Sanctuary

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The Farm Animal Sanctuary are hosting their first ever Halloween Event – Spooky Sanctuary from 10:00am – 3:00pm.  There will be a ghost trail, Pumpkin painting, lots of games and chances to win treats and a prize for the best dressed.  Entry is £5.00 for adults and £7.50 for children under 14.  The money raised will help towards the running of the sanctuary.  Please support this charity.    To book please use the link below.

https://www.thefarmanimalsanctuary.co.uk/spooky-sanctuary

If you can’t attend but would like to support their work you could sponsor one of the animals:-

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https://www.thefarmanimalsanctuary.co.uk/sponsor-an-animal

Purchase something from their Amazon Wish List,

https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/UF02CTXPTTC8?ref_=wl_share

Or donate to them – if you pay tax please tick the gift aid box – it doesn’t cost you anymore but means the sanctuary receives an extra 25p for every pound you donate. So if you donate £5.00 the Farm Animal Sanctuary actually receives £6.25.

https://www.thefarmanimalsanctuary.co.uk/donate

Link to Hope

This is the last full month to fill your elderly or family shoebox for Link to Hope.  Your filled and wrapped shoebox needs to be with your area collector by 5^th November.  If you don’t know where the area collectors are based check on the Link to Hope website https://linktohope.co.uk/shoebox-appeal-2021/getting-boxes-to-us/    If there isn’t anyone local to you listed please get in touch with Link to Hope as they may know someone you can take your shoebox(es) to. 

Many thanks to Hazel, Julia, Beth and the staff and students of The John of Gaunt School who have already dropped off their filled shoeboxes.

The contents focus for October is sweets and chocolate.  They need to be of EU origin and have a best before date of June 2022.  As the shoeboxes could be given to people who don’t eat some animal products for religious or medical reasons my personal recommendation it to try to avoid sweets or chocolates that contain gelatine – the easiest way to do that is select sweets that say they are suitable for vegetarians.  Personally, I go further and try to buy sweets and chocolates that are Vegan friendly so contain no dairy or egg products or honey or bees wax etc.

There are several offers on sweets at the moment because of Halloween.  My ‘go to’ accidently vegan favourites are multi packs of skittles.  You get 10 Small packets for £1.00 in Poundland, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons (£1.40 in Sainsburys). Because the packets are small it’s easy to cram them into small gaps in the shoebox.  I buy several bags and divide them between the boxes.

Swizzels Chew Crew are vegan this year – a bag with a mixture of drum sticks, refresher chews, banana skids, fudg-eee are 89p a pack in Tesco.

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Rowntrees fruit pastilles are good value at the moment with a packet containing 4 tubes/rolls for 99p in Tesco and Asda, and £1.00 in Sainsbury, so at roughly 25p a tube I buy enough to put a tube in each family shoebox.

Aldi are quite good for bags of sweets.  Their mint imperials are 45p per pack and their Lemon Sherberts, Fruit Sherberts, and Rhubarb and Custard boiled sweets are 59p for 100g. 

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For the elderly boxes I add in bars of dark chocolate.  Morrisons and Lidl’s own brand are 30p each and Sainsburys do one for 35p a bar.  For the family boxes I tend to put in diary free chocolate buttons 40p for a small bag from Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda.  I also sometimes put in Frys chocolate bars in both the elderly and family boxes.  The orange cream and raspberry cream ones are good for the family boxes as despite being dark chocolate the fondant cream centre means the dark chocolate isn’t too strong.  It’s often possible to buy a pack of 3 bars for £1.00 but do check the use by dates as in some of the discount stores the use by date is often only a few months away.  Sweets in this years shoe boxes must have a use by date of June 2022 or later. 

I found a 3 pack of Fry’s Strawberry cream bars for £1.00 in Poundland and they also had packs of limited edition dark Skittles for £1.00 both had long use by dates. 

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Other bargains

Poundland have some children’s beanie hats for 50p each reduced from £1.00 – they apparently had some children’s gloves for 50p but they had sold out at my local store.  (They do have 2 pairs of children’s gloves for £1.00.)  Primark still have 2 pairs of adult gloves for £1.00, and Savers have adult magic gloves for 59p a pair.

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Just to note some of my key bargains from earlier months seem to be going up in price by 50%.  The four pack of 12 small colouring pencils has shot up from £1.00 to £1.50 – that still works out at only 38p per pack but still quite an increase and I can only find 2 screwdrivers for £1.00 in Poundland and One Below – it was possible to buy between 4 and 6 screwdrivers for 1.00, and items like the 5 piece manicure sets in Bargain Buys/Poundstretcher that were 69p and then 79p are now £1.29. 

I hope some of you are able to support the Farm Animal Sanctuary at their Halloween event or if not that you can support them by sponsoring an animal, buying something off their Amazon Wish list or making a direct donation to them.  Also that you are well on your way to filling a shoebox or two for a family or elderly person for Link to Hope. 

Finally some of the hats I’ve been knitting for my shoeboxes – some have now had pompoms added, but you get the idea 😊

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