Tag Archives: Christmas

A Christmas Update

We have a few bits of news so thought it would be a good idea to do a quick blog post to update our friends and followers on what has been happening.

  1. We are almost ready for the Santa visit on the 21st December, as usual Pete will be donning the Santa outfit and will be accompanied by his helpful elf Christian. It is amazing how quite a lot of kids are quite frightened of the 6′ 4″ santa but all love his elf! Thank you very much to our trustees Darren Bowler and Amy Hancox for ordering and wrapping the presents and for Hugh from Boy Meets Girl Photography, who is donating his time and skills for free on the day.
  2. Waitrose in Sevenoaks have The Christian Blandford Fund as one of their nominated charities. Please drop by and pop the green coin into the middle bin!
    The CBF at Waitrose

    Christian

    The CBF

    The CBF

     

    Jess

    Jess

  3. Christian wrote a lovely piece of music for a string quartet. As proud parents we hope you don’t mind us sharing it!

 

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story, Fund Raising. Tagged with , , , .

The New Beacon choir sing Christian’s carol

Christian is in the Chapel Choir at the New Beacon School and they had their Advent service at the beautiful chapel at Tonbridge school. The junior school choir sang Christian’s composition, “The Snow”, while he played the piano.

If any parent wants photos of the event they can be downloaded from here.

This is a time of year to appreciate what we have and to help others that are less fortunate. Darren and Amy are currently ordering and wrapping toys for Santa to deliver to children who are unlucky enough to be in St George’s over Christmas. We continue to work to work closely with Martin at Samuel’s charity and look forward to continuing to improve children’s comfort in hospitals in 2016.

Merry Christmas!

Christian

Peter Blandford’s photo

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story. Tagged with , , , , , .

Father Christmas at St George’s

We had a great day handing out presents at St George’s helped by the wonderful play specialists. The photos are on facebook here and also here where parents can download hi-res versions using the username guest and the password Christmas. Thank you very much for the very talented photographer Hugh Miller who gave up his time and skills in order to help us out.

Santa 2014I received a nice e-mail after one of our Santa visits which i thought it would be good to share, I have changed the names to maintain anonymity.

I just wanted to say “thank-you” on behalf of my son Jack, who received a lovely teddy. It really cheered him up, as did the visit from father xmas and his little helper: his eyes lit up when he saw them (I think he was thinking “oh no, the door’s opening, someone in a uniform is coming to do something nasty to me”) and was lovely for his dad and mum to see. As you can appreciate, being in an isolation room at xmas is pretty grim for a kid. Jack has been poorly all his life and is a “regular” at St George’s, despite living 60 miles away in West Sussex. The distance makes it particularly difficult as his brother, Henry, who he is very close to, has to stay at his Grandma’s during his many stays at St George’s, so we are all split up as a family. Luckily, we were put on “home leave” for xmas but must return next Friday.

I think your charity is brilliant. As soon as I read the poster in the posh new parents room I could tell that the person who wrote it had a real insight into life for kids and their families in this situation that only personal experience (unfortunately) can bring.

Merry xmas to you all and keep up the good work!

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story, Things We've Done. Tagged with , , , , , , .

Christian’s Christmas carol sung by The Cantus Ensemble at Sevenoaks School

Christian loves to play the piano and write his own music, this year he entered a competition run by Sevenoaks School to write a Christmas Carol for a 5 part choir. The winners and runners up in each age group got their song sung by the incredible London based Cantus Ensemble at the Christmas Carol concert in the school .

We are very proud that Christian’s lovely song got awarded 2nd place in the year 7 and 8 competition. It is called The Snow and all the words, piano music and vocals were written by him.

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story. Tagged with , , , , .

Claudia’s Christmas Market

On November 20th Claudia opened the house to about 80 friends who came along to support The Christian Blandford Fund, and do a spot of Christmas shopping.

Coco Cuscino brought along beautiful bespoke cushions, soft furnishings and gifts,  Anahita displayed luscious smelling homemade beauty products and Phoenix had a table overflowing with gift wrap, cards, note books and much more.  Upstairs Ben & Lucy from The Square Salon were busy with manicures and hairstyles, Miss Captain and Little Captain had rails full of fashionable clothing for ladies and children, Ochre had some gorgeous cashmere, silk and wool tops, pashmina’s and scarves whilst Stella & Dot brought a bit of sparkle to the event with some stunning jewellery.  Cakes and nibbles were courtesy of Sara Hester from Tandem Catering and Top Table provided us with tea pots, cafetieres, milk jugs, cups, glasses, teaspoons and much more.

We raised a massive £2410 and more money is still coming in online.  Thank you to everyone who supported this event.

Many people bought raffle tickets that helped towards the final total. We thought Christian should pick the lucky winners…

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story, Fund Raising. Tagged with , , .

Christmas gifts for the children at St George’s

We have had a great day handing out presents to the Children who are unfortunate enough to be at St George’s over Christmas. Christian was a fab Elf and we had lots of help from the wonderful staff at the hospital. Henry stepped in as official photographer and took some photos which are here. I have included a hi-res copy which parents can use for personal use as they wish, just press the download button on the photo you want.

 

Posted in Blog, Things We've Done. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , .

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

It is becoming an annual event, The Bowler and Hancox Families wrap up the presents and Peter, Henry and Christian pop over to St George’s as Santa and his two helpers. Today was very special with some really lovely children who seemed very happy with the visit. We hope they all get back to the comfort of their homes soon.

The photos are all here, we have made it so the photos are all downloadable in hi-res for the parents of the children that Santa saw.

Posted in Blog, Things We've Done. Tagged with , , , , , , , , .

December 2011

16th December 2011

Christian had his 6 monthly checkup today. All good with nothing to worry about. Apparently now that he has been clear for four and a half years, the chance of a relapse is “tiny”.

Hooray!!!

14th December 2011

We have ordered all the toys for Santa to deliver to the children’s wards at St George’s on the 23rd December. Ho ho ho!

12th December 2011

We have bought 20 cot mobiles for the Hedgehog Ward at Tunbridge Wells Hospital which Claudia is delivering next week.

10th December 2011

New Beacon Nativity

Christian and his class put on a lovely nativity play this year. The photos are here. If any parent wants a higher res copy of the photos please contact Peter.

3rd December 2011

Thank you to the lovely Leila Hacket at the wonderful Coco Cuscino for their continued support. They have just had an event to launch their amazing Christmas collection and gave a share of the proceeds to the Christian Blandford Fund.

1st December 2011

The Pinckney ward at St George’s now has a new Christmas tree and decorations thanks to The Christian Blandford Fund. Thank you to Darren Bowler and Marianne Sylvester for sorting it out.

Posted in Blog. Tagged with , , .

Christmas 2006

30th December 2006

Fortunately, Christmas was fairly peaceful. We had to visit the hospital every day in the morning to get some GCSF but that was much better than the 3 visits a day it looked at one point that we would be making. Christian’s hair started to fall out so we had to give him a haircut which he was a bit upset about. It didn’t seem to help when we told him that it looked like Daddy’s hair now. I can’t say I blame him. He still looks gorgeous though…

PICT0078-01

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story. Tagged with , , , .

Christmas Eve 2006

PICT0047-01

We have been in and out of St. George’s for the last few days getting antibiotics for Christian. He has also had GCSF to boost his neutrophils and a platelet transfusion as they were very low. The last couple of nights we have brought him home to sleep and yesterday he was home most of the day, returning to the hospital three times for his antibiotics. He had the last dose of that this morning and we are waiting to see what his blood results are to see whether he needs more GCSF.

Nanny and Grandad (June and Sandy) were here yesterday and the boys got their presents. Henry and I have been playing scalextrix all morning and Christian is very excited about his pink dancing car! it could be worse Danny was threatening me with buying him a pink fairy costume…

Merry Christmas from all of us and thank you for all of your support over the last few weeks. It really has made a massive difference.

 

Posted in Blog, Christian's Story. Tagged with , , , , .