2024 November/Christmas meeting

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday November 24, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Tammy R.
• Rick J. & Lise W.

Theme:

1. Activities 
   • TBD

2024 September meeting/30th Anniversary

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday September 29, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Tyler C.
• Marlene C.
• Yvette F.

Celebration of the club’s 30^th Anniversay!!

Theme:

1. Activities 
   • TBD

2024 May/June meeting

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday June 2, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Judy G.
• Andy N. & Don R.
• Ruth & Dennis T.

Theme: TBD

1. Activity 
   • TBD

2024 March meeting/AGM highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday March 24, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Gale & John H.
• Marlene & Bill M.
• Cherie S.

1. Annual General Meeting
   • TBD

    

2. White Elephant Sale
   • TBD 

    

3. Display Challenge – Year ‘Round Display using only accessories
   • TBD 

2024 January meeting highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday January 28, 2024

Organizing Committee:

• Sue B-G.
• Peggy C.
• Bonnie M.
• Charlene & Tim P.

Theme: Valentine

1. Word scramble game with a Valentine theme
• TBD
2. a LOVE theme for a small vignette display
• TBD

2023 November/Christmas meeting highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday November 26, 2023

Organizing Committee:

• Cheryl D.
• Lucy H.
• Bonnie M.
• Marlene & Bill M.
• Donald R. & Andy N.

Theme: Christmas

1. Christmas vignette display
   • the idea is to present a display in a gift box or gift basket setting
2. Potluck lunch
   • food is always the essence of the November meeting – bring a dish to share and your appetite to enjoy the food, fun and friendship
3. Christmas word scramble game
   • how good are you to “unscramble”?
4. Gift Exchange
   • bring a wrapped present to exchange with fellow members in a fun and exciting way
5. Penny sale with proceeds going to charity
   • the organizing group donates a number of items for auctioning and all the proceeds raised will be donated to charity

2023 September meeting highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday September 17, 2023

Organizing Committee:

• Robert B.
• Tyler C.
• Judy G.
• Rick J. & Lise W.
• Tammy R.
• Cherie S.

Theme: Halloween/Fall

1. Halloween/Fall vignette display
• Halloween (or the Fall) has always been a popular subject for display theme.  Club members were asked to bring in a display that highlights this “witchy” season.  
• Maybe this was the first Halloween season since the Covid pandemic or maybe because of suggestions mentioned in the previous newsletter on how to create a display; but nonetheless, the club responded tremendously to this “call in action” and in total we ended up with 11 wonderful displays from 11 different members!!


2. Halloween trivia questions
• The organizing group came up with a number of trivia questions about Halloween.  Once again, great questions that were tough!  


3. Display Hints and Hacks
• Not only does Cherie love to collect, she also enjoys greatly on creating displays for her collections.  Over the years, she has seen many display demonstrations and has searched many different retailers for display material. 
• At the September meeting, she shared with club members her finds of many accessories that enhance wonderfully to any displays: some of which came from unusual sources, some required time and patience to make and some were just ingenious – but all of them were creative and fun!

2023 May/June meeting highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday June 4, 2023

Organizing Committee:

• Marlene C.
• Yvette F.
• Dennis & Ruth T.

Theme: Summer

1. Summer vignette display
• Since summer was approaching, the May/June group sent out a challenge to the club members to create displays with Summer as the season using Department 56 products.  As many Department 56 items are Christmas related, that was not an easy task to take on.
• But lo and behold, Cherie, Marlene M. and Dennis had no trouble whatsoever with the ideas: a “Route 56” road trip, Snowbabies having a garage sale and ladies in colourful dresses hosting a tea party.  And voila, we had 3 beautiful displays!!


2. “Can you name that flower?”
• The organizing group came up 10 tough trivia questions on flowers/plants and members were supposed to identify each one.   Needless to say, no one got the perfect score but everyone came away learning some new about these flowers/plants


3. Is it Christmas in the City or is it North Pole?
• Rick brought a couple of recently purchased Department 56 pieces to the meeting.   The pieces were supposed to complement each other and yet, one is identified as a “Christmas In The City” piece (“Santa’s Man Cave”) while the other is a “North Pole” series piece (“Santa at the Man Cave”).   So where exactly do they fit in?

2023 March meeting/AGM Highlights

 

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday March 26, 2023

Organizing Committee:

• Sue B.
• Peggy C.
• Gail & John H.
• Charlene & Tim P.

Theme: Easter/Spring

1. Annual General Meeting
   • There was an election of officers for a new 2-year term.  Positions available for election were: President, Vice-President, and Treasurer.   Dennis and Rick retained their roles as President and Treasurer of the club respectively.   John H. was elected as Vice President.  The club thanked Sue B. who took on the Vice President role the last few years for her dedication and her help in running the club.


2. Vignette display theme: Easter/Spring
   • Members were encouraged to bring in a small display that highlights the bright and vibrant colours of Spring.  Dennis, Ruth, Gail and Cherie showed everyone in the audience their wonderful Easter/Spring displays of Snowbabies and Department 56 lithouses.  They also shared how they came up with the ideas and what accessories to use to build up the displays.


3. “Picasso Bunnies” - a hands-on activity
• Since Easter was just around the corner, Sue came up the idea of having everyone decorating Easter bunnies on paper.   She provided bunny cut-outs and all club members “dressed” up the bunnies by decorating (drawing) various outfits and designs.  It was indeed interesting to see the submitted versions of Easter bunnies were all quite different from each other.

2022 Christmas Meeting Highlights

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday December 4, 2022

After nearly a 3-year absence from having in-person meetings (Zoom meetings are just not the same, are they?), our club finally got together and hosted a Christmas meeting.  As soon as you walked into the club house, familiar faces came rushing to meet you, hug you, chat with you … as if we could just pick up the conversation where we left it last and continued forward, as if that gap in time due to a global pandemic was just a blip that certainly proved “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  We still had Sue and Peggy manning the membership table, Don and Bill taking charge of the prize table and many others setting up displays at the tables.  Yes unfortunately, we did lose a few members due to the natural order of life along the way; but for many of us in the club house that day, we definitely enjoyed every bit of moment we spent together sharing the common interests of our little porcelain houses and figurines .

1. Christmas pot-luck
   • We started the meeting with a bang with our traditional Christmas pot-luck lunch.   As expected, lots of delicious food and goodies to share and enjoy.  Don’t think anyone went home hungry. 
2. “Vintage Christmas” vignette display
   • To get our creative display “juice” flowing, everyone was encouraged to bring a small display using older Department 56 pieces … “older” as in the item had been discontinued in production years ago or was recently retired by Department 56 the company.
   • as you can see from the photographs below, a short time away did not strip away our members’ creative display ideas.
3. Gift Exchange 
   • As for the fun activity in this meeting, we asked each member to bring a consumable item for gift exchange with fellow members in a game of “white elephant” where each person picked a number and took turns choosing a gift from the pile - or “stealing” from an earlier participant who’s already picked - until everyone had a present.
   • The whole process got hilarious fast when people started “stealing” and everyone got excited at the end to find out what gift he/she ended up with.  Looks like Marlene got picked on during the game as she had to re-pick her gifts a few times!