Activities at Tixover House Care Home

From our residents meeting activities were made aware that the residents would like to go out for lunch. In advance, this was communicated to the residents and a sign-up sheet taken round the home.  If your loved one lets you know of an outing they would like to do, please speak with activities or place on our wish tree in reception. 

Residents enjoyed a main course and accompanying wine. There was no room for pudding! Residents said the following:- "It's nice to get out sometimes isn't it. It's been a lovely day today," "I enjoyed it very much, I like going out. It was a good choice," "Well this has been nice, it is lovely and bright here."       

We are delighted to have passed a recent Care Quality Commission inspection with an overall ‘Outstanding’ rating - the best possible rating the home could achieve.

The CQC inspected Tixover House in November 2025 and rated the home, as ‘Outstanding’ in two areas of the inspection - well-led and caring - and ‘Good’ in the safe, effective and responsive categories.  The report stated that there was a strong sense of belonging and teamwork in the home nurtured by a very well-respected management team who encourage a culture of genuine warmth and inclusivity and where residents are supported to maintain their interests and independence by exceptionally kind, caring, respectful and attentive staff. 

We celebrated International Hug Day within our home and here are just a few of the snaps captured. It is so heart-warming to see both the relationships that we have with our residents and the staff team. 

Everyone was open-armed giving and receiving hugs. It was such a feel-good start to the day! I keep revisiting these photos, as they truly do show the love within our home. One lady even has it built into her life enrichment care plan to have hugs from the staff team, wanting that much-needed human touch.’     

Staff and residents joined fellow keen quizzers from over 250 Barchester care homes and hospitals across the whole of the UK, including Wales, Scotland, Jersey and the Isle of Wight, to put their collective Christmas music knowledge to the test.

The Barchester Big Christmas Music Quiz took place over the festive period where we got super competitive and took on our sister homes from all over the country to find out which Barchester home or hospital had the best quizzers. It was a festive episode of our Barchester Goes Gaming quiz, an exciting quiz to test our Christmas musical knowledge and see who is the biggest brainbox of them all, the homes battled it out to find out who would prevail.

Another fabulous outing for our residents, hot refreshments, lemon drizzle and croissants! We were pleased we got to see their magnificent tree too! Start letting the activities team know your wishes for outings for the coming year. We will be finding out where everyone wants to go and wish fulfilments too!! Thank you for all your help.

Our residents enjoyed Chinese New Year celebrations in our home. Enjoy sweet and sour chicken, beef stir-fry and prawn crackers and accompanying fortune cookies. 

Activities ran flower arranging, creatives, quizzes and exploring Chinese radio on our activities platform Oomph. I would like to take the time to thank all the staff that have adapted to the busy Valentines' weekend, Chinese New Year celebrations and a day late will be pancake day because of just how many tasty treats we can eat in a day! A big shout-out to our chef team – thank you! In particular, our Head Chef Tony and our Hostess Cheryl, thank you!!’

We had a wonderful morning, having a coffee on our Memory Lane. Lots of conversation and a real giggle throughout. Thank you to Chef Ian for producing an amazing sponge cake and also to Dementia Champion Kathy, who supported activities on this occasion. Definitely do a re-do soon as it was so well-loved! 

This is fundamental within our home, having the understanding of our residents and knowing that not all of our residents would be able to access the Community Coffee Morning in residential or outings into the community. The residents, during this simple activity, whereby we had a mock-up tea-shop, commented that they felt like they had gone out for a special coffee. In fact, all that was different was that we encouraged a social setting for their morning refreshments.  

Staff and residents chose to spread some joy on International Hugging Day which took place on January 21st.

International Hugging Day is an invitation to extend your arms and offer affection, understanding and warmth. The idea is that by promoting a simple but meaningful act of kindness in the form of a hug, we can transform people’s lives, one small gesture at a time.

The Tixover House team made up of staff covering all departments decided to come together to spread love, warmth and kindness through such a simple gesture of giving and receiving a hug, the smiles on the faces of all and how accepting of a hug show truly how well received this act was.

As we left the home, we witnessed a beautiful sunset over our neighbouring fields to our home. Tinwell Forge is a must see spectacular, turning their home into a grotto! We parked the mini bus directly outside and our residents were chatting away and pointing out their favourite features of the display!

This year they are fundraising for MNDA, it's worth a check-out and a visit to their JG-page! We took a tour through Stamford, through Red Lion Square, the high street, high street shop displays, The George of Stamford and then looped back through Eastern On The Hill.

This will definitely become a Tixover tradition!

What a fun activity in our Memory Lane community this afternoon! Thank you to Morrisons , Stamford, for including this as one of their recent donations to our home. 

All residents in our community were involved in every step of this process, either through adding items to the design or admiring and commenting on the house. We have taken the gingerbread house across the home for 'show and tell' too, adding enrichment to residents throughout our home. 

We love baking activities within our home, and we increase the volume of these activities around Christmas. Christmas reminisces through the making of mince pies, Stir up Sunday and the decorating of the Christmas cake for the Barchester Christmas cake competition, lots of sensory elements of Christmas.’        

A day in our volunteer… knit n natter monthly community club, Valentine's Day colouring, Valentine's Day sticker creative, Valentine's Day-themed bingo, singing and dancing, lots of introductions and conversation and companionship.

Welcome to the team. Evie is already bringing a lot to our home. Residents are enjoying the additional intergenerational nature of the activities too. We are already looking forward to your next visit!’      

Emma Howcutt-Kelly joined our home and delivered a water colour workshop. We put this workshop on, having seen what a huge hit the Barchester virtual painting was and wanted to make sure we did more of what our residents love. Included are some of the finished watercolours. Don't they just look wonderful! 2 hours seated in the Garden Lounge for our residents taking part in this watercolour workshop. We went around the residents following to find out how they found it, and it was really well received!

Thank you, Emma, would thoroughly recommend you. In line with this, through speaking with our residents, they have asked for a new paint-by-numbers class, resources have been bought and this is due to start first week of February.  

Ahead of Big Garden Birdwatch which starts on Jan 23rd, staff and residents were treated to a talk by nature conservationist, Rob Magee. Specialising in ornithology, Rob has over 20 years’ experience leading conservation projects across Wales.   He previously worked for the RSPB on the ‘Red Kites of Ceredigion’ project in Mid Wales as well as BBC Springwatch at RSPB Ynys-hir Nature Reserve in 2013. He then worked at RSPB Newport Wetlands from 2013 to 2017.

A huge thank you to our staff who delivered Christmas within our home, to Activities Jessica and to Karina's husband, David, who year after year becomes our Santa and delivers presents to every resident within our home.

We had a fabulous time in our home, but Christmas continues with plenty planned in the lead up to New Year. Thank you to each and every one of you!

Merry Christmas!

Massive thank you to Activities friend Rachel, who kindly brought Marley in again to visit our Nursing Community. Marley is a regular, much loved feature of our home. Rachel dressed Marley in a Christmas outfit too. Although this soon came off because of the warmth of our home, Rachel still showed the outfit to our residents and was met with much happiness through doing so, “Hello baby, I think you’re gorgeous” and “What a dear little face, hello, let me see you.” 

We also sang and danced to Christmas songs at the foot of our resident's beds to their delight, asking for their song requests and dutifully trying our best to sing them, adding to really wholesome room visits bringing a lot of joy to our residents. There is a lot of pet therapy in our home and Christmas is no exception, with visiting cats and dogs and Zoolab creepy crawlies and, of course of residents' loved ones bringing their pets to our communal areas of the home. Your pets are very welcome within our walls!