On September 23rd we held an Italian dining experience evening. The Ashby House dining room was decorated with bistro table clothes, Italian flags and coloured balloons. Briony and Fiona from the Ashby House Activities Team dressed as waiting staff, and themed music was playing in the background to add to the atmosphere. The food was delicious, thanks to our kitchen team - we enjoyed minestrone soup, pizza, lasagne and then tiramisu for dessert. The meal and good company made it a lovely evening. Jean, pictured, said, "I really enjoyed myself this evening. Will there be another one?" Our Italian resident, Hugh, also had a great time, enjoying the music and the food. Everyone had fun and we are planning a culturally themed dining experience once a month. 

We are delighted that Fiona and Briony from the Ashby House Activities Team have been getting out and about to tell people about our lovely care home while also raising awareness and sponsorship for Alzheimer’s Society. On Friday 11th Sept they completed a ten-mile Memory Walk around Willen Lake in Milton Keynes. They did this in their spare time to raise money for this very worthy charity, as well as honouring the work we do at Ashby House, supporting residents with dementia in our Memory Lane community. Fiona and Briony are both passionate about offering high quality, personalised dementia care, and in their daily roles they create fun and meaningful activities. Fiona and Briony were lucky the weather was nice for their walk. They stopped halfway for a well earned cup of tea then completed their ten miles, enjoying the route and taking a few photos on the way.

We have been using our balloons and swatters this week to have some seated fun and physical activity. This game is good for hand-eye coordination and upper body flexibility. Chung and Jean really enjoyed the fun.

At Ashby house we were delighted to receive a phone call from ‘fishnchickn’ which owns 21 fish & chip shops across this region. They had held a competition on their Facebook page, to give away free fish & chip meals on September 4th, National Fish & Chip Day. They asked the public to nominate people and organisations that they considered have been heroes in their local community since the start of Covid restrictions in March. Ashby House had been kindly nominated, so today we received a generous donation of a fish & chip meal for every member of our staff, from the local branch of fishnchickn in Shenley Church End, Milton Keynes.We collected our donation from their friendly team members Mark, Marika and Maisie. They told us that since March their branches have given away over 7,000 meals to local communities. It was such a kind and generous thing to do and all the staff at Ashby House enjoyed their meals. Residents enjoyed the day too as they also had a fish & chip lunch, prepared by our own Chef.

August 26th was National Dog Day, and as a nation of dog lovers we simply had to join in the celebration. We looked at some photos of dogs, sent in by relatives and staff. Everyone liked to see the different breeds of man’s best friend and we all had our favourites. We had a full gallery of hairy friends, with their name, age, breed and what they like to get up to. We reminisced about our own past pets and their importance to us. Mary remembered her father breeding Blue Bedlington Dogs when she was a young girl. Chris enjoyed talking about his old Red Setter, Beauty, and the lovely walks they went on - we watched a virtual dog walk, too. Later we had a dog quiz and learned lots of new facts. For fun we played dog bingo to round off the day. Everyone had a great time including Activities Coordinator, Briony, who dressed as a Husky!

We held an Hawaiian Morning at Ashby House, even though the typical British weather wasn't quite what we hoped for. The rain didn't stop our fun - we simply moved our activities indoors. We decorated the activities lounge to look summery and tropical, with Hawaiian music playing in the background.

We all wore floral garlands to get into the tropical spirit, we shared a platter of tropical fruit, including Pineapple and oranges, and we drank refreshing mocktails. We talked about where we had been on our holidays over the years. Chris, pictured, said he had never been to Hawaii but had been to Greece many times. John had been to Hawaii with his work as an engineer on a boat, He said he went to the beach while the rest of the men went to the pub! We all enjoyed recalling our past travels.

We used our inflatable picture frame and inflatable parrot to take some fun pictures and we all had the giggles by the end of the morning including Rose, pictured, despite the lack of tropical sun.