Map of the Xmas Fair

HUGE thanks – AGAIN! – to Sara & Tina in the school office for helping to print AND fold our lovely maps for the Xmas Fair on Saturday 29th November. 

The maps - designed by Franceso (Edouardo's dad Y1G) – will be available at the fair.

If you'd like to save one to your phone or tablet, here it is…

See you at the Fair!

Holy Trinity Christmas Fair 29th November 2014 12 noon - 2:30p.m

Ask Me What I Did Post 26:11:14

Our star of the week this week is… 

EMMA BROWN!

Following on from her outstanding efforts with cheese in the preparations for our Wine Tasting Evening, Emma (mum of Jess, Freya and Jamie) has now bought and donated a new Santa suit to the HTSA!

Thanks Emma!

You can see our new Santa suit this Saturday, where we hope it will be modelled by two HTS dads in Santa's Grotto. And you can have a picture taken with Santa for 50p – our photographer is last week's star of the week Francesco.

Thanks again Emma! Great work!

Are we missing anyone? Are good deeds going unrewarded? We have enjoyed some AMAZING parental support this term and if you'd like to nominate someone for our Ask Me What I Did post, please drop us a line at n2htsa@gmail.com or grab our Vice Chair Adam in the playground.

Thanks to Our HTSA Xmas Fair 2014 Sponsors!

It's The Last Week of Movember!

Last chance to sponsor Mr Ritson and Adam (Isobella's dad Y3) in their Movember efforts.

In terms of cash raised Mr Ritson is currently Chelsea to Adam's Dulwich Hamlet but there are five days left and it's all still to play for. Adam will be manning the book & DVD stall at the Xmas Fair this Saturday – all contributions gratefully received!

Christmas Fair: Volunteers Still Required

We still require help with the following for the Xmas Fair on Saturday:


We still have no Santa. Volunteers please!


Two volunteers required for the makeover and manicure stall!


On Saturday morning we need as many hands as possible to lend a hand setting up.


Please get in touch! Email n2htsa@gmail.com or catch any of the committee in the playground.

Ask Me What I Did Post 20:11:14…

This week's star parent is the designer of our Xmas Fair poster Francesco (Edoardo's dad in Y1).

Francesco is also volunteering to be the photographer in Santa's Grotto at our Xmas Fair. Pics will be available digitally for 50p eaxh, all money going to the school.

Thanks for ALL of your help Francesco!

Here's the poster…

Can you help us in a similar way? All ideas and contributions are welcome – they may seem small to you but they make a massive difference to the HTSA. 

Do you want to nominate a star parent? Drop us a line.

Santa! Where Are You? Volunteers Needed For the Xmas Fair

Dads! We need a Santa* for the Xmas Fair. Volunteers please!

(*By which we mean someone to impersonate Santa. The real Santa is busy that day.)

Wine Tasting… The Result!

£1000 was raised at our first major event of the year.

After expenses the Wine Tasting 2014 cleared a profit of £851.22!

 Well done and HUGE thanks to everyone who made it possible. Thanks to…

 

… our new Holy Trinity parents – nursery and reception mums and dads. Thank you! And welcome! Your support is absolutely vital to our school and we hope you had a good time!

… to everyone who bought a pudding at the pudding auction. You raised an astonishing £376 pounds.

… to Sarah Tyner (mum of Cerys in Year 2) who pushed the pudding auction to its maximum potential. (Note to Sarah: we’ve spoken to Mr. Bowden and he will be holding Cerys back in year 2 indefinitely. Sorry, but we just can’t afford to lose this revenue stream.)

… to Karen Pepper (Louis Y3 and Albert Y4) for the tablecloths and for pledging a £13.50 donation on Saturday morning which took our total before expenses from £986.50 to £1000!

… to Mr. Ritson, as always. Not only was the hall set up by the time we arrived, but he also baked a lemon meringue pie. All this despite practically tripping over the majestic moustache that he is cultivating to raise money for our Movember Hijack. Who said men can’t multi-task?

… to all of our glorious pudding makers: Ginie (Lucy’s mum Y1) who made five! Tris (Amelie’s dad Y4), Lin Askew (Freya's mum Y5), Karen P.G (Isobella’s mum Y3) and Christine (Chikara's mum Reception).

… to the cheese & crackers production line, namely Emma (mum of Jess Y4, Freya Y3 and Jamie in nursery) & Karen P.

… to Maria (mum of Ella in Y4) for pouring wine in such, er, generous* servings. (* By “generous” we mean colossal.)

Not forgetting everyone who helped clear up at the end of the night!

This Week On the HTSA

It's Friday and the end of another busy week for us all on the HTSA… which means ALL of us!

On that note, I had a conversation with a parent recently who said that she hadn't planned to come along to the HTSA meeting because she "wasn't a member."

Perhaps a little clarification on that matter…

Earlier this term we staged elections for the positions of chair, vice-chair, treasurer and secretary. Those positions were duly filled, but those are only four people and they could achieve very little without the help of ALL the parent/carer community. EVERYONE IS WELCOME AT THE HTSA MEETINGS! It's YOUR HTSA and we want your input and your energies and skills.

Next week we'll post pictures here of the co-chairs, vice-chair and treasurer – there's usually at least one of us at drop-off so if you need to grab us (or give us money!) then you'll know who to look for.

Movember Hijack

The long and the short of it is that Mr Ritson is kicking Isobella's dad's butt in terms of cash raised so far!

We'll have the updated running total early next week to mark the halfway point in our campaign, but (as we put it on Facebook earlier this week), Mr Ritson is currently on a big-and-bushy £160 (he's Magnum P.I) while Isobella's dad is on a thin-and-weedy £40 (he's Salvador Dali).

Our Sponsors!

Thanks to Tony's Continental on the High Road for becoming our first website sponsor!

Ask Me What I Did Posts

Are there parents out there hiding their light under a bushel? Working away behind the scenes for the good of the school, unthanked unloved and unappreciated? If you know of such a parent then why not NOMINATE THEM for our weekly Ask Me What I Did Post here on our website. They can join Amelie's Dad and Ethan, Tristan & Isobel's mum and Lucy's mum and Naomi's Mum in our Hall of Fame! Drop us an email by clicking HERE to nominate a star parent.

The Giving Machine

Don't forget to sign up! We've DOUBLED our earning potential and TREBLED the amount of money raised since September – thank you! Click HERE for our easy-to-use sign-up page – and please share with friends/grandparents/godparents!

Jars! More Please!

Well done to those who have brought jars full of goodies for the Xmas Fair. Keep 'em coming! CLICK HERE for your easy how-to guide!

Have a great weekend!

To All HTS Parents Who Made Up A Shoebox For Xmas…

The Vice Chair writes…

Last week at the Finchley Foodbank I had a chat with a woman called Lillian.  

Lillian is in charge of the teas and coffees for the foodbank visitors and (with her husband Peter) is a great pillar of St Mary's parish.

She had just returned from pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While there she had met with a visiting priest and some of his parishioners who were eagerly anticipating the Help A Christmas Child shoeboxes.

"They are done with such love," said the priest. The parishioners talked of the joy with which the children received their gifts.

"To us they're only shoeboxes, " said Lillian. "But from their reactions you would have thought that we are giving them the whole world."

As we fly around filling jars and shoeboxes and writing cheques and throwing change in buckets and fielding school-related requests for this and that and the other, it's difficult not to become jaded and wonder whether our efforts are making the slightest iota of difference.

They really are.

Thanks to everyone who made up a shoe box, and to everyone who helps out with our seemingly constant HTSA requests. You really do make a difference.

Ask Me What I Did Post…

This week's star parent has offered something very simple in terms of his personal input, yet massively helpful to the HTSA.

You may have noticed that our wine tasting posters and tickets this year look a little, er, home made. 

This is because we've lost our fancy printing contact from last year.

Step in…

Tris Dodwell – Amelie's dad (year 4)

Tris joined us for part of the HTSA meeting last week and has offered to help out with our printing! Well done Tris!

Tris's small contribution is important in three ways:

• It's great to have dads on board mucking in with the HTSA

• He's providing a service that would otherwise take money away from our fundraising efforts

• He's doing something that won't take up too much of his time but still helps us enormously. There are SO MANY SMALL WAYS IN WHICH YOU CAN JOIN IN! (Signing up to The Giving Machine for example, or sharing our Facebook posts.)

Thanks again, Tris. Take the rest of the week off.

Can you help us in a similar way? All ideas and contributions are welcome – they may seem small to you but they make a massive difference to the HTSA. Drop us a line.

P.S Look! Our first sponsored post! Thanks to Tony's Continental

Thanks & Have A Great Weekend!

Dear All,

Thanks for another great and energetic week with the HTSA!


Wednesday's meeting was productive (see minutes HERE), great to see THREE dads there (!) and thanks to everyone who volunteered for the various forthcoming duties.



The wine tasting is next Friday 14th November – tickets £10 per person, available from your class rep or the office.

Jarbola! As Gemma said at the HTSA meeting, the kids really go for the jarbola stall at the Xmas Fair and last year we ran out of jars too quickly! Please help! Your jarbola instructions are HERE.





The Giving Machine is going great guns! Thanks to YOU! Just TWO more sign-ups to DOUBLE our earning potential! Here's how to sign up, it's easy and FREE. Please encourage grandparents, friends and godparents to sign up too. 

If you are shopping online this weekend, or if any of you end up making reckless online purchases late next Friday night after the wine tasting (!), then don't forget to go via The Giving Machine!



From next week we've got our first HTSA website sponsor – Tony's Continental on the High Road. HUGE thanks to them!



For those of you not on social media, here's a link to a New York Times article we posted on our Facebook page about the pros and cons of school fundraising. 

As a small school raising funds is a huge challenge for us. It will only become more of a challenge in the wake of Barnet's current consultation on the provision of future education services. The article puts forth some interesting points all round.




Thanks for all your amazing efforts this week! Have a great weekend!

Appeal: We Want Your Christmas Decorations!

As you all know, the HTSA Christmas Fair takes place on Saturday 29th November.

We will, of course, be decorating the school. And for this…

WE NEED YOUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

Can you spare a few bits of tinsel? Some baubles? PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY!


Drop us a line or grab Marina, Gemma or Adam in the playground at drop-off/pick-up.


Thanks!

Remember! Remember! The HTSA Meeting 5th November 9:00a.m

HTSA Meeting 9:00a.m in the Club Room – everybody welcome.

We are particularly keen to focus this meeting on the Christmas Fair (29th November), so please think about:

• PRIZES FOR RAFFLES (at this late stage we are looking for ACTUAL prizes and donations – although great ideas are never wasted, we need to have prizes in place as soon as possible)

• VOLUNTEERING – Can you cover a stall?

We'll also look to discuss the Wine Tasting Evening on the 14th November and have a quick review of our recent efforts on social media and The Giving Machine.


Looking forward to seeing you all!

Ask Me What I Did Post… 04:11:14

Our star of the week this week is the epitome of the old maxim, "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it."

Step forward Ella Dorrell.

Ella, class rep for Y1G, has three kids at Holy Trinity – Tristan, Isobel and Ethan – PLUS a full time job, yet still found the time before half term to marshal the troops for the Christmas Fair, to organise volunteers for stalls and generally muck in.

In between times she's signed up to The Giving Machine and regularly shares our HTSA Facebook posts to spread the HTSA word (every little helps!).

Thanks Ella! My bathroom needs painting, any chance you could pop round and give it a quick lick o' paint this weekend? Ta.

Every week we pay tribute to just one of the many parents and carers who step up and help out with the HTSA. 

Are we overlooking anyone?

Are there "silent stars" out there? We want your nominations! Drop us a line at the usual address or catch Gemma, Marina or Adam in the playground,

Wine Tasting Evening Friday 14th November 2014

Always a good night and a GREAT fundraiser for the school…

Tickets £10 per person – from your class rep or the school office.

Welcome Back! The Next HTSA Meeting is This Wednesday!

Welcome back everyone! We hope you all had a fantastic half term!

This week we hit the ground running with our HTSA Meeting on Wednesday 5th November in the Club Room (the old nursery) after drop off.

The Christmas Fair (29th November) is the big item on the agenda and as usual EVERYONE is welcome to attend. Even dads!

£154.70 Worth Of Cake!

Well done Year Two! Your cake sale raised £154.70 for the HTSA!