Trials and Tribulations

Well, quite a bit has happened since the last blog entry.

Our website is now up and running so people can go on and have a look at what we are doing and can purchase tickets for our events.  The link to the website is:  http://www.batwoman.org.uk/Macmillancancersupport.html

On 8th November we did our first fancy dress pub crawl, which despite a couple of hiccups, was a big success.  We were meant to meet in town at 10pm but the bus was late so me and Sarah were late and left mum stood outside the pub freezing for half an hour while she waited for us.  We did text her to let her know we were running late but she left her phone at home, oh well!!  We finally got going and were immediately given a sign of things to come when in the second pub we went into, a drunk man with vomit all down the front of his jacket kept trying to force us to give him a hug or a kiss, so that was fun. We finally managed to shrug him off and continued on our journey.
After a few more pubs we got to The Malt Mill which, like all the pubs we went to, we had phoned prior to going in and they said it was all right for us to take in our collection tins.  However, when we got there we got some donations from the two punters in the upstairs bar then headed downstairs where people seemed to be very annoyed at our presence and nobody donated any money.  After a few minutes the barman finally told us that it was a private function and everybody had already paid £20 a ticket to get in to help raise money for a little girl with cancer, so we quickly hurried out and continued with the pub crawl.
A few pubs later and we arrived at Filthy McNasty's where I was very successful and lots of generous people donated lots of money.  Sarah however was not so lucky.  She approached some people at the bar and was asked by the barmaid to show her fundraising licence. She stopped to open her bag to get the licence but before she had a chance to reach into her bag, a big burly man grabbed her by her necklace and pulled it across her throat so that she could not breathe and he proceeded to grab her bag and take out the licence, all the while the barmaid just stood watching what was going on and not doing anything to help her.  Luckily, mum was able to go over and help Sarah while I finished gathering donations from other punters.  Just as I was about to leave I walked past a group of men who'd said they wanted to donate some money.  I stood patiently and waited but instead of putting money into the tin, the men decided it would be more fun to try to take off my dress.  When I shrugged them off and started walking towards the exit one man from the group told me that since I was no fun (i.e I wouldn't take my clothes off) they were not going to donate any money anymore.
We carried on with the pub crawl relatively problem free, other then the occasional rude person, and in the end Sarah raised £126.95, mum raised £145.91 and I raised £185.07, making it a successful pub crawl with a total amount raised of £457.93.

Today, mum and I braved the cold and went to Thainstone for another car boot sale, selling lots of clothes, bags, books etc generously donated by our super smashing friends and ourselves.  We arrived around 8.30am and immediately were approached by several people looking to find a bargain.  The first hour we were there was really busy and we sold quite a lot, afterwards it settled down and by noon there were hardly any people going about.  By about 12.30pm we ended up just packing up and going home as there were no more customers and everybody else had packed up or were packing up.  Despite the freezing cold and people being really stingy we managed to get rid of everything, well almost, which is great as it means no more car boots for a while - yey!!!  Even if we hadn't sold so much we probably wouldn't be doing any more car boots anyway as they don't really generate much money and it's getting far too cold now.  Today we took in £81.20, which doesn't seem like much in comparison to other things we are doing like pub crawls and bag packing but it's more then we have taken in the other car boot sales, besides, every little helps!!!

In other news, we now have more bands organised to play in our Battle of the Bands in the Tunnels on 10th January.  The bands are: Eden, Zodiac Arrest, Logic Effect, I Punched A Hurricane, Reverse-61 and Easily Led.  Tickets for this event will cost £3 and will be available to buy at the door on the night.

You can check out the details for this event as well as the "Not A Burn's Supper" Dinner Dance with Auction and the Race Night (tickets for these two events are available online) at our events website http://www.batwoman.org.uk/Macmillancancersupport.html.

Other than organising and participating in events and getting cold and abused by drunk men, we have pretty much occupied ourselves by emailing lots of companies and asking for donations for our raffle and auction which doesn't seem to be very successful thus far.  We did also find time to go for long walks up hills carrying our day sacks to practice for Peru.

So, that's about it from us this time but remember that if you would like to join in with any of our events then please get in contact, also you can sponsor us using the following links:
http://www.justgiving.com/Heather-Kennedy5
http://www.justgiving.com/Karen-Kennedy5

Success!!!

Oh my word, what a busy couple of weeks we have had.

First of all, we now have a venue for our 'Race Night', it's booked for Saturday 15th February 2014 at the Transport Club.  It's got plenty of space and more importantly, it's cheap, we don't have to pay to hire the hall we can hire it for free if one of us becomes a member and pays the annual £20.80 membership fee.  So that's good news.  Also, Alex, a friend of a friend, is going to help us run the race night (for a small fee of course) which he has done many times before and he has all the equipment we need so we don't need to hire any of that which is good.  So all we need to do now is get raffle prizes sorted out, get tickets printed and sell some horses.

Secondly, we have now also organised a Charity Battle of the Bands event which is going to be held in the Tunnels on Friday 10th January 2014.  The Tunnels are letting us hold the event there free of charge which means that any money we make from it goes straight towards our fundraising.  So far we have 3 confirmed bands, 'Zodiac Arrest', 'Taxi for Bongo' and Mike Weber and his band.  We still need to find at least 3 more bands to compete but I am already on the case, I have emailed a bunch of bands and am awaiting their replies.  As we cannot pay the bands to play we are organising prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.  Tickets for this event will be available to purchase on the door.

As far as the Dinner Dance goes, we have some more good news.  My friends son plays the bagpipes and has agreed to play while the guests arrive.  We also have a folk band lined up to play a live set and a DJ who will play while people are eating and after the folk band have finished their set.

Yesterday we did some bag packing in Morrisons on King Street dressed in onesies.  My dad and my friend Sarah came along to help us, also dressed in onesies.  My sister Lianne was going to come and help but she got a little confused and turned up at Sainsburys instead.  Sarah and mum were packing bags on the tills while my dad and I were stood out in the cold at the front doors collecting money from people as they were entering and leaving the supermarket.  Despite the cold, wet and windy weather the bag packing day was a success.  Sarah raised £52.58, mum raised £106.31, dad raised £137.30 and I raised £191.20, so in total we managed to raise £487.39 so nae too shabby!!

Other then all that, we have kept ourselves busy emailing companies asking for donations for raffle prizes and for the auction, which seems to be going very slowly.  We have emailed hundreds of companies and so far we have a £525 voucher for Bedlam paint-balling, two £50 vouchers from Sailor Max Tattoo Parlour and a voucher from Ishoka Hair Salon which is still in the post but hopefully we will receive more donations through soon.

We have also been busy trying to sell some stuff on Ebay and we have a massive pile of clothes donated from various friends for the next car boot sale.  We also have our first fancy dress pub crawl on the 8th November so keep your eyes peeled for photographs from that, hopefully it will be another successful fundraising event.

Again,if anybody would like to join in and help with our fundraising please get in touch so we can sort out your licence.  Also, if anybody would like to sponsor us, you can do so through justgiving: 

www.justgiving.com/Heather-Kennedy5 or

www.justgiving.com/Karen-Kennedy5

Ups and Downs

Well the last two weeks have been full of ups and downs.  The detox was a disaster, lasted four days before the headaches and stomach cramps got so bad I had a sandwich, well a hotdog.  The funning thing is, when I told Heather, she told me she had broke the detox too with a hotdog, like mother like daughter LOL!!!  The good news is we still lost weight, one hotdog each didn't hurt too much, I lost 3lbs and Heather lost 2lbs.

Heather

That was on Monday last week, the diet has done downhill since then, it was my friends birthday this week so I've had cake and alcohol plus we have ended the detox early, basically we are back to eating tatties - NOT CHIPS just baked tatties, still no caffeine though or dairy till next Monday.  The gym has been getting easier too, I no-longer suffer for days afterwards and am managing to do more each time, so I'm hoping I haven't put on weight even if I haven't lost, I'll let you know.

Karen

Good news - The council fundraising license has arrived so we can start the fancy dress pub crawls, these should be good fun.  We are also bag packing at Morrison's in West North Street, Aberdeen on the 2nd November wearing Onesies, anyone fancy putting on their onesies and joining us OR chose Morrison's that day to do your shopping and let us pack your bags for a small donation of cause.

The Copthorne Hotel has been booked for the 25th January 2014, as we are having a "Not A Burn's Night" Charity Dinner Dance that night with an auction.  The tickets will be £35 per head if anyone is interested send an email.  I've sent letter out to the large oil companies here in Aberdeen to advertise the tickets and ask them to sponsor a table at the dance, hopefully they will take us up on this as it will allow us to put all the ticket money to the charity but we will have to wait and see.

If you can't make it to the dinner dance, how about joining us at the "Race Night".  For those of you who don't know what a race night is, its a fun pub event where you can purchase a horse, nominate a jockey and even bet on the races, lots of fun.  If your horse wins you win!  The date and venue for this is still TBA but we'll keep you informed.

So as you can see its been a busy couple of weeks, but hopefully we can start raising some descent money now.  Anyone who does fancy joining us on any of our events please email me first, as under our licensing rules we do have to make sure you all have passes at each event.  In the meantime don't forget you can sponsor us directly by making a donation through our just giving pages: Karen or Heather.

GREAT NEWS - We both lost weight..... I lost only 1 pound but Heather lost 3 - Yipee!!!

 

 

Detox

I got up this morning and found my legs didn't work after the training yesterday, good laugh though, Heather is half my age and she's suffering too.  Never mind, no training tonight just the weight lose class.

Well we started the weight lose classes today.  First thing you get weighed, thats over surely it must get better.  You get your diet plan with losts of healthy receipies, great we think, this should be good.

Then he says, on this diet you should be able to lose a stone a month, great we think.  Then he tells you the bad news.  Your diet starts with a two week detox......the list of banned food is bigger than the allowed food.  No alcohol, no caffine, no sugar, no milk, no butter, no bread, no potatoes, no pasta......etc.

Basically we are heading for two weeks of fruit, veg, eggs, we can have chicken, beef, fish but no sauces and only basmati or brown rice.  There was some good news though, we can have peanut butter lol, with a spoon cause no bread or on rice cakes.  Our snackes will be fruits or nuts and we should eat 6 meals a day.  That will be fun to fit in, I usually eat once a day, I forget to eat at work, I will need to make myself eat to lose weight!

These next two weeks could be fun, plus we found out tonight, that from next week we are training in the weight lose class too.  So lets get this straight, I am paying a man to punish me with tough exercise and put me on a strict diet and I can't even have a drink afterwards.  This better work......just remember we're doing this to get fit and healthy enough to raise lots of money for Macmillan.  Talking of which, I have a meeting arranged for wednesday to discuss a large event I am planning to help raise lots of money and have fun doing it......watch this space for up dates on this, you won't regret it, I promise.

In the beginning

Okay everyone, you'll need to bare with me here, this is my first attempt at a Blog, ill try not to make it too boring.

My daughter (Heather) and I have decided to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support as they were a great help to our family when my mother in law (mum K) was dying of breast cancer. 

They were a fantastic help to my father in law (dad K) who was trying to cope on his own, as like most families now, we are scattered all over the country, so were not able to help much with the day to day unlike when my dad was dying of lung cancer.  I live in the same city as my mum and so was able to be there for her.  My mum had support from us but dad K didn't and so had to rely on outside help.  The Macmillan nurses were brilliant, not only helping with mum K's medical needs but they kept her spirits up with their permanent smiles and laughter, not an easy task I would imagine, but what a difference it made to both of them.



From left to right...Heather, Dad K, Lianne, Duncan, Howard and Mum K when mum was fit and healthy.



Dad with me when he was young and healthy.

We want to say 'Thank You' in as big a way possible, so have decided to challenge ourselves to not only raise thousands of pounds but to get fitter and healthier doing it.  We have signed up for the Inca Trek to Machu Picchu.  A trek that starts at 12,000 feet and continues across the Andes for 6 days non-stop and ending on a 3000 step climb up to Machu Picchu.  Hence the blog, we want to keep a record of how we are doing and not just in the fundraising but also in our fitness.

Heather and I up Lochnagar 

So far we have done two car boot sales, climbed Lochnagar a couple of times and signed up for the gym.  Believe me the car boot sales are the easy bit.  After my first weekend in the gym I am dying, I hope I can walk for work tomorrow, thankfully I work behind a desk most of the time now.  We also have our first weight lose class tomorrow night, not sure I want to know my BMI but here goes nothing.....no pain, no gain or so they say!!!!

To help us reach our fundraising target visit our justgiving pages at http://www.justgiving.com/Karen-Kennedy5 or http://www.justgiving.com/Heather-Kennedy5