In January we celebrated Chinese new year, with a selection of games, workshops and activities! We began our celebrations with a sculptural snake workshop to commemorate this year’s animal being the snake. Our residents used foil and mod rock to create the shape then decorating them with acrylic paint and gold foil. In the bistro our residents created a Chinese noodle soup and had a taste testing session with a selection of other Chinese cuisine. We also held our annual chopstick challenge competition where our resident’s had to transfer a number of objects using only their chopsticks. Another fun day at M&J!

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For our annual festive show, this year we chose a variety show to showcase all our varied talent in Mary and  Joseph house. Below, the slug slayers kicked off the show with their rendition of king of the road followed by Folsom prison blues: Afterwards we welcomed our Elvis double act.    We had a ventriloquist, a performance of ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and another singing act from one of our residents. For the big finale they performed our very own choreographed Bavarian dance! And finally, to close the show, we brought everyone back on stage for our annual tradition of singing do they know its Christmas!

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During the month of December we celebrated our annual Christmas Jumper Day with singing a selection of Christmas carols and selecting our winner for the best Christmas Jumper of 2024! This Year we decided our winner with a twist, each of a our participants cat-walked to show us why they should be crowned our winner! Gary was crowned our winner of the 2024 Christmas Jumper Day competition, winning a Santa Claus jar filled with festive treats!

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To commemorate remembrance day we created a group painting of a stained glass style poppy field and each of our residents completed a section of the painting. Below are all of our residents who took part in the  remembrance day projects. After the two minute silence one of our residents chose to read in Flanders field to commemorate our fallen soldiers. Also pictured below, our residents decorated their crosses and placed them in Our display pictured below with all of our resident’s and staff who came together to commemorate Remembrance Day.

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In preparation for Halloween we held a pumpkin painting workshop and competition for the spookiest creation. We began our Halloween celebrations with a morning of dressing up from our selection of costumes.  We followed this with the traditional reading of the raven accompanied by Daniel as the raven for this years rendition In the afternoon we played a Halloween themed game of Pictionary, which involved   picking out a subject matter from three different ghoulish categories. Pictured right, Alan successfully translating his selection onto paper Ending our celebrations with Julie awarding our winning pumpkins, our first place pumpkin winner below with his tiger themes traditional pumpkin.

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This month we began our community outreach project at Harpurhey church. Our aims of the project is to brighten up the interior and exterior of the church and repair elements that have  become run down. We began by prepping the space for our mural, pictured below our residents laying down the first coat. We also began working on the exterior of the church. On the second week we began repairing the benches, below doing the finishing touches. Inside the church we began on the linework for the mural, using a projector to transfer the design in segments. Pictured below our residents during the process and with their handiwork after the session We can’t wait to see what it looks like in the next few weeks!

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Mary & Joseph House recognise the value of  day trips and activities.  It’s good to get out of the house. Trips can make us feel good, give us a chance to relax, do new things, encourage friendship and create lasting memories.  We try to encourage everyone to get involved in  suggesting, choosing and planning trips, and understand the importance of this to those who choose to become involved.  Our activities week took place between June 10th – 14th 2024. Even though we do activities throughout the year, residents really enjoy activities week. There is something to do every day either in the house or out. We always make sure to ask residents for feedback from activities week. We like to know if there is anything we can improve on or any other places they would like to visit. We are proud to say there were no complaints!

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Mary and Joseph House are delighted to offer our congratulations to John Hubert Cox – Chair of The Joseph Cox Charity 1977 to present. He has been awarded MBE in the Kings New Years Honours list 2023 for services to homeless people. Pictured below John with his family and our Home Manager, Julie, outside Windsor Castle after collecting the award. A few days after John visited M&J to celebrate this huge achievement with our resident’s and staff. John gave a lovely speech commemorating our residents and staff and both Nick and our resident advisor Dennis gave speeches to congratulate John!

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This month we began planting in our raised beds with a selection of vegetables and herbs with the help of Sow the City to kickstart this seasons planting! We began by planting our parsnip’s into the raised beds, Ladislav from ‘Sow the City’ gave us a quick rundown of the do’s and don’ts of planting and we quickly got the hang of it! A huge thank you for Sow the city for joining us to help kickstart growing season at M&J! In the next couple of months we will see our garden flourish.

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Easter Workshop Our residents created some lovely wooden resurrection themed decorations to place around the house for the season. Our residents  in the woodworking room helped create all the elements in preparation for the workshop. We began by painting our wooden shapes below. These were displayed around the home over the Easter weekend. Easter Chocolate Nests In celebration of Easter we made some simple but effective chocolate Easter nests to enjoy in this weeks coffee morning. John began by breaking up our mixture of dark and milk chocolate ready for mixing with our syrup and butter mix. Whilst Martin was busy breaking up the shredded wheat, pictured above. After melting down our chocolate and butter mixture martin mixed in our shredded wheat and we began placing  it in our cupcake cases to set in the fridge, pictured below. These were enjoyed by residents and staff! Easter Egg Hunt Finishing off our Easter celebrations we had our very own Easter scavenger hunt equipped with riddles placed around the house that our resident’s had to follow to complete the hunt and win a mystery prize! Pictured below, Daniel, Mike and Dennis in our winning positions!

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