It’s a quiet start to the New Year as snow has prevented us from being able to stock up the Rose Cottage kitchen today! We’re hoping to be back to normal with hot meals available tomorrow – weather permitting.

Our flower arranging taster last Friday was a great success. Jenny gave us lots of different ideas for creating interesting displays and the best part was she only used flowers from the supermarket, so nothing exotic or difficult to find. I thought you’d like to see these pics of the arrangements she made during her talk.

We’re all itching to have a go ourselves now! If you want to join us the next session is Friday 6th November 2-4pm. This time we’ll all be trying our hands at creating our own arrangement, so bring along a suitable container or vase – everything else, including flowers, will be provided in the cost of the afternoon, which is £4 per person. Drop into to Rose Cottage to book or send us an email: office@twerton.com

A very big thank you to Twerton Infants School who gave us a lovely surprise today by turning up with three huge boxes of food donated by children and parents as part of their harvest festival celebrations. We were quite bowled over!  They explained that they had chosen to donate it to us because they particularly wanted it to benefit people in their local area – and it certainly will! Like most households in the UK, the cafe has been struggling with rising food bills over the past year and donations like this will help us to avoid having to put our prices up, so the cafe can continue to serve tasty low cost meals to benefit the local community. We will also be able to use some items to make up food parcels to help some of our elderly customers and those on low incomes. What a great way to celebrate the harvest season! Thank you so much to all at Twerton Infants School for their generosity.

I don’t know about you but I am quite often a bit disappointed when I get flowers home from the supermarket and put them in a vase. Somehow they never look quite right! So I am looking forward to our two forthcoming taster sessions on flower arranging. Jenny Morris has kindly agreed to share her experience in this area and has promised her sessions will be suitable for complete beginners or those who already have some skills in this area. On Friday October 23rd Jenny will be hosting a talk and demonstration  from 2-4pm, then on Friday November 6th from 2-4pm there will be a workshop session with chance to make and take home your own arrangement. All materials will be provided and tea and cakes will be served to keep your energy up! Space is limited, especially for the workshop session, so please contact us to reserve your place. Cost is £2 per person for the talk, and £4 per person for the workshop.

It is with great sadness, but with a sense of excitement and anticipation, that Lucy and I are leaving Rose Cottage and Twerton to take up the post of Vicar in another parish.  We are aiming to move in early December.  It seems strange to leave the Community when things are going so well, so why are we leaving?  Well, the short answer is that God is leading us and is calling us to go and lead a church!

Over the past two years we have put a huge amount of energy into the Rose Cottage project.  In fact, we have hopefully turned it around from being a church ‘project’ to a Community with a capital C – a group of people, committed to each other and to God, with a common purpose or goal.  This Community is not based around Lucy and I – and if it was, then we should definitely be leaving – because it is not, and never has been, about us.

Our vision was to create an environment where people could flourish and I think, under the grace of God, that we have achieved that.  One analogy is getting a rocket into orbit.  We have put all our energy in to get this thing off the ground – our time, money and effort – but now the rocket is in orbit, it needs some new skills to take it further into outer space – to build and maintain the space station.

So what has been achieved over the past two years?  Well, too much to list here!  The Rose Cottage Community does what it says on the tin – a faith community that seeks to bless the wider community through running a community centre and cafe.  We have loved every minute of it and will miss the Community here.  We love you all and you will always be in our prayers.

Heaps of Peace

Gavin and Lucy

Taste – a group that meets at 10.15am on Thursdays at Rose Cottage have decided to become ‘mission-focused’. They are seeking to support Samaritan’s Purse – a charity that helps the victims of war, famine, and natural disasters across the world. They will be doing this by collecting and assembling Christmas presents for needy children. You may have heard about the Shoe Box appeal? Well, this is it.

If you would like to join in with Taste then come along to Rose Cottage at 10.15am and ask for Sandra or Lucy.

The IT Crowd is a new group of people who meet to serve the wider Twerton community through using IT (Information Technology) skills.  They meet at Rose Cottage on Monday mornings at 11.30am for coffee and a hack.  The first project that The IT Crowd has taken on is the development of twerton.com and associated pages.  To this end, they have created sites for Carrs Woodland, Twerton History Society, The Rec House and Rose Cottage.  If you would like to join The IT Crowd, then please contact them through the Rose Cottage contact form on this site.  Blogtastic!

I think we have made the transition from school holidays into a new term relatively unscathed! The weather has changed and there is a distinctively autumnal feel in the air. It’s that time of year where we begin to get things ready to endure winter – protecting the wooden furniture, finishing painting windows, battening down hatches so to speak. No doubt soup will be back on the menu soon.

We welcome into the Rose Cottage Community some new members – Ian and Michael who will volunteer on Wednesdays, Judy, who will volunteer on Thursdays, and Paul and Dermot who will volunteer on Mondays and Thursdays. Welcome!!

Sue is back from Ireland and the kitchen is once again alive with the sounds of naughty giggles!

Righto, time to go and put on the coffee…

The third summer BBQ was a great success – well, at least it didn’t rain this time!  It was a slightly more chilled-out affair with mellow music and a family atmosphere.  Once again, Dave cooked up a storm on the BBQ.  It was so good to see so many people from the wider Rose Cottage community – toddler mums, elderly people, Carrswood clients, friends from St. Mike’s, Father’s House, Bath City Church and beyond!  Special thanks to all who made our three summer BBQs such a success – especially the kitchen team who worked hard to let the rest of us have such a good time.

Enjoy a summer smoothie!

So the school holidays are here, and with them the monsoon season. We’ve been taking a couple of weeks off to give the volunteers a well earned rest, but we’re back in action again from Monday August 10th. So if the kids are bouncing off the walls and you’re desperate for a change of scene that won’t break the bank, why not come down to the cafe? Creative types can join in our fun competition to design an ice cream sundae, and if it’s too wet to enjoy the garden there’s always the free internet access to keep them quiet while you enjoy a well earned cuppa.