Brilliant Banquet, Beautiful Blossoms Bring Bountiful Benefits

 

On May 7 St. Philip’s served up another five-star English Tea Luncheon and blue-ribbon Spring Garden Tour in this its third year of existence.  Originally the brainchild of Sheryl McEwan, Nancy Jackson, Janet Lennon, Vicky Granger-Jones, and Lucy Gowan, this truly special fundraising event has grown and improved each year attracting not only many newcomers, but also a large number of return participants.  The 2005 edition included six gorgeous gardens, another mouth-watering English Tea Luncheon, the raffling off of several wonderful gifts, and the sale of exquisitely crafted birdhouses, flower presses, potter’s benches, broken-plate mosaic stepping stones, and ceramics netting the church a grand total of $3700!

 

Many people worked long hours preparing for this complex and important fundraiser.  Deepest appreciation and gratitude to the following people for their tremendous efforts on behalf of our church:  Sheryl McEwan for finding all the gorgeous gardens, for making several lovely broken-plate mosaic stepping stones  to sell, for weeding the church grounds, for cleaning the church, for dealing with countless details associated with the planning and organizing of such an intricate event, for her deep dedication, amazing energy, unfailing optimism, and incredible enthusiasm. 

Thank you to Barbara Lyon for the flower arrangements of unsurpassed beauty, artistry and elegance which have become an indispensable hallmark of the English Tea Luncheon, for her sewing talents and artistic sensibilities which produced the lovely parish hall curtains, teapot display, and fragrant gift sachets, for her common sense, and generosity of spirit. 

Thank you to Vicky Granger-Jones and Lucy Gowan for, once again, organizing and presenting an unforgettably delicious English Tea Luncheon, for shopping, cooking, planning, and serving meals to some 150 patrons, for washing countless dishes, for their beautiful and tantalizingly artistic arrangement of both the meals and the tables.  Deepest gratitude, in addition to Lucy and Vicky, for helping with the luncheon to: Julie Levy, Jong An, Julie O’Brien, and Sara DeRouchey.  These ladies worked their tails off cooking, serving and cleaning and through their efforts made the luncheon a resounding success with wonderful food expertly prepared, beautifully presented, and graciously served.  That kitchen was humming!!!  How fortunate we are to have such talented, experienced, hard-working, artistic people to staff the English Tea each year—-Hooray!!!

Warm-hearted thanks to everyone who worked so hard to prepare the church facility and grounds for this event.  This is such a focal job because it is so important to show our very best face to those visiting our church; we want our church to be clean, neat, attractive, and welcoming!  First and foremost thank you to Tina Grubbe who worked tirelessly for the many months leading up to this fundraiser to prepare the church grounds by weeding her generous heart out, pruning bushes, mulching, and planting dazzling flowers all over our large and challenging church property.  The Tea and Garden tour benefited tremendously from Tina’s botanical expertise, landscaping vision, hard work, and love.  The church building itself also needed a great deal of sprucing up:

Thank you to Julie Mazurek and Karen Krestensen for meticulously cleaning all of the church windows until they were absolutely sparkling.  Julie Mazurek also did a tremendous job of preparing our outside patio area, helping to make it a neat, attractive space in which to dine.  A big thank you also to Val Jackson for repairing a badly clogged drain near the patio area—truly a heroic and nick-of-time deed for which we are all deeply grateful.  Thank you to Mardi Jensen for noticing the drain was clogged in the first place and for everything she did initially to clear out that area.  Thank you also to Mardi for doing such a great job at fielding phone calls and handling many of the office ticket sales so expertly even thought she had only been on the job as our new secretary for such a short time.  Thank you to our cleaning service, Sunrise Cleaners, for their flexibility in allowing us to have them clean the church on the Thursday preceding the fundraiser rather than on their regularly scheduled Saturday.  Thank you to every person who helped clean the church for this event.