The Christmas party on December 3 rd was the best yet. Yvonne and her helpers provided a lot of challenges and fun. First we helped her to write the president’s speech by providing all the adjectives, adverbs and some of the verbs – the result was hilarious. Then we each had to make a flower for our table centre from the bits and pieces that Yvonne had provided. These were judged by Gerry who made us laugh. Lastly, we had to find the forgeries by discovering the mistakes in three pictures and guess the artists too.
The food was varied and delicious as always, beautifully presented and with a minimum of fuss as we had disposable plates and our own cutlery. Rayma had prepared three raffle prizes gorgeously decorated in baskets. The goodies had been donated over the last few weeks by members. Mike drew the winning tickets and Rayma presented the prizes. Then Celestine became Santa for the handing out of the Kris Kringle presents. Finally we had the judging of all the members’ pictures according to the three categories that Yvonne had prepared.
It was a wonderful wind-up to a fairly difficult year. I know I felt glad to belong to such a happy, friendly and creative bunch of people.
I was told that the gavel I need to bang every so often was turned by Max and is therefore especially valuable to us. We toasted him with much love and happy memories. Thank you cards were given to Karyn, for her work on the newsletters, and to Mike as secretary.
However, there are many members who haven’t been mentioned individually who have generously given time, effort, ideas and quiet service to us all in the society and to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. The Pastel Society provides much in the way of artistic and social richness and makes an important contribution to the cultural life of our community. I particularly wish to thank the committee members for their contributions.
I look forward to next year. In responding to the survey, we all chose some activities which will enliven our meetings and, I hope, motivate us to paint more and better. We’ll be looking for lots of members to volunteer to run one or two of these events. The committee will be meeting in January to outline our calendar of events and plan the year ahead. I have the feeling that it’s going to be a good one. We’ll meet again on 4 th February 2013.Till then, have a good holiday. Happy painting, Anne Rice, President.