The Hermitage Ensemble

Tonight saw the Hermitage Ensemble perform at St Peter's. It was a stunning performance of unaccompanied male voices. They sang a mixture of Russian orthodox and folk songs and even a Beatles number at the end! As you can see they received a standing ovation from the assembled masses!
A huge thank you to everyone who came along and supported this event and watch this space for the St Peters concert series programme which will be published soon...

100 Club

This month's 100 Club winner is Ruth Dawson's daughter Kathleen Edmond.
Ruth was a member of St Peter's many years ago but has kept on her 100 club numbers for herself and her daughter Kathleen. By sheer coincidence Ruth was up visiting for a few days and was in church this morning so was able to pick up her daughter's winnings!!!
Congratulations go to Kathleen and a big thank you to Ruth as she's saved us the postage!!!

Blog launch.....

Well today saw the unofficial launch of the blog! Having realised I had told the congregation we were thinking of starting one I then forgot to tell them that it was up and running!
So today they were told and the email addresses came flooding in.... so HELLO and welcome to any new recruits who become followers this week. I hope you enjoy the blog and if anyone has a burning desire to contribute please let me know and I'll get you registered as a contributer.

Spring Fayre

Well, yesterday saw the annual St Peter's spring fayre go off without a hitch. There were plenty of customers and a huge variety of goods on offer. As always, the limitless home baking and endless refills offered for afternoon tea went down a storm as did the face painting - with both adults and children taking part! A total of £541 was rasied with more to come in from the left over home baking that was sold today after church (you can't beat 2 day old scones and cake!). A massive thanks to everyone who helped, donated or came along to buy what was on offer.

The next St Peter's sale will be in November so watch this space for more details..

just joined, what fun. rev

The Hermitage Ensemble

The Hermitage Ensemble are a Russian male voice choir from St Petersburg who are coming to perform in St Peter's on Sunday 26th April at 6.30pm. They perform a variety of spiritual and folk songs unaccompanied and are well worth hearing! Tickets are £8 / £6 concessions.

Following on from the success of the concerts which St Peter's has hosted in the past we will soon be launching our concert programme for 2009/2010. Watch this space for further details...

St Peter's is a great venue for concerts with excellent acoustics, seating, parking and facilities. Please email Duncan ( stpeters.gala@btopenworld.com ) for further details.

Church Floor

Easter Monday saw the start of the resealing of the church floor... a big job which required lots of helpers! The floor was probably due to be done in the next wee while anyway but was fast tracked due to the permanent marker which managed to indelibly stain the floor following the Christmas Messy church event!!! Interestingly it was an adult ( who shall remain nameless!) rather than a child who perpetrated the graffiti! Here's Rhuaridh and John sanding with the unique 'sanding brooms' ( creating by Duncan - patent pending!) and what looks like snow is actually the large amount of dust they were creating!!

Easter Sunday

I just wanted to add a photo of the sunday squad on Easter Sunday. It was the last Sunday for two of our Sunday Squad families; The Phillips and The Allisons. We had a great service which included adding everlasting dafs to our grass cross on the lawn ( the crocuses now come up about a month before Easter which is very annoying!) and decorating the Easter tomb at the altar. The kids managed to eat a massive choclate egg in about 3 seconds flat and found all the hidden eggs in the garden - no surprises there then! All the best to Kate, Alex, Zoe and Casey and Helen, Anthony, Mary, Owen and Sarah from everyone at St P's, we will miss you all and hope to keep in touch until we meet again.

SPRING FAYRE

Just a wee reminder that the Spring Fayre is this Saturday 18th April 2-4pm at St Peter's Church, Abbotsford Road... there are still some car boot spaces left if anyone is interested? Lots of stalls and the best afternoon teas in Gala on offer!!! Look forward to seeing you there :)

Easter flowers

As a new member of St Peter's from January of this year, this was the first time I have helped with the flowers for Easter Day.

It was a very enjoyable Saturday morning, arranging flowers in various baskets and vases. There were flowers everywhere; on windowsills, shelves, on the font, at the door and around the pillars. We used mostly daffodils with greenery and also a beautiful vase of lilies at the altar .

It was a glorious Easter Sunday morning and even more so to go into church and see such a wonderful sight and knowing that I had helped, with everybody on Saturday morning, to make it so, what a pleasure .

Isobel.

Palm crosses

On the evening of Sunday 29th of March a group of about seven met in the church hall to make palm crosses for Palm Sunday. In previous years the late Ann Brown had always made them - another of the jobs that no one knew needed to be done until after her death. Now about 3 people fill the
gaps. A few of us had done this last year but I must admit I had not
retained the instructions. Fortunately Richard had printed an
illustrated guide for us to follow. This still managed to flumox most of
us even after Richard gave us one to one tuition! Once the nack of
folding the two strips of golden palm in the correct order had been mastered the conversation flowed and the basket filled up with finished
crosses. It was a pleasant hour spent in useful fellowship and I look
forward to doing them again next Easter.

Sheena

Welcome

Hello there and welcome to the St Peter's Church blog! St Peter's is a Scottish Episcopal Church in Galashiels which is in the Scottish Borders. The plan is for the blog to be an open forum for chat, info, reflection, news, etc, etc.. hope you enjoy reading all that's going on!