Canvas Bake-Off

Our most recent Thursday night event was a bake-off at the Canvas House. Everyone got in pairs or small groups and baked a "pudding" or dessert to enter the bake-off. All the entries were so delicious! The categories were most creative, best overall, chocolatiest, and best presentation. Mike and Rob ended up winning best overall with a delicious apple crumble! Here are a few photos from the evening:

Jo and exchange student Katie with Dirt Cake - won best presentation!

Luke and Alli's oreo cupcakes

The spread.

Alli and exchange student Lauren. :)

Ashley, Gemma, and Jenny

Rob and Mike

Alli and Aaron

And this is what happens if you fall asleep at Canvas. :)

Curry Cook Off

Last week, our Thursday community night event was a Curry Cook Off. Canvas hosted a few curry cook offs a few years ago and we wanted to bring it back. Birmingham is well known for curry restaurants and many students will go out for a curry with friends for special occasions. We have eaten countless curries while living in Birmingham and really love it!

Our Canvas Curry Cook Off had three categories: 1) Most Creative 2) Spiciest and 3) Best Overall. Students, staff, and exchange students formed teams and each made a different curry to bring to Canvas. I think we had about 9 or 10 entries and they were all quite good. Here are a few photos of the night:

Lots of entries, ready to eat!

Plate of curries and a naan bread. Yum.

Playing Nertz and eating curry.

The winning team!

Mike and Matt made a tasty curry!

Quiz Night

Thursday nights at Canvas are community nights. We do different events each Thursday to build community amongst our students. Last Thursday we had a Quiz Night. We had quite a few quiz nights last term and they are quite popular. Pubs in the area offer Quiz nights on Mondays, and so we like to offer the Canvas quiz alternative. Our quiz nights always include silly games and the winning team usually gets some type of baked goods. Here a few photos from last week's quiz night!

The "ginger snap stack" game

A quiz team!

The Quiz Masters: Andrew and Mike

"Bear Hunt" - Gummi bears in whipped cream ha!

The winning team and our cake! Yum!

New Staff Bios!

Teammate Kevin made new staff bios for the Canvas website. Students can get to know the Canvas staff and learn more about our ministry by visiting our website. You can check it too! www.canvashouse.org

Here are our new staff bios!

Another New Term

Well the first week of the new term has ended and things are going great at Canvas! Students are back and eager to hang out at Canvas and to come to Tuesday Nights at TC's. The terms do pass quickly here and so we pack as much as we can into three short months. This term will include our second Spring retreat to Wales, Pancake Day, lots of Tuesday Nights at TCs, and Thursday night events at Canvas such as Quiz Nights, bake-offs, craft nights, a curry cook-off, and more. Details and photos of the events will be posted to the blog!

Cornwall

We took a short trip to the southwest of England for a few days on the coast. It was so wonderful to get away from the city and explore the English coastline. We did some hiking, saw beaches and cute English seaside towns, saw some castle ruins, and relaxed and ate a lot! It was such a wonderful trip. England is such a beautiful country to explore and we are thankful to live here! Check out some of our photos below. There are lots more on Facebook!

Mike on Fistral beach in Newquay

Hiking around the coast

It was windy!

Mike on stage at the Minack Theatre in Penzance

The harbor at low tide in St. Ives

On the coast of Tintagel

So pretty!

In the ruins of Tintagel Castle

New Canvas House Video

Here is a tour of the new Canvas house after renovations. Check it out!

Autumn Weekend Away

Canvas went on our second retreat ever this Fall to the English countryside in Shropshire. November 12- 14 we loaded up into cars and drove to Cloverley Hall, built in 1868 for a Liverpool Banker and now converted into a Christian Conference Centre. It was a beautiful location with grass and sheep as far as the eye could see!

The theme of the weekend was sharing our stories. Some of the staff members shared parts of their life with the group, and students shared parts of their lives with each other. It was a beautiful weekend! As usual on retreats, everyone stayed up ridiculously late playing games. Nertz and Bang were the popular games of the weekend. As you would imagine, Mike and I are loving the new game culture at Canvas. :)
The weekend away was so important for the new Canvas community. We had lots of "regulars" now that can't get enough of Canvas, mostly due to the retreat. We didn't get much sleep, but we wouldn't have missed it for anything!

 I didn't take any photos, so here are a few from one of our exchange students.

Group photo, minus a few still sleeping.

The obligatory "crazy" photo.

Our rental car and silliness. 

Mike and I in front of Cloverley Hall.

Weekend Trip to Bath

Mike and I rented a tiny car and went to Stonehenge and Bath for a Saturday and Sunday trip. It was so wonderful to be out of the city and see more of England! We went to Stonehenge first and saw the famous pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere! Then we headed back up to Bath. We got to go on a walking tour of the city and learned about all the important landmarks. We went the Roman Baths and museum, too. We had a really good time exploring such an old and interesting city!

It was quite rainy and windy when we got to Stonehenge.

But it started to clear up!

The B&B we stayed at in Bath.

Bath Abbey

The Royal Crescent

The Circus

Pulteney Bridge

The Roman Baths

Painting Canvas

We have had more than a few painting days at the new Canvas house. To show you how our painting progressed, here are some photos:

We began by painting all of the ceilings white.

And the walls were painted yellow, orange, and red.

The doors were painted bright blue. (This is a Canvas alumni, Rob.)

We added our logos. (Jenn and exchange student, Christine.)

And they turned out really great!

Then we mopped for hours cleaning the floor.

And painted it a chocolate-y brown color.

Oh and the stairs, too. (Team member, Andrew.)

Mike did a lot of painting!

We have lots of work still to go, but the majority of the painting is done. The second room downstairs is still being worked on at the moment. More "after" photos to come soon!

Welcome Project Update

Unfortunately my (Alli) computer died last week and I have been unable to do much, including posting to the blog. The good news is that I got a brand new hard drive and I had just done a back-up. So everything is back to normal! I wanted to put a few photos from the Welcome Project up for you to see. We handed out almost 1,000 "Welcome back to Selly Oak" gifts to students during the first week of the term. The gift included a jute bag, cup, and flyer with upcoming Canvas events. We all had a really great time and met lots of new students!

Canvas jute bag, Canvas cup, Canvas flyer

During the first two weeks of the new term, Canvas did free tea, coffee, and donuts in front of one of the entrances to campus. We have done free tea and coffee in the past in front of the old Canvas house, but this year we decided to branch out. So we set up shop at 8:00 am each morning and had a really fun time. In the photo below, you can see there is a lot of the construction behind us. That is a new road going through Selly Oak and won't be done for a while. Thankfully, it did not rain during our two weeks of free tea and coffee, but it was quite cold. We met lots of students on the way to lectures or the library to study!

Alli, Anton, and Caleb

Canvas did a variety of events during the first two weeks of the term. We hosted an Open Mic Night at a local student hang-out called Urban Village. We had our kick-off party at TC's which was a great success. We served chili and the Canvas band played three sets of amazing music. And lastly, we had a BBQ in Selly Park and played American Football. The BBQ was on one of the last nice days before it got really cold! 

Alli, Keziah, and Rob getting ready to serve dinner at the kick-off party at TC's.

The Canvas band practicing before the kick-off party started. 

Thank you to those of you who gave to the third Canvas Welcome Project! It was a great success and we really appreciate your generosity! The term is in full swing now. We have a lot of fun and exciting things planned for the next few weeks so stay tuned...