Christmas seems to feel different for a lot of people this year, perhaps its the ongoing cost of living crisis to blame, or maybe there are still some impacts on families since Covid, we’re not certain. Last year we were too busy to run the Christmas competition unfortunately, but after we saw a few disappointed comments, and recognising that people needed a bit of a lift, we decided to run the competition again for 2024.

There have been a lot of other things going on this year to help boost the Christmas spirit in Wixams too. The Wixams Events Group ran a grotto at the Winter Wonderland as usual, then another grotto a couple of weeks later on 15th December. To promote the grotto and also to spread some joy, Santa took evening walks around our town, giving sweeties and warm wishes to all the kiddies who came out to meet him. The Grinch has been doing his rounds again this year too, causing mischief, turning off Christmas lights, giving out Brussels sprouts and spreading even more joy! This year Santa and the Grinch even put on a special show for some special kids on one street in Wixams, bringing a burst of fun and community spirit for those in need 🎅🏻❤️

Check out Wixams Santa Watch and Wixams Grinch Watch to see what they’ve been up to this year.

The Thank Yous

Wixams has some amazing people who really care about our community. As a new-build town full of people from different parts of the country (mostly Luton it seems!), it’s so important for us all to work to get to know one another and to create a thriving place for us all to live for years to come. These events and competitions take time and energy to put together and it’s ALL done by volunteers.

We’d like to firstly thank the Events Group, Wixams’ resident Santas (Vinny and Rob) and the Grinch (not telling 😝) for being epic and making a huge difference to many people this year. Thanks also go to Wixams Parish Council and Welcome Co-op for their donations for the first prize for our competition, and D&D Painting and Decorating who offered us more goodies for another hamper as the second prize, which we gratefully accepted! Faye at Spirited Intent put together the fab Christmas themed hampers, thank you Faye. Yet again the legendary Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com) took all the amazing photos of all the entrants below. And last but definitely not least, thanks go to the judges: Lucy, Paula, Rob, Sam, Adriana, Deb, Leon and Rich.

The Judging

We ask our judges to select their top three homes, in order, and then we award 1, 2 or 3 points for each nomination. The winner is the home with the most total points. However, with so many amazing displays it can be challenging to judge these competitions and to pick just three. We like to let the judges set their own standards on what they like, and we deliberately make sure to have enough judges to make things as fair as we can.

The only comment we make is that we ask the judges to factor in the size of the home. Bigger houses create a bigger canvas, and the homeowners tend to have a bit more money to spend on decorations too. So we do take care to pay attention to the details of the smaller displays, and we have seen people make excellent use of the small space available.

The Prizes

We had two prizes this year. First prize was a great hamper from Welcome Co-op and a £100 John Lewis gift card from Wixams Parish Council. The second prize, donated by D&D Painting and Decorating, was another great hamper of goodies. Both hampers are pictured below.

Runner Up

Our runner up this year was this home on Thistle Lane. The judges commented on how classy and elegant it looked, and that it was a display they would love to have in front of their own homes. Well done, we hope you enjoy your hamper!

The Winners

There were 19 entrants in this years competition and they were all great, but there was just something about this display that made it stand out and it received more than double the points of the next best home. The display makes such good use of the space available and is filled with lots of bright colours and fab inflatables. There’s lots going on in the display but it’s not too busy meaning you can better appreciate all the decorations and lights.

One of the judges commented that whilst the runner up home appealed to her as an adult, they could imagine a child seeing this house and feeling the excitement, seeing all the lights and decorations, and just jumping up and down knowing that Santa was coming soon!

Fantastic work, we hope you enjoy your prize and it helps make your Christmas extra special 🥂

Other Entrants

Here’s some great snaps of the other entrants this year. Commiserations to them all, and we hope they’ll enter our competitions again in the future. The judges commented that all the displays were great and they passed on their thanks to all the houses that entered the competition, the effort that each house put into the decorations brought a lift to our community spirit 👏

Past Competitions

You can find some fantastic photos of the previous competitions on the pages below:

• Christmas Decorations Competition 2019
• Christmas Decorations Competition 2020
• Christmas Decorations Competition 2021
• Christmas Decorations Competition 2022

 

This event has now passed

This July we’ll be running another jumble event, including a jumble sale inside the village hall and stalls all around Wixams on the jumble trail. If you’re looking for a bargain or have a load of stuff to shift here’s your chance! Entry is free and there will be free refreshments too. There will even be a freebie table in the hall so a great opportunity to grab a bargain!

Sunday 14^th July 2024
1:00 – 3:00pm
Free entry for attendees
Lakeview Village Hall, Brooklands Avenue MK42 6AB

How Does it Work?

On the day there will be two places to buy and sell. The Jumble Sale will be in the main room of Lakeview Village Hall. There will be tables set up, as pictured above, and people come and wonder around the hall to see all the stalls. There will also be a few craft stalls available for local businesses so you might find something cool to buy there too.

For the Jumble Trail residents set up a table or blanket outside their own home, typically in the driveway, and then people can make their way around the trail to visit the stalls to find a bargain, whilst enjoying a nice relaxing walk around the town. The jumble trail has proved very popular in the past and there’s a great community atmosphere on the day. We will publish a map of all the stalls on the trail and we’ll ask for a donation of just £1 for a map.

All proceeds from the jumble sales, including table bookings and map sales, will be donated to Keech Hospice.

Book Your Space

If you’re looking to sell some stuff you have two different options:

• Indoor Jumble Sale – A table in the village hall cost £5 for jumble and £10 for craft stalls (tables are provided).
• Jumble Trail – Take part in the jumble trail and be added to the map for free. Please note there aren’t any stalls in village 4, if you’re in village 4 please contact us: community@wixams.org
  

Please complete the form below and for jumble sale bookings we’ll contact you with bank details to ask for payment once your place is reserved. There will be a limited number of craft stalls available in the hall so these will be treated on a first come first served basis.

Please note: Your personal details will be deleted after the event has finished.

 

The Wixams Pokémon has started as a trial run to gauge interest and see if a bigger club is viable. The club will be meeting monthly for now, in the cafe at Seasons gardens centre, on the first Sunday of the month from 11:30 am. To take part please complete the form at the bottom of the page. This will be sent directly to the club committee and someone will be in touch to confirm from there.

For a bigger club to get off the ground it takes volunteers. A small committee is needed to govern the group and make sure everything is in place, and then a few people are needed for club sessions, mainly just to supervise the kids. Without volunteers the club cannot run, so if you can spare a little bit of time to get involved please fill in the form below.

All the remaining bags of seeds have now been claimed

In the Wixams Community Group we love gardening, so in March 2022 we ran a little project to give away sunflower seeds to homes all across Wixams. We started with a couple of large bags of seeds of giant yellow and red sunflowers. These were put into around 100 packs of 10 seeds from each variety, which we gave out to the community. After a post on our Facebook group every single bag was claimed in just one evening! We were overwhelmed by the response and wanted more people to take part so we reached out to Seasons garden centre in Wixams. Seasons were great and, despite their limited stocks, they gave us enough seeds so that we could put together around 50 more packs of seeds which we were able to distribute. Thank you Seasons! 👏🏻

For 2024 we’re doing another seed giveaway and this time we’re giving out bags all harvested from the amazing plant pictured below, which grew to over 6 foot tall and had multiple flower heads. The plant grew from seed which must have dropped in the soil from 2022, so we’re not 100% sure of the variety, but it’s likely to be Sunflower Hallo, a great variety and easy to grow.

To claim your free seeds please just add your address in the box below and we will pop them through your letterbox in the next week. Each contains approximately 25 seeds and growing instructions. Please note this is open to residents in Wixams only.

All bags have now been claimed.

Photos from 2022

Below is a selection of the fantastic sunflowers grown around Wixams from this project from 2022.

There won’t be a Halloween competition this year. We will be supporting the Events Team again with the Halloween Party on 26th October, and we are looking at alternative projects for the future years as Wixams expands.

We would like to express our gratitude to all competition entrants over the last 5 years. You’ve helped make Wixams very special at Halloween and we hope you continue to decorate your homes and continue to make Wixams magical.

There’s no place like Wixams on Halloween and 2023 was no exception! The streets were filled with hundreds of people making their way around the town trick-or-treating, interacting with some of the wonderful spooky displays or simply enjoying the atmosphere. One of the judges commented how cheerful everyone was, that community spirit is a large part of what makes our town such a great place to live and Halloween here so special.

This year was the fifth Halloween Decorations Competition which we run in collaboration with the Wixams Events Group. We had 18 entries and, wow, it was harder than ever to pick a winner! The judges are asked to send in their top 3 homes in order and we award each 3, 2 or 1 points, the winner is the home with the most total points. There are so many factors we have to take into account. In particular there is a massive difference in the space people can use for their displays, some have front gardens, some have massive houses and some have driveways. This just makes it all the more difficult to try and be fair to everyone, but we think we have picked the right winner 🧛🏻

Thank Yous

As always we want to say some thank yous to everyone who has helped with this competition. Thank you Steven and Dee at Welcome Co-op for sorting out the prize hamper, Budgens/Co-op have supported all our competitions since the start and we really appreciate the donation. The hamper was wrapped up in a fab Halloween theme by Faye (check out her Etsy shop here: Etsy|SpiritedIntent). This year our winners also received a £100 gift card for John Lewis donated by the Wixams Parish Council, thank you guys. Asan probably has the toughest job of everyone, he has to visit every home in the competition to get the fantastic snaps below, thank you Asan for everything you do for Wixams (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com). The judges this year were Cecilia & the boys, Rich & Lucy, Barbara, Sheila, Adriana, Sally & James, Richard and, one of our previous competition winners, Rob. Thank you for your excellent judging skills!

This year and last we worked closely with the Events Group to put together the Halloween parties which were both a great success. Both our groups are run completely by volunteers and all profits go back into the community. We are always on the lookout for more volunteers so please use the contact form to get in touch if you’d like to help out in our future activities.

This Year’s Prize

We had a two part prize this year, a great hamper of goodies from Welcome Co-op and a £100 John Lewis gift card. We hope the winners have got stuck in already 🍬🍿🍺🍫

🥁 Our winners are…

There was only 1 point in it this year but our winners are this amazing home on Brooklands Avenue! We were really impressed by the variety of decorations, many home made including a fab man-eating wreath, how interactive it was including a snow machine and flying ghost, and how the whole family dressed up and took part in the display. They had a lot of visitors all evening who all seemed to be having a lot of fun, and that’s a large part of what makes Halloween so enjoyable.  You could tell they went to a lot of effort to put it all together and they really deserve the win. Well done!

Other Entrants

We want to give a huge thank you to everyone who entered our competition. The standards were on another level and that made the judging so much more challenging. Spiders seemed to be a popular theme this year, big and small. One display had one giant spider happily sat on his web, another had a corpse wrapped up and a trail of spiders making their way to it for their dinner, eww! As usual there were some amazing carved pumpkins out there, maybe we need a competition just for that next year 🤔 We also liked all the colourful lights and interactive elements. It seems the other home on Brooklands Avenue reigns supreme in their delight in scaring people, this time with a prisoner in a cage who gave a fright to anyone brave enough to try and reach for a sweetie.

We were really pleased to see so many homes from Willow Grove (village 2) joined in the competition this year, there seemed to be a lot more people out and about there too so it looks like the Halloween magic is spreading! 👻

Past Competitions

You can find some fantastic photos of the previous competitions on the pages below:

• Halloween Decorations Competition 2022
• Halloween Decorations Competition 2021
• Halloween Decorations Competition 2020
• Halloween Decorations Competition 2019

This Christmas we’ll be running a brand new project which should make a lot of kids happy as well as helping us raise some money for charity. Parents will be able to book a ‘Santagram’ which is a visit from Santa Claus, similar to a Santa’s Grotto but in your own home, and they can even provide us with a present in advance which Santa can deliver. Alternatively parents can book a phone call where Santa will call from Lapland to ask your child what they’d like for Christmas and if they have been good!

To get this project off the ground we need volunteers who can…

• Dress up and play Santa and visit homes in person
• Act as Santa on the phone
• Help coordinate bookings

We’ll even be running a ‘Santa Masterclass’ so if you’ve never played Santa before but are interested there is help available.

Please note: We won’t be running a Christmas decorations competition this year.

Operation Oscar Bear

Oscar is a 3 year old from Wixams who suffered a Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) event at birth. He is living with Cerebral Palsy and needs help to get an operation and intensive rehab which would change his life. You can read more about his story here:

just4children.org/operationoscarbear

All proceeds from Project Santagram will go to the Operation Oscar Bear fund.

Book Your Place

We are now taking bookings on the Wixams Events Group website: wixamsevents.uk/santagram

 

This event has now passed

If you’re stuck looking for a gift for your loved one this Valentine’s Day you’re in luck! We’ve invited some small and local businesses to come along to the village hall, they’ll be selling a wide range of handmade products and other great gift ideas. This includes jewellery, personalised gifts, cards, gift vouchers, candles, wax melts, ornaments, stationary, indoor plants and more! Entry to the event is free and we’ll even have some free refreshments on offer.

And that’s not all… all attendees will be entered into a prize draw to win a little hamper of goodies to share with a loved one! No purchase necessary, just turn up and you’ll get a ticket.

Stalls

We’ve managed to get together a great selection of local businesses offering a wide range of gifts you may want to buy for your Valentine:

• Rokkall Gems
• Therapy from Within
• Well Turned Out – Woodwork
• Lanji Candles
• Libra Leather
• Magical Glasses
• Sara&Co Bespoke Cakes and Creations
• Sweet Dem Sugar
• Jars with Love
• Winnie & Pearl
• Em’s at 27
• Hearts and Crafts
• Ember & Gold
• LoveLeaf – indoor plants
• Holistic Gifts
• Loaded Club Bakes
• Evelyn Rose Jewellery
• Little Box of Serenity
• In2 Crystals
• Melanin Minds
• Petal & Perch
• Christina’s Charms

The judges scores are in and it’s time to announce the winners of the Wixams Christmas Decorations Competition 2022! As usual we ran our competition to try and select the best decorated home and to award the winners with a prize for their efforts. Things have been a little different this year, with the cost of living crisis in full swing (and getting worse) it seems there are fewer lights shining this winter, but even so the Wixams community have worked hard to make our town a magical place to live at Christmas time.

Thank yous

In case you’re not aware, this and all our competitions are run by volunteers who give up their time to give back to the community, and that shouldn’t go unrecognised. We’d like to express a massive thanks yet again to Welcome Co-op Wixams for donating the prize for our winners, thank you Damien and the team. The fabulous Faye took all those goodies and put them into the fun festive hampers, thank you Faye. As usual the amazing Asan battled the winter weather to take all the excellent photos for us to share with the community, he’s an absolute star! Thank you also to the judges: Barbara & Nathan from the Wixams Events Team, Richard, Cecilia & the boys, Joey, Adriana, and our new judge the lovely Deb. Finally a big thank you goes to Sheila for stepping in and helping with the prize giving at very short notice.

The Prize

We don’t take this competition too seriously but when it comes to the hamper we definitely make sure to put together a selection of goodies we think our winners will appreciate. There’s around £100 worth of items altogether between the two hampers which includes a great selection of booze, drinks, snacks, biscuits and chocolates. We hope it helps make sure our winners have an extra special Christmas 🍿🍾🥨🍻

The Winners

To run this competition we give the list of addresses to all the judges and then they have a few days to let us know their top 3 in order. We award 3 points for 1st, 2 points for 2nd and 1 point for 3rd, then we total up the points from all the judges and the winner is the home with the most.

This year’s winners received more than twice as many points as the second placed homes so it clearly resonated with our judges. They were very impressed by the beautiful sleigh, presents and other ornaments, as well as the real decorated tree and colour coordinated lights. Altogether it just works and it really stood out from the crowd, well done to the winners!

Other Entrants

17 homes entered the competition this year which meant there was a big variety of ornaments, lights and other elements on display. We particularly liked the homemade Quality Street sweeties on one home. We also saw some excellent lights such as those on Homestead Way, Avocet Road and Oatlands Drive. The beautiful archway on Thistle Lane was particularly special and really took things up a notch too (they came joint 2nd). This year we noticed there were a fair number of unicorns amongst the displays, but the ultimate has to be the one on Fieldfare View which looks across majestically to his reindeer friend! 🦌🦄

Overall there were some amazing displays out there and here’s some great photos for you all to enjoy….

Past Competitions

You can find some fantastic photos of the previous competitions on the pages below:

• Christmas Decorations Competition 2019
• Christmas Decorations Competition 2020
• Christmas Decorations Competition 2021

Wixams is a fantastic place to be for Halloween each year and, despite the miserable weather, 2022 seemed to be busier than ever. We saw our town come alive with hundreds of little reanimated skeletons, witches, ghosts and even dinosaurs out on the hunt for sweeties and enjoying the atmosphere.

As usual we ran our Halloween Decorations Competition so that we could find the ‘Spookiest House in Wixams’ and reward them for their hard work and for helping create such a wonderful experience for our community. This year 16 homes entered the competition and we could tell some people had really taken things up a notch! Our judges saw so many weird and wonderful new ideas and it was particularly interesting to see what past competition entrants had put together. In some cases they took last year’s display and went event further with it, in other cases they did something completely new. The creativity of some displays was off the charts and the variety made things really difficult for our judges. Two of them kept asking if we could just make everyone a winner a split the hamper between all the families!

Thanks Yous

A competition like this takes a lot of work and people to plan and run; given it’s all done by volunteers we want to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has made this a success.

The winning prize is a massive hamper and all the goodies were very kindly donated by Welcome Co-op Wixams, thank you to Damian and the team. All those goodies were put together in a great Halloween themed two-part hamper by the fantastic Faye. The amazing photos below were taken by Asan (Tu Plus Tu Photography tuandtu.com), he covers lots of events in Wixams and elsewhere for free and in his own time. It’s a massive undertaking and it makes all the difference to have so many great shots to share with the entrants and the wider community. Last but not least are the judges: Barbara, Cecilia & the boys, Rich & Lucy, Ferial & Mike, Paula, Sheila, Adriana, Richard and Joey. Thank you all!

The Prize

As usual the prize for the winning home was a massive two-part hamper of goodies worth around £100. Both boxes were crammed with drinks, snacks, sweets and more which we’re sure our winners have got stuck into already. We make sure that around half of the budget is spent on drinks just for the adults as we know they put in so much work into their displays, sometimes planning months in advance 🍻

And the Winner is…

Three homes this year were very popular with the judges but there can only be one winner, and it was this fantastic display on Pheasant Grove! We were wowed by the sheer number of props they had created and the overall effect was something really spooky and special. Apparently it was put together on a tight budget and the props were mostly hand made from bits of old wood and bin liners. 10/10 for effort there!

There’s a big variety of houses in Wixams, particularly in size, so our judges do their best to factor this in and consider how well the displays take advantage of the space available. Our winners are lucky to have some green space in front of their home but they really took things to another level filling it with a giant spider and web, corpses, pumpkins and more. The house itself was really impressive too including silhouettes in every window. Well done and thank you for bringing something new to Halloween in Wixams 👏👏👏

Other Entrants

We want to thank all of the participants in this year’s competition for their hard work. This year really was exceptional and we saw some particularly fantastic new ideas which deserve a mention. The house on Brambling Gardens was covered in a giant spider’s web and the nest was home to the bowl of sweeties 😵‍💫 The owners of one home on Brooklands Avenue seem to take great pleasure in giving visitors a fright in return for sweets, this time a giant spider would drop on anyone brave enough to try to grab some from the bowl! We saw lots of great window scenes but the stained glass windows on Tawny Avenue really stood out. We also saw some really great carved pumpkins in a variety of styles, some lit of with colourful lights, and they all looked fab.

A special mention goes to the Stranger Things themed house on Southern Cross which was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately the age range of our judges mean that they didn’t all get the references, but one judge is a big fan of the show and said the attention to detail was incredible and it captured so many different parts of the story. Well done guys, we’re sure you made a lot of people very happy 😈

Here’s some great photos from the other entrants for you to enjoy.

Past Competitions

You can find some fantastic photos of the previous competitions on the pages below:

• Halloween Decorations Competition 2019
• Halloween Decorations Competition 2020
• Halloween Decorations Competition 2021