Windsor Red ER Post Box, a photo by Rovers number 9 on Flickr.

Lovely shot of the Post Boxes outside Windsor Castle.

Following hot on the heels of Valentines Day, this year February 29th offers girls the advantage of being a Leap Year.  Traditionally on this day usual laws were suspended including the rule that only men were allowed to propose.  This meant that just once every four years women got the chance to pop the question.  Custom also dictated that if he turned you down he had to buy you an expensive gift – it’s a win-win situation!  If you’re thinking of taking the plunge this Leap Year here’s our guide to Windsor’s most romantic locations.

• • Snow Hill in front of the Copper Horse – Take a stroll down the Long Walk heading up to the Copper Horse, with breath-taking views across Windsor and the distant Castle.
  • River Boat Cruise – Suggest a delightful trip along the River Thames and soak up the stunning backdrops of Windsor Castle and Eton College.
  •  VIP Champagne Ride on the Royal Windsor Wheel – Enjoy the panoramic views from Alexander Gardens across Berkshire and all the way to London as you get down on one knee.
  • Horse-drawn Carriage in Windsor Great Park – Surprise your loved one with a horse drawn carriage through the park, champagne and roses optional.
  • The Pink Bench at Ascot Racecourse – The tradition of proposing on the Pink Bench dates back to the Regency period and has the added advantage of great odds for an acceptance.

Continuing the wedding theme, this coming Sunday 26^th February Windsor is playing host to its first ever Windsor Wedding Fayre.  The event will be jointly hosted by The Macdonald Windsor, Harte and Garter and Mercure Castle Hotels and promises to offer a fabulous showcase of banqueting suites and bridal packages.  There will also be tours of the famous Windsor Guildhall –  wedding venue to Royalty and Celebs including Prince Charles & Camilla and Sir Elton John & David Furnish.  To register your interest or book an exclusive viewing email windsorweddingfayre@macdonald-hotels.co.uk

If you would like to visit Windsor whether to make a proposal or to make wedding plans you can book a stay with Accommodation Windsor Limited for short stay apartments in Windsor and Eton.  Likewise, Alma House  Bed and Breakfast has a special offer during February and March if you book 2 nights together over the weekend your stay will be reduced and includes a free bottle of wine and box of chocolates to get you off to the perfect start.

Many thanks to superb Wedding Photographers Plenty to Declare for sharing their lovely photos with us.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erincooks/

Pancake Day, otherwise known as Shrove Tuesday, falls on Tuesday 21^st February this year.  On this day pancakes are traditionally eaten as it is the day before the start of Lent when people used to fast for 40 days.  The reason people ate pancakes specifically is because they are made of eggs, sugar and milk which were not eaten during the period of Lent.  Nowadays we  eat them just because they taste so good!!  In order to help you celebrate Pancake Day here’s our recipe for the perfect pancakes:

Ingredients:

140g plain flour

200ml whole milk

2 eggs

25g unsalted butter, melted

Method:

1. Sift the flour with a pinch of salt into a bowl and make a well in the middle.  Mix the milk and 100ml of water together.  Break the eggs into the well and start whisking slowly.  Carefully add the milk and water, whisking constantly and gradually mixing the flour in as you do so.
2. Whisk until the batter is smooth.  Let the batter sit for 30 minutes, and then whisk the melted butter into the batter.
3. Heat the pan over a medium heat.  Very lightly grease the pan with melted butter.  Pour roughly 2 tbsp of batter into the pan.  Use just enough batter to make a delicate, lacy pancake.  Cook the pancake for about 45 seconds on one side until golden and then flip the pancake over and cook the other side for about 30 seconds.
4. Slide the pancake out of the pan and either serve immediately or stack on a plate with baking parchment in between.  Continue until all the batter is used up.

For toppings you can try the traditional lemon and sugar or golden syrup.  Or you could go for melted chocolate and strawberries!

The Windsor and Eton Flippin’ Pancake Challenge 2012 is set to be bigger and better than ever this year with all teams encouraged to don the traditional pancake racing costume of the 15^th century housewife.  That means skirt, apron, headscarf and frying pan!  The competition takes place tomorrow along the Royal Windsor Shopping area between 10.00-11.30am.  A blog by Rosie.

Recently the team at Accommodation Windsor enjoyed a taste of Hollywood during the making of our first ever “Meet the Team” video filmed and edited by Sam Taylor, the winner of our recent video competition “Destination Windsor”.  We started with an initial brain-storming session, which got us all buzzing with ideas.  After this, we decided to introduce each member of staff by giving a small glimpse of what they do each day, for me this meant a lot of answering the phone, greeting people at the door, doing check-ins and check-outs and taking payments.  It was tiring work but also a lot of fun which reflects exactly what a normal day at Accommodation Windsor Limited is really like.

It was tricky to get all our ideas into such a short, two and a half minute video. We wanted to show all aspects of what we do at work including taking bookings, checking in guests, fighting our way through a mountain of paper work, meeting landlords and purchasing fabulous home furnishings.  Luckily a number of our landlords are also close friends so were happy to help to get stuck in with the filming.

The completed video will be shown to the world via our website and various social media sites.  It was therefore not surprising then that we all came to work on the first day of filming looking our absolute best! The team at Accommodation Windsor Limited have never looked so glamorous.  The filming itself lasted just a few days and was a lot of fun and turned into a great team-building exercise.  The Meet the Team video is a great way to show potential  clients, Landlords and guests how we work together and what kind of a company we are.  We recently used the video to advertise a job vacancy and had such a positive response from candidates who all felt we would be a great company to work for!

Working with Sam on this video has been a pleasure for all of us, he has a very professional and creative attitude which filled us all with energy and enthusiasm. We can’t wait to see the rest of the videos he will be creating for us in the future which will feature a number of our apartments as well as videos on where to eat, drink and shop in Windsor.

During the Blitz Elizabeth and her family sought safety and refuge at Windsor Castle where they spent most of the War years.  Whilst the country was still recovering from the devastation caused by WWII Elizabeth married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip have now been married over 64 years and they have four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

In the 1950s her father’s health began slowly deteriorating until his death on Wednesday, 6 February 1952. Elizabeth was in Kenya on a royal visit when she received the news and immediately flew back to England as the new Queen.  Her Coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.  The procession was viewed by crowds of people and the ceremony was broadcast over the radio across the world.

During her reign Queen Elizabeth II has seen many changes in the world including the first man on the Moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invention of modern television, mobile phones and internet.  She is an avid animal lover who has taken a keen interest in the breeding of both dogs and horses.  It is also less known that she has an interest in Scottish country dancing and performs each year at Balmoral Castle to neighbours, staff members and the local community.

The Queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee, a milestone to mark the 50^th year of her reign in 2002, and a large number of people threw street parties, garden parties and many other events to celebrate with her.   Now the country is looking forward to celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this summer to commemorate 60 years since her Coronation. The only other Monarch in British history to have celebrated their Diamond Jubilee is Queen Victoria who at the moment holds the title of longest ruling Monarch after her reign of 63 years.

The Diamond Jubilee Central Weekend takes place over four days in June 2012, celebrating 60 years of The Queen’s reign, see the diary of events below.

Saturday 2 June

The Epsom Derby

Sunday 3 June

The Big Jubilee Lunch

The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant

Monday 4 June

The Diamond Jubilee Concert

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Beacons

Tuesday 5 June

Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral

See link for further information on events taking place during the Diamond Jubilee weekend http://www.bbc.co.uk/diamondjubilee/index.shtml

Windsor, a photo by Andy Blackwell Photography on Flickr.

Lovely wintry shot of Windsor by Andy Blackwell

Swans, a photo by johnbailey1 on Flickr.

Lovely shot from River Thames of the swans.

The idea began in 2009, with an eye on world events and a dread of signing hundreds of Christmas cards, we decided to donate our budget for printing corporate cards to charity and send out an E-card instead.  Together with the girls in the office, we donned our sparkliest outfits and popped open some bubbly.  Charles Nicholls – friend, Landlord and keen photographer volunteered to come and take the pics for us. 

The following year we asked the Housekeeping Team to join in with the photo, even dressing up Ruby with a big red ribbon.  This year, the team has grown again and some of our Landlords managed to gatecrash the photoshoot too.  We decided to host at our home as a way of saying Thank You to the Team for all their hard efforts throughout the year.

Add in some nibbles and fizzy stuff and the evening took on quite a lively flavour.

As is becoming the trend when we all get together, the Team are keen to share their unique party tricks with their colleagues.  Who knew Rosie (an ex-gymnast and trampolinist) could pick up a Champagne cork from the floor using only her mouth?  Or that several of her colleagues would then be inspired to see if they could too… Or that together, with Nigel leading on the drums, we would so enjoy “performing” (and I use this term loosely) Stevie Wonder tracks in Nigel’s new music studio, despite none of us being able to sing or play any instruments.  (Video footage of this event is currently on lockdown!!)

So the donation we are making this year is to El Rohi Community School in Uganda (the school name comes from the Hebrew for Good Shepherd).  We hope that our small contribution will make a difference to the lives of children much less fortunate than our own.  A friend at our daughter’s school is an airline pilot and she has become involved with the school over in Kampala, dropping off spare clothing and stationery each time she visits.  Food is exhorbitantly expensive in Uganda and  it is a constant dilemma for the Headmistress there to juggle the finances and provide a nutritious meal for the pupils – often the only meal that they will have each day.  We would like to support the school on an ongoing basis so more info to follow in the New Year.

We hope you enjoy our Christmas e-card  and approve of our nominated charity.  We’ve had a lot of fun putting it together and feel proud to have contributed in some small way to help others.

We would like to wish all our Friends, Customers, Landlords and Suppliers the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years!  Visit our Facebook page to see more pics of our photoshoot.

Accommodation Windsor Limited is proud to announce Sam Taylor as the winner of our “Windsor as a Destination” video competition.  The competition was launched back in September to the BTEC media students at East Berkshire College to provide a 90 second video representing Windsor and everything it has to offer.   We launched the project in partnership with the College in the hope of finding some raw talent to showcase Accommodation Windsor Ltd, our Executive short-let Properties and Windsor to its best advantage on film.  The idea was initially thought up by Managing Director Nigel Holder, recognising the benefits of video footage on various social media, he thought it would be great to invite  local cinematographers to enter our competition; a great experience for the students and what fantastic results!  The videos were judged by a team at AWL who were blown away by the level of talent on their doorstep.

After vigorous viewing of all the submissions, it quickly became apparent that Sam’s video was the clear favourite, but the standard of entries was so high that we ended up creating two runners’ up prizes for Cory Thompson and Jack Smith to recognise their efforts.

Sam wins £250 together with a contract worth £2000 with Accommodation Windsor Limited to produce further videos of our short-let apartments and houses.  This week Sam has completed filming the first video “Meet the Team” and a photoshoot for our Xmas Charity E-card.  The video in itself has been a great team-building exercise and we are all really excited to see the results… more details to follow.

Sam shared his thoughts about winning first prize, “Nigel from Accommodation Windsor approached my college to produce a ninety second video entitled “Windsor as a Destination”.  It was a fantastic opportunity for me and my peers as aspiring videographers to enter this competition and extremely beneficial to be given a chance at a corporate brief from a real client.

I was extremely nervous on the day Nigel came to announce the winner.  I wanted to win so badly as the possibility of working on similar professional briefs was just too great a prize to miss out on.  When Nigel announced that I had won I could barely speak!  It was such a mixture of emotions; I was happy, excited, nervous and relieved all at the same time.   I’m so excited about working with Accommodation Windsor in the future and really thankful for the opportunity that they have given me.”

We have been delighted with the feedback from Sam’s prize-winning video “Windsor as a Destination”, it really does show Windsor at its finest and amazingly was completed in just three days!  Sam is 18 years old and has already won a Young Bafta Award, he hopes to attend University when he finishes his course in Windsor and we think that he has a very bright future ahead.

Visit our Website to view Sam’s video “Windsor as a Destination” https://accommodation-windsor.co.uk/Windsor-Berkshire-Destination-Video.htm and let us know your thoughts.