The Redwoods Retirement Residence
2604 Draper Ave. K2H 9B1 Ottawa, ON, Canada

Happy New Year!!! We are glad to put 2020 behind is and we wish everyone a better 2021! For our New Year's Eve "Party" we did a Door-to-Door Treat Delivery/Mobile Photo Booth. We handed out sparkling wine (or sparkling water) and took a ton of fun photo's to share with you all! We also wished a HAPPY RETIREMENT to Frank, our amazing Bus Driver, today. He has been an incredible addition to our team since 2017 and we will miss seeing him every day. We're lucky to still have him as a volunteer, and we wish him a happy and healthy retirement :)

This week we wrapped up our 'Elf on the Shelf' activity and handed out prizes to the residents who found Elfie the most often. We had an awesome time with this and can't wait to do it again next year! We also handed out some gingerbread cookies dipped in chocolate yesterday and it was definitely a hit! We are so happy to be able to keep spreading the Christmas joy to all of our residents!

Wishing everyone a safe and peaceful holiday and looking forward to the new year!

Yesterday we handed out 2-Bite Christmas Cupcakes door to door! They were a big hit and we loved spreading some christmas cheer to all of our residents!

Our Elf on the Shelf and weekly feature crafts have still been going strong! Below are some pictures of Elfie's most recent hiding places, as well our fillable Christmas ornament craft and our stovetop holiday potpourri craft :)

Today's Friday theme day was Funny Hat Day! We have been having such a blast each week dressing up and participating in these theme days and this week was no exception! Thank you to all our incredible residents and staff for participating! We love to see you all smile!

We are still on a high from last week's Christmas Party Luncheons! As is always a tradition at our Christmas parties, we raffled off the centerpieces (made in house by our crafty activities staff) from the party to our residents. Any resident that wanted a chance to win one was entered into the draw and below are pictures of some of the very excited winners!

We would like to thank our Veterans today for all that gave for our country. Though we had to have our ceremony over the PA system this year, we are grateful that we were able to show our respect and appreciation for all of the Veterans that have served our country, many of whom live in our home. Thank you again for all you have done for us.

This week was our Christmas Party Luncheon week! We weren't able to host our typical Christmas party in our main lounge, but we were able to host a Christmas luncheon each day this week to make up for it. We had as many of our usual traditions as we could and were so pleased that we were able to still do something to make our residents feel pampered for the holidays. We had a visit from Santa, DELICIOUS food, awesome holiday decorations and of course, a gift bag for everyo...ne who attended! We even got to celebrate one of our resident's 100th birthday with them!! Thank you so much to all of our staff for their hard work in making sure that every resident who wanted to celebrate got to have a special Christmas party experience during this unconventional holiday season! Thank you to our awesome residents as well for coming down, having fun and for giving us so many compliments and thank yous. We are so glad that we could do this for you all.

Meet one of our newest residents, Elfie the Elf on the Shelf, who is only in town for the holidays! Our Redwoods Elf has been busy trying out different activities all over the building and our residents are having a great time searching for him in the common areas! He'll be continuing to explore for the next little bit and we can't wait to see where he ends up next! We'll be awarding a prize to the resident who finds him the most throughout December. It's a great way for our residents to get moving without having to go outside and we're so pleased that so many have chosen to participate!

The kindness keeps on coming! We received some wonderful teacup gifts for some of our residents from a very thoughtful friend in Manotick. The teacups used for these gifts were all donated by members of the community in Manotick and we'd like to thank everyone who had a hand in making these gifts a reality! They put wonderful smiles on many faces and were so appreciated! THANK YOU!

A lot of fun means a lot of pictures! We have a TON of pictures for you today from this week's two treat deliveries (Pumpkin Spice Wafer Cookies/Mini Cupcakes & Pumpkin Spice Hot Chocolate) and from today's Movember theme day! We're having a so much fun today wearing our stick-on mustaches over our masks and we hope that it puts a smile on your face too :)

We continue to be touched by all the kindness from the families of our residents. We received the below in an email earlier this week and our day staff are currently enjoying their generous pizza treat! "To all the Redwoods Staff, We would just like to say how very impressed and thankful we are of all of your continued efforts in keeping our parents and all the other residents safe and sound during this pandemic. We are aware that all of these changes and sometimes addition...al duties have been very stressful but you are obviously all working as an amazing team and just getting the job done! Our parents have nothing but praise and thanks whenever they talk about you and often mention how very safe they feel. This is so nice for us to hear and gives us great peace of mind:) Thank you all so much for all your efforts, they are very much appreciated! Enjoy the Pizza!! Sincerely, Kathy and Scott Cowan and family Ken Johnstone and Sarah Bradley" They sent us pizza today for the day staff and are sending more for dinner for our evening and overnight staff. So incredibly thoughtful! Thank you Johnstone/Cowan/Bradley family for this generous gift!