This was an extra (January challenge booster) group session. The aim was to deep clean the kitchen at the Martin Way Methodist Church, home to the Open Table and soon to become a night shelter. Gloves at the ready, six of us faithfuls set about cleaning behind the fridge, wiping down surfaces, sorting drawers and cupboards, hoovering, mopping and anything else that could be completed within the hour. The sparkling results spoke for themselves! As the clock struck the hour we departed into the night, excited to catch the next episode of The Traitors...

A lunch break to help with The Open Table Christmas lunch. Starting with chatting to familiar faces before getting down to the serious business of clearing and vacuuming. There were lots of helpers today so it was all done fairly quickly and if course Henry was there to lend a hand.

It was great to stop by and help tidy up after The Open Table community lunch today as hadn't been there for some time. Also great to get out during a break.

With a delivery to sort and tables to clear, of course having Henry (the vacuum) join me was the highlight (is my favourite job).

Hope to be back again soon.

On such a chilly night, it was good to have an indoor task to keep us warm for our group session. Abby set us to work sanding, taping, wiping and painting some of the church skirting boards, to match the newly painted walls. Although we were a small group, we whizzed through the task in record time and Jon even managed a bit of a lie down. We had to admit the results were simply brush-taking (although we didn't want to get too emulsion-al).

Last night our trusty crew tackled a truly rewarding task, proving once again that a little sweat and a lot of smiles can make a big difference. Our mission after running to the Methodist Church was to extract the sunflower seeds from the flower heads, retrieve the last tomatoes from the plants in the greenhouse, pulverise the sunflower stalks with a mallet (Jo particularly enjoyed this) and generally tidy and prepare the garden for the colder months. By the end of the evening everything was shipshape and there were heaps of green tomatoes ready to be transformed into chutney. Now that's something to relish.

There was plenty of washing and drying up to be done, along with table clearing and hoovering. Such a great place to stop by in a lunch break and the blondie treat definitely helped with the energy levels.