Before getting into the nitty gritty of how we decorated a house for Halloween, huge shout-out to Beth for reaching 50 good deeds on today's community mission! Massive well done and kudos! 🎉😄🎉

Stephens House and Gardens were left in trust for the people of Finchley by Henry "Inky" Stephens. Inky made his name in indelible ink (hence the apt moniker), and was equally keen to leave his mark on society through various philanthropic acts. Although the Gardens are open to the public, they're not technically a public park and so the trustees have to raise maintenance funding in other ways.

One of these ways is their annual Spooktacular event (details here). They asked GoodGym if we could help decorate their main House in anticipation of this event.

Liz, Jacqui and Sam were the first to arrive. After saying hello to our contact, Mel, they got to grips with the task by attempting to fix some faux cobwebs to a balustrade. Having never used the stuff before, there was a lot of trial and error (and divided feelings about Blu Tack).

While they worked on that, a whole host of other GoodGymmers appeared one-by-one and were also put to work. Some joined the initial three, while others were put to work on webbing other parts of the house, including Spike Milligan's piano! 😎👌🏻 Jacqui, Kapil and Danny also pitched into the photographing duties for this task (thanks all!), although it must be noted that Danny's oeuvre seemed skewed towards pictures of people shorter than him trying to reach slightly hard-to-reach places (whether by stairs, chairs, or tables) 😏😂

Just before finishing up, we took a brief break to enjoy some cakes and sweets to celebrate Beth's 50th (thanks, Beth! 😋🤤), and to hydrate with some drinks courtesy of Stephens House and Garden. Nice!

If you'd like to help out with the Spooktacular event tomorrow, you can still sign up using this link. It's in fancy dress, so come in your scariest (but still child friendly 😅) costume 👻 Ooooooh!