What a great night we had last night for the GoodGym Leeds Christmas party. We had a whooping 22 people come to celebrate Christmas & it was really wonderful to see such a lovely group of people come together.

Firstly, we met at Heart to do a quick clean of the nursery space & then everyone settled down in the nursery and I ran a sound bath for the group. I've never seen the GoodGym Leeds gang so quiet!!! Everyone relaxed to some gentle sound meditation & I really appreciated so many people coming to let me practice on them. We'll do another one in the new year :)

We then headed to the Heart bar for food, drinks & a Christmas quiz. We were also very lucky to have a group of musicians come along to entertain us all! Well done to Katie, Katie, Rachel & Kat's team who won the quiz with a fabulous 10/10 (I'll need to make it harder next year)!

It was also an opportunity to thank our wonderful task force, Helen, Jubz, Katie, Kat & Bryony (in her absence). We really appreciate everything you do for GoodGym Leeds, so thank you for everything you have done for the group this year.

Welcome to newcomer Finn & welcome back to Pik & Sudharsan who joined us for the second time. We hope to see you again soon.

Thanks all for a wonderful evening & Merry Christmas!

This afternoon 5 GoodGymers headed to Bedford Fields for a gathering to celebrate the Piano planter project. The piano had been in City Square and then was moved back to Bedford Fields where members of the GoodGym team built it back up to create a planter for the front of the garden.

There was a fire pit, mulled wine & delicious mince pies. My little doggies weren't particularly happy but they found a chair to settle down on & kept warm by the fire.

Thanks to Bedford Fields for hosting:)

Yesterday, five GoodGymers made their almost weekly pilgrimage down to Bedford Fields. Despite the sickness going round, we were still able to field a solid team. Shenanigans were afoot with themes including shaving your head, starting fires and Greggs floating around.

The gang got to work with trimming back some of the mint and other overgrown plants as well as raking some of the fallen leaves and dead bushes. Later, we trimmed back the blackcurrant bushes, removing any branches that were interfering with each other, and taking straight cuttings to be used later. Some of the mint and marjoram was kept to be used for drinks and such. We ended the day by placing cardboard around the trees and some of the bushes and then shoveling mulch onto them. A very solid workout for the day.

Lovely to see the newer faces of Caragh, Alice, and Lloyd - hope to see you all at the Christmas party! Jason is still the King of Bedford Fields, the piano calls to him.

On Sunday, four GoodGymers made their way to the newly reopened Surplus To Purpose warehouse. A combination of viral social media posts highlighting what the business/charity does as well as a buy one get one free offer resulted in huge queues of customers entering the warehouse. Sadly the warehouse was closed on Saturday due a security issue so Sunday was the first day people could attend that weekend.

The GoodGymers responsibility that day was quality controlling thousands pieces of fruit and veg and keeping the shop floor well stocked. It was hard work getting around but the gang was on it. Alice and Christian returned for their second visit whilst this was Alina's first visit. Alina focused most of her time on QC-ing fruit and veg, Christian did cardboard baling, frozen food stocking, Alice mainly spent her time admiring the stacks of mushrooms - didn't really do much else (she did push the cardboard baling button, stock the drinks fridge as well as all the above). I spent my time doing some cardboard baling, QC-ing, manning the new till, and keeping the shop floor looking tidy.

The gang all had full baskets paid for by using their volunteering credits - big shout to Christian who cycled home with a 6KG box of washing powder.