As we took down the seasonal sparkle, we decided which decs needed a new home.

Christmas decorations will be donated to the Naomi House charity shop, as they have plenty of storage space to keep them safe until next December.

(Nb broken Xmas lights will go to electrical waste recycling.)

A busy afternoon at NH, lots of puzzles to sort, Jane did a great job of bagging up the pieces, pricing them and stacking them up. Wilson tidied up the books donations in the store room and then tidied and replenished the children books and toys.

Our task today was to sort out the linen and the shoes. Judy and Jane got stuck into the linen, sorting curtains, duvets, tablecloths into crates. Wilson put all the winter boots and shoes to the back and crated up all the summer shoes ready to go onto the shelves.

Once our task was done, Jane and Judy then sorted out all of the hats and scarves and Wilson tidied the basket bay.

It was a tiring task, but still had a moment to dress up.... amazing what someone had made from a pair of curtains!

We were assigned a very serious task today at NH, so it was fortunate that the most mature and sensible GG'ers were in attendance 😜

Todays task was to sort out the fancy dress! Costumes were tagged, hung and sorted into childrens and adults. Then with 40 minutes to spare we headed downstairs to sort and hang clothes donations. We had a lovely visit from Vicki a fellow GG'er, who for some strange reason was keen to peruse the puzzles 🤣

A real fun but busy afternoon - another awesome effort!

The final group run of January is done!

This week we opted to stay warm with an indoor task after a run or walk around Fratton (just to make sure we did get that exercise bit in!!).

Wilson was responsible for organising us tonight, with a counting task that she thought would take us about 15 minutes... let's not ask her to estimate timescales for future reference!!

She had managed to fill her little car with A LOT of jigsaws, all of which needed checking for the correct number of pieces. Most people were tasked with counting to 1000, which takes longer than 15 minutes it turns out! Some boxes were a few short of pieces and Maxine even had extra pieces.

Harry provided us with some energy balls as a post puzzle count snack and Jen provided some tunes. We hope that we've helped Val with her jigsaw phobia via immersion therapy.

We also had Helen and Sara from Energise Me along for the evening gathering ideas for GG Southampton which will be launching later this year. GG tourism opportunity! And Anna from Fratton Big Local popped in to give us our Inspiring Fratton award, we won the Community Spirit Award.

Well done everyone! Great to see you all.

Samantha and Wilson mission today was to sort out all the shoes that had accumulated upstairs. Sammy was great at deciding what shoe types went together... Wedge, open toe, closed toe, heels, flats..... they all looked like pretty painful shoes to Wilson, who without Sammy would have put them all in the "these are gonna give you blisters" crate 🤣

Some shoes were a little worse for wear.... these were put into bags for shoe recycling ♻