Well done to all the GoodGymers who came along this evening for a fun mix of scavenger hunt, Christmas crafting and cake. Our official Christmas night out is tomorrow at the Off the Tap pub quiz, but this evening felt like a party to me! Maybe I've been to too many 5 year olds' birthday parties recently...

Of course there was some method in our madness. I will explain in reverse order:

The cake was to celebrate Claire's 50th good deed. Claire's first good deed with us was rescuing baby toads, her 50th was making reindeer, and in between she's done everything from planting oak trees to marshalling a Santa dash in fancy dress.

Congratulations Claire, we love having you in our group! A huge thank you also to Rachel, who made a fabulous chocolate cake AND a free from lemon drizzle.

The Christmas crafting was our task for the evening. We were making decorations for the first GoodGym tree at the St Luke's annual Christmas Tree Festival. The festival raises money for the church, plus their chosen charity, No 22, the Maidenhead and Windsor Youth Counselling Service.

The festival is also a great way for charities like GoodGym to raise awareness of their involvement in the community, and many of the trees (including ours) are donated to families in need after the event.

It is a really festive spectacle, and very much worth a visit while it's open to the public from the 8th to 10th of December. Click here for full details.

Many thanks to the Maidenhead Community Centre for providing us with a venue for our crafty task, and to the GoodGymers turned elves, who led our various crafting activities.

Nicola made sure we weren't flagging while we made bunting; Jess's snowmen were the stuff(ing) that Christmas dreams (and nightmares!?) are made of, and Sophie and Claire had us making reindeer. I Donner know how they were Blitzen so many! As the evening unfolded I also renamed myself origAMY, Can you guess what I was making!?

A special mention also for Georgeta and Sheila, who weren't with us this evening, but who have still made decorations for the tree. Georgeta has made a beautiful quilted star including the GoodGym GGs and Sheila has crocheted a gorgeous doll, complete with GoodGym t-shirt. I can't wait to see them on the tree!

And the Scavenger Hunt..?

Since the Community Centre was also our start location, there was no real need for a run or walk this evening, but I wasn't about to let everyone wriggle out of doing some exercise. Before we settled down to our creative gluing, cutting, folding, and tying, I challenged the group to a scavenger hunt. They had no more than 25 minutes to find and photograph as many things from my list as possible - including things like a dog, a snowman and a post box.

We formed two teams of walkers and two teams of runners and gave the walkers a head start while the runners warmed up. Teams devised their own routes and impressively everyone ticked off everything on the list and made it back to base on time, having covered 2-3km on foot. There were also some very creative photos taken along the way, and some entertaining chats with dog owners. I think next time I will need to make the challenge a bit trickier!

Thanks everyone for your contributions to a fun evening. If you would like to help hang the decorations on the tree at St Luke's, there is one space left on this community mission next Wednesday from 4-6pm. Do also check out the listings for all the group activities planned so far for December and January. Hope to see you soon!