Our annual Christmas Makers Market is coming up on Saturday 26th of November from 11am-2pm. It’s on the election day … always such a wonderful neighbourhood day with everyone wandering the streets, and we hope that on your way to or from voting at Fairfield PS or Alphington PS you will drop by and take a look at all the wonderful stalls of local makers that will be lining the footpath out the front of ACC and pop in to enjoy the salon exhibition inside our centre - part of the Alphington Open Studios weekend.

We are hoping for great weather (fingers crossed) and for lots of locals to come out and support this lovely community day (and our local makers).

And … we are looking for some lovely volunteers to help us out on the day with either our craft stall or food stall. We always appreciate our long standing volunteers who regularly help us out on these days; but it is also great to have some new and friendly faces to lend a hand.

So if you have an hour or two free on Saturday 26th of November between 11am-2pm and would like to do something neighbourhoodly … then send us an email.

It would be great if you could nominate a time and what you might like to help out with. The more the merrier.

Thank you!

Time flies when you are having fun!

We’re now putting together the program at ACC for next year and as always, we are interested in your ideas.

If you have a skill you’d like to share through a weekend workshop or through a regular activity please let us know (eg. our Visible Mending Club runs monthly thanks to Serene offering to share her skills).

If you have been to a course or program somewhere else that you think would be super for our community please let us know (eg. it was thanks to recommendation that we met Gordon who now runs our Sewing Machine and Overlocker Maintenance workshops annually ).

Just email info@alphington.org.au or give us a call on 9499 7227 and we can talk about how to make it happen!

And as a taster … new things on our radar for next year include:

• Movie Club - once a month on Tuesday afternoons we’ll head over to Westgarth Cinema on the train to watch a film together.

• Podcasting 101 - a short ACFE course (we have funding to support this program thanks to RCLC - our lovely neighbourhood house colleagues in Richmond)

If you are interested in joining in these new activities just look out for our new program that will provide details of how to register. It should be out by early December …

Lovely to see local events like the Fairfield Primary School art show starting again after the Covid hiatus.

I (Leanne) made some stools for them to auction off (even though my kids aren’t there anymore) and added a bit of spruiking of our lovely community centre into the event in the banter that went with the auction!

Hope you went along … aren’t we lucky to live in a such a great creative community.

A quick reminder that we have the Alphington Open Studios event coming up. Join us for neighbourhood drinks on Friday 25 November from 5-8pm to celebrate 🎉 our creative neighbourhood and check out the art in our gallery. Then head out to the studios that are open across the neighbourhood on Saturday and Sunday for two weeks.

Also … we have the Alphington Makers Market here on Saturday 26 November, 11am-2pm. We have about 25 stallholders booked in. Come along and start (or finish) your Christmas shopping …

This week is National Recycling Week and we’ve been celebrating recycling in our programs. We kicked off with Visible Mending Club on the weekend and sent along some fabulous potential mending supplies for the group that Anne had kindly donated (patches and lace and all sorts of interesting things) … then offered a range of fun recycled craft activities for playgroups … and will finish the week mixing up recycling with gardening … making recycled seed packets for seeds we’ve saved from the garden and also potting up some of the lettuce seedlings we’ve been growing - again in recycled pots and tins.

And we made this great sign as well! Just for fun. Using a whole range of donated/recycled things we had hanging around … so Happy National Recycling Week.