Hi everyone,

It’s our last week before the Easter holidays. Programs this week will wrap up early on Thursday as Lee is on school camp with her baby Oscar who is at FPS and I have to get to parent teacher interviews at NHS for my baby Scarlett who is in year 12 … which sadly means we won’t be running Crunch or Community Lunch this week.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at 7.30pm Village Power will be coming to ACC for a Q&A about Alphington’s new community led battery, and if anyone is interested in getting involved and helping to reduce carbon emissions you are more than welcome to come along!

Coming up during the holidays we will have another of our monthly Men’s Breakfasts on Saturday the 11th of April from 8am-11am. Don’t forget to book in online here.

And next term is going to be really fun with Sustainability Workshops, Thrift-Seeking opportunities, and Community Yoga.

Keep an eye on our newsletter in the coming weeks for further information.

For now we want to wish everyone a happy Easter, and we’ll see you in term 2.

Also … check out all the amazing photos in the posts from this week (below) specifically thanking volunteers, showcasing the dog show … and all the other things! As usual Kalimna did an amazing job in capturing our event in pictures (on top of all her back-end organising!). We’re so lucky to have her here!

Cheers Leanne

Our red carpet edition … kids, adults and fur babies galore!

We owe a big thank you to the following people who volunteered their time on both Saturday 21st and in the lead up to make the Alphington Show a great day.

Thank you to the judges of the Alphington Show entries. We had Noela, Michelle and Anne from the CWA, Bill and Wayne from the Preston Garden Club and Local artist Kate Herd here to judge. And Lynne and Margaret came to help set up.

Thank you to all the entrants to the Show. We are thoroughly impressed by the many skills in our community.

Thank you to the CWA for the delicious Devonshire tea they hosted. Michelle baked an incredible amount of scones and the ladies sold about 150 on the day. They donated the proceeds from the sales to ACC which is amazing!

Thank you to Anne and Jenny for registering all the dogs for the Dog Show. We could not run the show without getting all the details for all the cute dogs that entered.

Thank you to Beth, Rachel and Emily for judging the Dog Show. Not an easy task with so many well behaved and adorable dogs. And of course Jill who does a fabulous job as MC.

Thank you to Alphington & Fairfield Vets, Northside Vets and E & A Salce for sponsoring the prizes.

Thank you to Elaine and Marie-Louise for minding the craft sales in our street kiosk. And thank you to our Preserves Group who gather monthly to cook up our preserves for sale. We greatly value their time, knowledge and friendship as we cook and chat.

Also a thank you to Alex and his family who kindly donate the items Alex makes that we offer for sale on our Makers’ Market days.

Thank you to Norma, Margaret, Ina, Jill, Corrado, Anne M, Adele, Anne C, Taras and Clive for doing such a great job running the Sausage Sizzle.

And thank you to the Alphington Uke Group and Jemima for the live music performances. It was great to watch and enjoy.

Volunteering your time really adds something special to events like these.

Thank you to Nelson Alexander for sponsoring the show with the boards and corflute posters to aid with promoting the event.

And finally thank you to the politicians that were here with us for the whole event and those that popped in to show support.

Amazing!

I was not able to capture everything that was happening on the fantastic community day of the Alphington Show.

But here are a few more photos to share.

Thank you to all the Makers Market stall holders that were her and the very friendly petting zoo people. It was lots of fun! We loved the beautiful face painting (by Jamari) and also loved seeing so many people making clay pieces that will contribute to the new garden totem sculptures being created under Clare’s guidance (using a process kindly shared by local artist Avis).

Kalimna

Hi everyone,

Last Tuesday was a super exciting day here as all things paused to watch the Oscars - because Lee’s sister-in-law Autumn won the award for cinematography for the movie Sinners. How amazing?!!! Lee is enjoying her ‘winning by association’ feeling! … and if you know Lee or even just read our newsletter or come to ACC I reckon you can also join in the degrees of separation ‘winning by association’ thing!

On Saturday … we had a lovely weekend with the Alphington Show. So many great entries, cute dogs, stalls, and to top it off blue skies….. really it was a recipe for a perfect day. Thanks everyone for coming along and for all your hard work in the lead up and on the day! So many volunteers … amazing.

This week - we’re back to business as usual. Come along on Thursday morning to Garden to Plate for another delicious, seasonal lunch. And in the afternoon we will have this month’s session of Embracing Life and Death where Ann and Andrea etc. will be talking about end-of-life planning.

To find out more about our other programs this week, as always you can visit our website at this link.

Cheers Leanne