We had our community art bin out last weekend with bits of wood, sharpies and instructions, and asked people who stopped by to draw a little picture for the scrap wood community Christmas tree that we we are making.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to do a picture or a pattern. They were all pretty cute.

Note, there may still be more bits of painted timber that Lee will be putting out over the coming week … so keep your eyes peeled if you are walking past. We’d love you to contribute too!

As you know, we are busy planning our Christmas Makers Market on Saturday the 5th of December. And … what fun is an outdoor market without a sausage sizzle?

If you are handy with a pair of tongs, and rock an apron, we’d really appreciate your help for an hour. We’ll need help setting up and getting the snags on from 9.30am, and then help with cooking and serving at 10am, 11am and 12pm.

If you’d like to volunteer please email Kalimna here.

After cooking or selling a few sausages you can then of course explore the stalls and hopefully find some lovely things to give for Christmas gifts to the ones you love!

Our first morning tea on the corner was lovely. And we plan to host one each week at 11:30am until we close for Christmas holidays.

This Friday Leanne made fresh scones for the occasion using the tried and true CWA recipe. And we set up some umbrellas so people could enjoy a seat in the shade.

Blind date with a Book was out, Craftberry Jam jars were available to collect and a new Honestly letter to the neighbourhood was on the window round the corner. .

If you are keen to reconnect after lockdown, Friday morning at ACC might be just what you are looking for! Maybe we’ll see you this coming Friday? 10am for activities. 11.30 for a cuppa and a chat.

As David Bowie says, there are lots of ‘ch-ch-ch-ch-changes’ going on at ACC at the minute. Are you getting sick of posts about all the busy things happening? Sorry! We’ve got loads of projects that have been building up this year and we’re now 110% on the job and getting them going. Particularly our outside ones …

As previously flagged, earlier this year we were the happy recipients of a Yarra Valley Water grant, and we have a plumber who will be spending 3 days on site in the first week of December upgrading taps and toilets and making us as water efficient as possible … along with installing a water tank with pump and hose for our community garden.

The tank will sit against the back wall of the community shed. In preparation we’ve had Lily and Matilda working hard to empty and move the metal garden beds - I am sure they will be feeling fit and strong after all that shovelling! And today (Thursday) we’ll have Mark on site to start preparations to pour the slab for the tank. The pour will happen tomorrow.

Exciting times. And then there has been progress on the outdoor kitchen of course. Installation started last Friday, and Kalimna did some hard-painting-yards over the weekend (it is being finished in painted marine ply to ensure it is robust to the elements and to match in colour-wise with the mural and shed). Yesterday all the framing was completed and now we are just awaiting the stone benchtop - which has been measured up and ordered. We’ve got our fingers crossed that this will happen by the end of next week … ready for our first morning tea on the corner!

Hooray.

Well … we have our COVIDsafe plan in place and with 10 days in a row of double doughnuts (as we all like to say now!) we are feeling good about reopening ACC.

Yesterday it was just lovely to have our Women in the Shed program back up and running. Six women came along raring to go.

We were also delighted to see Ross and Kristian again … who are part of our AAA Art group. We gave Ross his ‘winners’ mug from the Alphington Show … a reminder of just how long it has been since we’ve seen him.

The announcements on Sunday mean we will be welcoming more people back and opening up further next week.

In our tiny centre our biggest hurdle is of course space. With 4m2 per person rules we can only have 9 people at a time in our largest room and 5 people in our smaller room … which is obviously a bit tricky for our larger groups.

But we can all be accomodating, creative and flexible right? We’re thinking for example that an inside/outside mix for playgroups will probably work.

And there are other rules to consider as well. Groups like ukulele that involve singing are only able to get together in groups of 5 people. So we’re hoping they will be happy spread out around the centre …

The next dilemma of course is how to accommodate for example, the book club, that was meeting at the same time as ukulele … agh! There’s going to have to be a lot of juggling.

We’ll be contacting all the group leaders this week to chat about the how and when … expect a call or an email from us in the next couple of days. Or feel free to drop us a line of you’re super keen.

It’s going to be SOOO nice to see you regularly again friends!