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.

Are you a local maker? Would you like to have a stall at our upcoming Christmas Makers Market. It is going to be on Saturday 26 November which is in fact election day … always a fabulous day to be out and about in the community and walking in the neighbourhood. So we expect lots of local to stroll past … and hopefully combine their democracy activity with some retail therapy …

If you are keen for a stall you can book here.

If you are keen to get a jump on Christmas shopping and buy lovely things from local makers then save the date.

As usual we will have a lovey craft activity for any children who come along and a sausage sizzle to keep energy levels up.

Rachael contacted us to share information about “Nature Connect” at the Collingwood Children's farm.  It is a program for survivors of family violence to enable them to meet up and support each other in nature.

Women can attend the farm (with young children or not) to meet other women. The group meets on Wednesdays from 10am-12pm.  Attendees have the choice of focussing on social time or undertaking volunteer tasks around the farm. This group is not facilitated as such but there are peer volunteers who are present. In addition the farm staff greet the group each week.

You can find out more about the program here.

 Thank you Rachel for sharing. We hope if anyone needs this support they find this helpful.

How fun!

Alphington Football Club is planning a dazzling end of season fireworks display.

There will be open air movies for the kids along with food - including BBQ, crepes and a bar. If you and your family would like to join in the fun you can click here to purchase tickets.

The ticket includes a double bill open-air family movie, hotdog and drink.

Timing:

• 5pm kids soccer ⚽️ movie

• 8pm fireworks 💥

• 8.15pm teenage soccer ⚽️ movie.

All proceeds go towards covering the community pyrotechnics display.

Alphington Show was so much fun this year! We had glorious weather and lots of people came along and joined in. The pony rides were a real hit and our show entrants were super talented.

We’d like to thank our partners Alphington CWA. It was terrific to run this event together.

We’d also like to thank our friends from the Preston Garden Club for judging (along with the CWA) and Nelson Alexander for helping us publicise the event AND for providing a prize. We had 16 people get a hole in one on our mini-golf green and go into the draw to win the $100 LaTrobe Golf Club voucher… and many more spent quite a while trying!

This year we had 29 entrants in our family friendly, funny and somewhat shambolic dog show. The calibre of entrants was very impressive … we saw the most amazing trick - a dog who retrieved a tissue from a tissue box when their owner sneezed. Beyond impressive! We’d like to thank E and A Salce on High Street Thornbury for the prizes.

We had around 15 stallholders in our makers market with lots of lovely things to buy. We love running events that support local makers.

Finally a big thanks to our volunteers. We had some new helpers this year and along with some old favourites! And we really couldn’t do all the things we do without you.

Oh, and congratulations to all our prize winners … thanks once again everyone!

See you next year!