With COVID restrictions easing we’re quite excited about planning a little neighbourhood gathering to kick off the Alphington Open Studios weekends.

For the first time we are going to have our salon exhibition open at ACC open from 5-7pm on Friday 26 November. Pop past for a glass of wine and some nibbles. Admire the art … buy some art as a gift for yourself (you deserve it) or a loved one! Have a chat to us, to the artists and/or your neighbours. We’ll set up inside and out in the garden to abide by COVID restrictions.

Put it in your diary and come along for a low key, fun, arty neighbourhood evening. Kids can play in the garden … fingers crossed for the weather!

If you are an artist that would like to participate you can register here. We welcome emerging and established artists.

Happy days! I picked up a new (to me) Kate Atkinson book from our street library today. The library is nice and full again, including a good selection of books for children - could be perfect on a rainy weekend.

Thanks whoever dropped this book off - I am looking forward to reading it this weekend.

What did you miss the most in lockdown? For me (apart from friends and family of course) it was rifling through others people’s junk! So I am excited to see this garage sale coming up … thanks for sending your flyer through Catriona.

Families came along on Friday to join in our garden program and decorated some gorgeous tins and potted up some cuttings for our street seed library. If you are passing by and would like a rosemary plant or some Vietnamese mint for your garden you might like to collect one this weekend! Cute hey?

It was lovely to reconnect with everyone again on Wednesday. We had quite a few families out in our garden throughout the morning - playing in the sandpit, using the ride-ons and enjoying the craft activities Lee put out.

And lots of our long-standing friends popped in to see us too - either coming for a sausage or a coffee as part of our 12pm BBQ lunch … or popping past throughout the day for a chat. It was great to see people in the flesh!

Jill ran the lunch, and juggled the timing complexities of sausage cooking and coffee making with aplomb … and I was very happy to be the guinea pig for her latte’s, they were pretty good! We’re very pleased to be able to do some fundraising for Friends of Baucau via the fancy coffee as part of our regular program.

And now we're looking forward to next week! Note we will be closed Monday and Tuesday for the Cup Day long weekend … but will be raring to go on Wednesday.

A special thanks to Brenta Meats in Fairfield who donated the sausages - we’re so luck to have such wonderful community spirit in our neighbourhood (and I can tell you the chicken sausages were really delicious!).