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.

Projects are already afoot as the Women in the Shed learn to use new tools and build their confidence and ability to tackle new things.

This week Debbie started restoring a timber garden chair, Anne decided to learn mosaics so she could breathe new life into a broken ceramic duck, and Sheryl began making bamboo cutting boards from offcuts she sourced at a local business.

We will share some images of these projects as they progress and hopefully the final results. It is quite exciting to see how quickly everyone is progressing.

From this week we’ll be having morning tea on the corner on Fridays (weather permitting). It will be a fairly simple event. A chance to catch up over a cup of tea or coffee - with something to eat.

Friday is traditionally our community morning, with gardening, craft and cooking activities to join in from 10am. Come along then if you’d like to be part of community craft, would like to help with our latest community art project (maybe make up jars for Craftberry Jam or wrap books for Blind Date with a Book) or feel like doing a bit of community gardening. Come along around 11.30 if you’d like to have a neighbourly chat over a cuppa.

Cheers!

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!

Have you noticed our gardens are looking much tidier? Local gardener Lily has done a great job over the last couple of weeks to get everything back in order … even our back storage area has been swept and tidied. Thanks Lily!

On to other news … we had confirmation on Thursday that we can restart Women in the Shed. We’ll be very happy to welcome our enrolled participants back. The 2 classes will be starting up on 9 and 10 November. Hooray!

Please note this program is currently oversubscribed … however we do have a waiting list if you are keen to join in next year! You can email us here.

We’re also getting organised to run weekly morning teas out on the corner on Fridays at 11am.

These will commence on Friday 20 November. Put it in your diary - we’d love to see you! In the meantime we’re finalising a fancy outdoor kitchen under the community shed pergola. Kalimna has been working with Matt who is a local (and by chance a playgroup dad) to deliver this wonderful new resource.

And Jenny has been looking into catering trolleys and thinking about what we need, to bring all the things outside from inside … she’s also looking at safety processes around food in corona times …

Then … Jen has finished her fancy welded tables … and will be delivering them soon, increasing our artiness in the garden AND our capacity for outdoor meeting. Which is exactly what we need right?

All of a sudden it is all happening. So, see you next week at ACC. Yikes! We haven’t said that for a while.