Harvest Festival

We had a wonderful time yesterday afternoon at the Devonport Community House and Devonport Community Garden Harvest Festival. There was a scarecrow competition which Maddy, Eloise and I entered. The remit was to use recycled goods to make it. Everything on our scarecrow was recycled even down to the wooden frame which came from our old kitchen, down to his newspaper stuffing and tea dyed old t-shirt head. His hat came from an op shop and has been used again by my girls for halloween and his outfit is made from Richard's painting clothes. The braces were salvaged from his 80s wardrobe (tee hee).

This is Patches our scarecrow

There's a Tui in a found bird's nest on his shoulder. The white pom pom is one of our cat's already played with toys (yuck, I know and lots of irony there!); the beak is made from some of the orange stars that were originally on the witches hat and he is stuffed with wool from sweaters I've been knitting. The felt came from an op shop. Patches is held together with safety pins from new clothing labels and elastic bands from our weekend newspaper (Richard needed his painting clothes back so we had to make it all temporary!)  I painted the face and Richard made the frame of the scarecrow but the girls stuffed him and put him together with glee. They loved shredding all the newspaper and crumpling it up to put it in. He didn't look recycled enough to win but we had a wonderful time looking at all the fabulous entries and once we find him new old clothes, he will take up residence in the veggie garden.

Here are some of my favourite entries.

 This one (above) was the winner. Her face is made from magazine cut outs. Brilliant!

This one won the people's choice award. Fantastic. It would definately scare the birds!

There was a petting farm in the Creche too.

The farm animals were brought into the creche playground and essentially left to roam around the kids.

Complete bedlam ensued with goats eating all the plants, enormous sheep escaping from hay bale enclosures and rabbits making out in the pen. Hilarious.

This little piggy found a cupcake.

The winner of the giant pumpkin competition

Gorgeous crepe paper bunting. I loved the cardboard leaves creating a sillhouette on the tarpaulin.

Eloise carried lunch home.

These wondeful preserves by the croquet club ladies (quince jelly, beetroot and ginger chutney, apple and feijoa chutney) made great birthday gifts for a friend. We gave them fabric lids (in gorgeous quilting fabrics of course) and popped them in a basket with some rapidly made parmasan wafers. Yum!