Name the Galloping Goats' Goats Contest!

Our girls are here!!! Yay!! They are so small and cute but fairly timid so far. Everyday we have gone out and talked to them and petted them as much as they will allow.
I think they are slowly getting more comfortable and even are starting to play a bit with each other. They will also follow Leah around when she is in the pen with them. I'm hoping that by spring they will be as easy going and tame as our old dog Belle.

They are a Pygmy and Angora goat cross, so they have the short stature of a pygmy goat and the curly long hair of an Angora goat. Their coats will be routinely sheared and then I will hopefully get my mom, aka. the Crafty Crone, to spin up some mohair yarn and then I'll be able to knit it right into my hats!

THE CONTEST:

So we are having trouble naming the sister goats, and need your help! You can enter your clever name ideas, then everyone will have a chance to vote, and the creator of the winning entry will win a fabulous prize!

How to enter:

You can enter your suggestions starting at 7PM Nov 4th by emailing us, leaving a note at the friends of the Galloping Goat facebook group, by commenting on this blog entry, or by visiting the Galloping Goat and dropping a note in the box on the barn. We will take submissions of names up until Nov. 20th midnight. There are just a couple of things to consider...

They are beautiful girls and deserve girly names, no boy names allowed!
You must include 2 names, one for each goat.
The names must be cute, but not too cute!
You must include your name and either a phone number or email address so we can reach you if you win. Your contact info will not be published, unless you publish it yourself by submitting in one of the more public venues. (Like on the comments on this blog.)
No vulgar names will be permitted. :P
Sorry, but no entries from our own family will be accepted! This means you Snyder/Morris'
All entries will be posted on this blog and on the facebook group.

Voting:

Voting will take place from November 21st to midnight November 27th. We will put the names on this blog and facebook group so that everyone has a chance to vote.

Winning!

On November 28th the person with the most popular names for our goats will get a $25 gift certificate for the Galloping Goat Gallery, bragging rights, and will be able to come and visit the girls anytime they like! AND, the goats will finally have names we can put up on their little house. They likely still won't come when we call though.

Scarecrow Festival Success!!

We had an amazing and fantastic Scarecrow Festival this year!! Thank you again to all of the people that came out and made a scarecrow and for those that just gave a donation. We raised the most $ ever and gave a cheque for $1300 to the Reverend Jean Wilson for the church's trust fund that is set up for Joseph Stoness and his family.
This year we were lucky enough to have Terry from the Picton Fire Department come and set up his tent and show people the importance of fire safety in their homes, barns and garages.

I have to say the goats were probably the biggest hit of the day. Children and adults loved petting and feeding them and the goats thoroughly enjoyed all the attention. They had enough corn and treats from the garden that they didn't even want their dinner that night!

The popcorn crew of ladies were also alot of help though I'm not sure if they ate more popcorn then they sold or not!

We also decided this year that we would give a prize for the most unusual scarecrow of the Festival and Lucy and Hannah's creative use of the clothes and a lace curtain to create a bride and groom were the definite winners!

I also have to give a shout out and a huge thank you to our amazing Picton businesses that donated all the items to make our day possible and give us a low enough overhead that we could give 100% of the money donated straight to Joseph and his family.
Home Hardware for creating all our scarecrow sticks and delivering them to us!
George Emlaw for that very important bale of straw for stuffing!
County Farm Centre for all the hotdogs.
The Co-op for the feed bags that we use for scarecrow heads and the corn for the goats.
Giant Tiger for their gift certificate
No Frills for their gift certificate
Metro for their gift certificate
Black River Cheese for the free ice and ice cream cones for all our volunteers that helped us that day! Nothing like getting paid in ice cream!
Sobeys for all the hotdog buns we could handle!
2nd Time Round for all the times I went in begging for used clothes and letting me dig through all the bags looking for items we could use. You ladies are awesome!
Picton Gazette and Wellington Times for the articles and photos of our event that helped us in promoting a good cause.
And last but definitely not least the ladies that came and helped out during the day and tried not to freeze in that brisk wind off the river. Aynsley Emlaw, Lucy Mee, Lori Farrington, Kirstie Ross, Heather Zantingh, Pat Dubyk, Sheila, Leah Snyder, Annette, Bri-Anne & Hannah Brummell, Rosemary Morris and Valery Phillip. Also thank you to Barb Guernsey of Black River Tree Service for ferrying me around all over the County delivering flyers to promote the day and requesting donations for the event. I can't thank you all enough and feel very blessed to live in this amazing community. These kinds of things just can't be done without people willing to step up and help out! You all are awesome! Can't wait to see all of you again next year!

3rd Annual Scarecrow Festival

Wow, does time fly by or what!!! It's Thanksgiving weekend already and the trees are all dressed out in their prettiest colours for the season. Where did the time go, it has been a bit of a blur this year that's for sure.

So since it's fall and Thanksgiving you know what that means? Right? Scarecrow time is here!! We have been gathering up all the makings for our annual fundraiser and as always the local businesses have gladly pitched in with donations. This year the funds we raise are going to Joseph Stoness and his family. Joseph was the boy that was so terribly burned this past May and was a good buddy of my son Quinn's. His family is really struggling under a financial strain that we are hoping we can help to relieve a bit. They are actually working on having Joseph home soon but he is in a wheelchair so they need to have ramps put in and some other alterations to the house in order to make this happen.

It is going to be a fun Scarecrow Festival this year with hotdogs and drinks, facepainting and popcorn as well! It is this Saturday October the 10th from 10 am to 4 pm. Also our goats, are looking forward to visiting with everyone as well. Coco and her sister Smores (she is the one that looks like the colour of marshmallows) love to play with my kids and their mom Nana Aggie is always just looking for something to eat. This is a fun event for kids of all ages and it's for a really good cause.

Don't forget it is also the last weekend for ice cream at Black River Cheese Factory so don't miss out, it's along time until April!

The store, of course, is full of some new cool things I found in Montreal like my crazy purses. I've been carrying the silver magic bus purse and it has been getting tonnes of comments from people. There are also purses of volkswagon bugs cars, pug dogs, trains, cinderella carriages, high heel shoes, a red snail wearing a rhinstone necklace and many more.

Also I just got another big order of our funny old signs and there are some new ones I've never had before. So don't forget to come and read the walls and have a good laugh and giggle.

We are now open Thursdays and Fridays 11 am to 5 pm and Saturday and Sunday 10 am to 5pm. We can also ship things out to you if you can't make it in to the store. Just send me an email at lesley@gallopinggoat.com and let me know what you are trying to get a hold of and I'll do my best to help you out. Someday maybe our website will get fancy enough to shop online but I doubt it. I am constantly picking up new fun things so I don't think we could keep up with the changing stock in the barn and on a website.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and hope to see you in the barn real soon!

Turtles, Turtles Every Where Turtles!

Well these are not goats but they are baby snapping turtles that were born on the shores of the Galloping Goat Gallery.

We have a mother snapping turtle that comes every June to climb the hill surrounding our house and lay eggs all over our lawn in front of picture window. This turtle is huge, bigger than a dinner plate and fairly scary looking so we don't bother her while she goes about her business. This year about a week ago we noticed there were holes torn up all over the front lawn. Little round sections as if someone was digging all over the place in small sections. No egg shells anywhere to give us any clues but as I was walking from the barn to the house I saw one tiny turtle just plodding along. These guys are about the size of a looney. I went and got Tim and then we started wandering around with our eyes peeled on the ground. We found about 8 of these guys all over our property, going every which way and obviously no idea where the water was. We put them into the bottom of the wheelbarrow and took them to the river shore. We plopped them into the grasses on the shore and left them to do what turtles are supposed to do.

We stepped gingerly for a few days with hopes that the turtles all made their way to the water. It's funny how you like these guys when they are cute little babies but when they are adults they are kind of creepy and a bit evil! We saw a baby swan get eaten by a turtle and they will take a full sized Canadian goose down as well. I think next time I might not be so helpful getting these guys to the river. We did find another area of lawn holes from another nest of turtles so just on our property alone there must have been more than 60 small holes dug up so that means 60 or so turtles heading to the river. I sure hope they don't all make it or there won't be much else living on the river with these guys taking down anything they can get their jaws on!!

Labour Day SALE!!!

We are cleaning up and clearing some stuff out so that means it's time for a SALE!!

50% off Christmas items,

50% off bits for the kitchen, like wine charms, pate knives, dip bowls and such.

25% to 45% off some of our garden statuary

and more!!!

Still Shopping and More to Come!!

I got to go to Montreal to the Gift show there. My girlfriend Charlene is expanding her store that is in Deseronto into a gift store so she came with me and we also brought our guys along. Not always the smartest idea to bring men on a serious shopping trip but they actually did well without too much hovering or reminders of "are you on a shopping frenzy or is this something we really need?" What kind of a question is that??

I shopped for the store for 2 days and the last day I shopped for myself and for once picked up some treats just for me! I of course did get the kids there token souvenirs and Tim found a really nice jacket. The clothes I saw in all the shops were amazing and all had a funky style to them that I love!! I don't clothes shop much, since everything is all so boring and the same. Montreal is so the opposite it rocks!! I'm doing the trip more often, the prices were even reasonable and the ladies in the shops were helpful and really nice. My french unfortunately is so old and rusty that it is pretty much useless to me. I hate that when I went backpacking back in my early twenties I could actually manage to converse and understand french when I was in France but now, forget it.

Anyway I did find some new artists and wholesalers and have a fairly decent amount of things I asked to have delivered ASAP so hopefully over the next week it will start arriving. I'm probably crazy to fill up the barn at this point with the season slowing down but I have a feeling there are going to be alot of visitors this fall coming to see the fabulous foliage colours. Plus lots of people will be looking for Christmas gifts and such. I found some really cool and funky new metal wall art that I'm going to put in the upstairs of the barn and on the outside as well. This company had some really neat pieces and good prices.

Also we will be at the Milford Fair again this year and it's always a really fun day. It's on Saturday September 19th with a parade at the beginning and lots of fun activities for the kids and lots of local vendors with fun things to check out. It's a real old fashioned country fair with contests for everything from the best cake, cookies or muffins to best knitted hat (which I won 1st prize for last year! - I've never won 1st prize for anything before!!), lego sculpture to best photograph. Everyone puts things into the competition, including all the kids so everyone has fun getting ribbons.

On the fall agenda is the Scarecrow Festival Fundraiser as well. It is happening on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, unless we get rained out. I need to find volunteers to help me pull this off this year. It's not that much to set up but more people make a big difference to making it run smoothly and easily. We need donations of hats and clothes so email or phone me to drop off any donations. We actually ran out of pants last year and had to run to town once and then when they were gone I raided my husbands trunk of his old jeans that are fitting a bit too snuggly for more donations! Any loud coloured shirts, scarves, paints or overalls would be welcome.

Almost time to open so that's it for now! See you in the barn!

New Hattitude Hats Added to the Mix

Ok I have to say this hat is now my favourite and might even be worth repeating the combination of colours and yarn. Assuming of course I can find it all again!

I named this hat "Limesicle" for it's tangy green-ness and cool icy blue. I wish the photo was a bit better lighted but I shot this in the barn on the counter before I put it on display. This hat fits me so size wise it's for an average adult-sized head.

I also made another of my glow-in-the-dark skull hats that were so popular with the men in my family at Christmas last year.

This picture is the best I could come up with of the skull glowing in the dark. It actually glows quite brightly.

I have to start working on a special hat that someone ordered for a gift. It is a earflap hat with the batman logo on it. Should be a challenge but a fun one. I do love a challenge.