All year long it is a fabulous view beside our shop in the barn.

Come on in and have a laugh and do a bit of shopping!

The flying crows guard the garden.

We are a bit of an oddity our little gift shop.
We are situated in an old 150 year old barn on the side of the Black River. We have our hens wandering around the yard occasionally accosting people with ice cream cones. There are two goats, Knit and Purl that eat all the leaves and grass you can offer through the fence.

Not to mention the 2 cats Baxter and the newest addition Loki (he is the orange cat with the giant puffy tail) that hang out to be pet by anyone visiting. Also there is our weiner dog Milo that likes to sleep on the counter.

To add to this our employee Bill and his faithful companion Otis the long-haired weiner dog that work a few days a week. Otis has his own fans who he is happy to lie down for a good belly rub when he sees them.

Yes definitely not your average retail shop. We invite people to sit at the picnic tables or chairs to enjoy the view or to read all the funny signs and get a good laugh. We are ice cream friendly and well stocked with water and paper towels for any ice cream emergency that may occur. This is mostly small children with a face covered in the sticky chocolate version.

We are open everyday except Wednesdays from Labour Day to Thanksgiving Weekend (October the 8th). After that we are open Thursdays through to Sundays until December 22nd. Then we close the barn up from the snow until it's maple surup making time! (This is usually the 2nd week of March).

Stop by and say hi!

Kids Art Camp Van

So our van has had a bit of a face lift, two giant faces to be exact, in order to promote our summer art camp and after school art clubs.


































































The idea behind the blank pages the kids are holding up goes like this: Each child who takes part in this years summer art camp in July will have the opportunity to paint or draw a picture that will be judged by a few prominent Prince Edward County artisans. The 2 winning pieces of art will be printed in vinyl and placed on top of the blank pages on the van, so that the winning child artists will have their artwork zooming around the county and visiting local schools for as long as the van lasts. We will be picking one boy piece and one girl piece to match the characters on the van, but there's no guarantee that the winners will look exactly like the characters you see here!


Also, as we had to get a little promo for the shop in there, this is the view you will get when you are driving behind us.



















Here's the close up:


















And finally, here is a quick video of a walk around the van, so you can see how it all fits together:



If you have a child interested in joining the camp, read the next post (press conference), or visit www.gallopinggoat.com for camp details. Oh, and watch for us next time you're out and about!

Press Conference for Summer Camp

The press conference on Tuesday was great and thanks to everyone who came out and showed their support for us! I think the kids had the best time doing some fun little projects while we chatted about what we are up to with the summer camp and our expansion that is happening this year.

We get to borrow the Big Red Shed in Milford this year! Yeah! It's a really nice new building that is right beside the playground and Mt.Tabor playhouse which is the old church in Milford. I love the fact that we will be able to walk with the kids on the nature trail around the mill pond and over to the library during the week at camp.

People have asked me a number of times how this all started so I'll go back about 15 yrs ago to how it all began.

Tim and I met & graduated from Sheridan College's illustration program together in 1994 started doing freelance work as illustrators & graphic designers in Toronto. I wanted to teach kids art as well so I set up art workshops in High Park for a couple of summers. Then when my kids entered the school system I was able to volunteer in the classrooms and get to know the teachers and principal. My kids kept asking me to come in the school more and more and the teachers were asking me to help every week that there was an art project happening. Finally I asked the principal for use of an empty room to start a lunch program called the "Art Club". That started it all... there were so many kids wanting to come we had to set up new groups of kids every few weeks so that everyone had a chance.

Four years ago we decided to make the big move to Prince Edward County with visions of a new life. We opened up the Galloping Goat Gallery & Gift Shop in the little barn on our property in Black River by the well known Black River Cheese Factory. This has turned into a very popular spot, I'm not sure if it's the gorgeous view from the river shoreline, the fun, eclectic gifts we carry or the fact that we welcome people holding ice cream cones and even dogs on leashes!

My kids started almost immediately after the move asking for the Art Club to make it's debut here in the County. I went to South Marysburgh's principal asking for space and started the first after school Art Club. From there I added Pinecrest Public School, then Sophiasburgh Public School. This year with Tim's help and his very own stop motion animation art club we added CML Snider Public School, Queen Elizabeth in Picton and St.Gregory's Catholic School.

We had a 3 week Summer Art Camp in our backyard last year. We were filled to capacity with kids! This year I started in January trying to figure out a plan as to how to find a bigger space for the Art Camp and chatted to Bruce Dowdell in Milford and he suggested that the South Marysburgh Recreation Committee might be able to help me out. Off I went to their meeting in January with my papers of budgets and proposals and Chris Pengally, chair of S. Marysburgh Rec. Committee was more than happy to offer rental of Mt.Tabor's red shed to our camp. They also offered to sponsor 4 spots in the Art Camp for children that might not otherwise be able to attend due to finances.

Is this not a great community? Everytime I've hit some wall or glitch I start to ask around and always there has been support, advice or information that I needed to keep moving forward. It really is an amazing group of people that live here, I am so lucky to have all this support.

I also have Carol Rutledge partnering with me on the Summer Camp. She is like an energizer bunny with so much creative and musical talent it's going to make it a blast to work with her this summer.

Brianna Gorsline (1^st year student at Sheridan College) is also back with us to help with the summer camp along with Stacey York (2^nd year student at Trent University). They are both creative young ladies with lots of experience working with kids and Stacey is even going through University to become a teacher!

The Summer Art Camp will run weekly starting July 5^th for 4 weeks, 9 am to 4 pm. Children need to be at least 7 yrs old or starting Grade 1 this September. Cost is $188 (GST included and materials supplied) for a full week. 10% discount to siblings in the same week.

My approach to teaching art is to create a fun and interactive environment for children to play, explore and create. This is not your typical classroom experience. There will be imaginative themes changing weekly that range from Magic is All Around to Colour Wonder. For more Summer Art Camp details go to the website Galloping Goat Gallery

For further information please contact me, Lesley Snyder by telephone at 613-476-9696 or email at lesley@gallopinggoat.com.

Easy Landscape for Kids

I took more paint out again for Art Club today. Most teachers and parents, myself included usually avoid the whole paint thing in the classroom and at home with their kids. It can be disasterously messy for furniture, floors and clothes. Not to mention how everyone disappears when it's time to clean up and who wants to make a mess all over their kitchen table and find places for wet masterpieces to dry?

Well since this is a short Art Club session of only 4 weeks we are painting! I have been told by the kids many times that they love to paint so 4 solid weeks of painting! Last week was the challenge of putting into practice how to make the secondary colours in a rainbow using only 3 colours on their palette, red, yellow and blue. It's amazing how few kids really know their primary colours and which go together to make the secondary colours, orange, green and purple. The kids were surprised how hard it was to make a nice orange and the purple brighter. Also how quickly the colours got muddy when mixed less than carefully. Anyways we all survived and turned out some nice rainbows and they don't even know it but they just learned the school's art curriculum!

When I showed up this week the kids were a little worried about having to go through all that paint mixing again but breathed a sigh of relief at the bottles of "normal" colours! Pulling out the straws did confound them for a short time but with a quick demo of how to create trees using very liquidy paint they loved it!
Once I do the lesson of the techniques I really let them explore and play and create whatever they want.

It always surprises me when they ask permission to add flowers, a pond or a log lying on the ground.

I guess it's the years of being told exactly what to do, step by step, they tend to need to check in to see if it's OK to do things a bit different. It makes me a bit sad that our kids are so regimented that they feel they need to ask permission as to what they can add to their own art. As a painter myself I feel like I'm always trying to let myself really go in my paintings the way a very young child does without any consideration as to what people's interpretation might be. I'm being shown by these kids that that disappears very fast when they enter school. I guess it's the need to keep all those kids focused and learning within all the parameters that are set in the classroom.

I always say in response to a question like "Can I put flowers in my picture?" "You are the artist, it's your artwork so do what you feel will work best, follow your gut."

The usual response to that is the rather shocked question "I'm an artist????"

Green Gala at Books & Company, Picton

The speakers at this event are Mark Cullen, Canada's best known gardener, television personality and author, Denis Flanigan Landscape Ontario HGTV, Scott Wentworth of Wentworth Landscape Group, Stephen Poole from Connon's Nurseries. Some pretty awesome speakers and I'm glad that I get to be there with my booth of wares to sit and listen to all the talks!

SUMMER ART CAMP for KIDS!!!

So we have finally gotten all the details sorted out like location, projects and the sticky wicket... insurance. Now the fun starts with testing crafts and buying up supplies!

One thing we forgot on the poster is that for siblings, as in children from the same household, we will offer a 10% discount on the price of the camp for the 2nd child, and 3rd and so on.


Call or email us ASAP so that we can hold your child a spot and remember that all payments will need to be completed before July 1st if you want to avoid HST. That lovely tax set up the government likes to tell us that we won't even notice when they start it up! Oh, I think we are going to notice it big time!

9am to 4pm - ages 7 (entering gr 1) and up.

July 5th to the 9th - Monday to Friday - $179 per student
July 12th to the 16th - Monday to Friday - $179 per student
July 19th to the 23rd - Monday to Friday - $179 per student
July 26th to the 30th - Tuesday to Friday - $179 per student
All materials will be supplied.

Magic is All Around - Week 1 - creating wands, fairy homes, working with crystals and
making rune stones and wishing boats, hunting for fairies and elves...

Paint, Percussion & Paint - Week 2 - create a skin frame drum, design and paint a tribal
flag, making chimes, end the week with a performance of stomp-like music!

Colour Wonder - Week 3 - Solar dying, tie dye t-shirts, needle felting, build a kalidescope,
painting and lots of other colourful projects!

Finders, Keepers... Krafty - Week 4 - creating art from all the fabulous things that we
find all around us like twig fairy furniture, toad houses, herb dolls, stepping stones...

There will also be lots of other games & activities, nature walks
and swimming at the Mill Pond!

Register and complete payment before July 1st and pay only the GST.
After July 1st HST (13%) will apply.

The art camp will take place at Mt.Tabor in the red shed beside
the playground in Milford.
For more info look on our website www.gallopinggoat.com.

The classes will be run by Lesley Snyder, teacher of the after school Art Club at 5 local schools & owner of the Galloping Goat Gallery along with Carol Rutledge, an expericence crafter and director of Annie and Cinderella’s Christmas at Mt.Tabor. Community Playhouse.

For more information & registration call or email lesley@gallopinggoat.com 613-476-9696.

Goat Girls

Knit and Purl love school day mornings. They know we are out early and the kids are running around and interesting to watch. It also means that they get me in the pen visiting with them and feeding them earlier than those two other days that I don't seem to show up until they are completely starving!! They even recognize the sound of the school bus and try to show off a bit when the kids come home in hopes they will come into the pen to play with them. I think they might need more friends! Soon all the visitors will keep them better socialized than this small crew of goat herders.

Hopefully the girls will get used to being on tie outs so they can munch on the grass and weeds and visit people. They are a bit skittish when I walk them on their leashes around to different areas that they haven't seen before. I really would love to just let them wander around but they will totally trash my gardens and eat everything that looks remotely like vegetation!

Belle sees me taking out her leash to walk the goats and gets all excited thinking she is going for a walk and then depressed when she sees it's for the girls. The girls are always cautious of poor Belle because after all she is a dog, very dangerous creatures, apparently for goats. Everytime I've taken the girls for a walk on their leashes and Belle tries to tag along, Knit constantly rears up on her back feet and tries to head butt poor Belle. She has only made contact once so Belle has learned the painful lesson to avoid goat heads & horns.

The girls are pretty wet in the video I took of them this morning and goats never like to be wet! The will be happy when the snow is gone and all the greens start growing. Of course the green stuff will disappear the instant the goats find it. It's amazing to think that pen area before the other goats arrived was so thick with greens you couldn't even see through it to the barn!

Laughter is ALWAYS the Best Medicine!

It is once again that time of year when the blues starts creeping in around us. Not enough sunlight and too cold to be outside, unless you don't mind your nostrils freezing together everytime you try to sniff away a runny nose because it's so freaking cold!

I tend to go the way of the blues in the month of Jan. and Feb. and haven't yet been able to escape to somewhere sunny during this time of year but I'm always hopeful that it will happen!

I'm leaving tomorrow for Toronto for the big gift show, which is combined with the toy show and a few others. My mission is simple, run around like a maniac to the 4 shows find all the cool unique things and buy, buy, buy but don't over spend! Oh did I mention I only have 3 days to do it in?

Thankfully my girlfriend is on the same mission for her newly opened gift shop Sacred Circle so we get to drive together and share a hotel room and catch up and lots of girl gossip. This way we both have a sounding board for what we think we might be acquiring for our businesses. It's a bit scary just jumping into this arena and all these helpful salespersons and their helpful suggestions of what else I should add to my order that would be fabulous!

So the list is long with "have to find these", "try to find something like this" and a few "does anybody make these?". The hard part is the booths are all gorgeous and professionally displayed that it is completely distracting and you end up looking at stuff that is completely not what the shop needs! But it is so fun! It's probably a very good thing you can't actually buy the items on display to take home for personal use or it would be very dangerous.

I do like going and seeing my funny sign lady and her husband since we do a whole lot of laughing and she always shows me all the newest signs. I also share with her some other sayings and funny signs I've seen around so she can go on the hunt to carry those as well.

I also think this line of vintage images with Anne Taintor adding in her brilliant lines are beyond hilarious! Anne Taintor you have a wicked sense of humour and I would love to have coffee with you someday! You are, I bet a fun person to hang out with!

For updates, Tim is now diligently pursuing his favourite thing to do, illustration and graphic design. This is a link so you can check out some of the things he has worked on. If you need anything along these lines created for yourself or business we would love to work with you. Long distance jobs are easy to do with the joys of the internet, anything is possible.

I'm also working out the details for the 2nd year of the Galloping Goat Art Camp for kids. We are going to have the camp at Mt.Tabor so we will have a better space to work in and a playground to use! There will be 4 weeks (Monday to Friday 9 am to 4 pm) this year with each week a different theme, which at this point I haven't exactly figured out yet! The cost has gone up a bit since things like insurance, summer students and renting a space have all become a factor. The good news is we have some way cooler art projects in the works! $180 a week plus GST, with 10% discount for any sibling also attending the same week. After July 1st payments will be subject to HST (13%). I need to do more research in regards to the HST and the camp fee but I think this is how it will work.

Carol Rutledge is partnering with me in the running of the art camp and bringing along her amazing skills in music and theatre to add to the art mix so it is going to be so awesome! Carol has worked with kids, for years and worked with the Mummers drama camp, directed a number of plays, like Annie, Cinderella's Christmas and tonnes more whose names have currently become lost in my head. Not to mention she is a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to working with her!

I have actually started a list of names of kids that already know they want to attend Art Camp since last year we ran out of spaces rather quickly. If you want to add your child's name to a week email me your contact info and I'll add them to the list. Please email your info instead of phoning, phone messages through my kids end up being a bit of a muddled mess sometimes. I will also email you all the specific details of themes in the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping to have all the details worked out before March break so I can hand out flyers to all the afterschool Art Clubs that I teaching.
Go and play in the snow if you can, it helps make it a bit less annoying! Not to mention it's a serious workout trying to haul yourself up the hill you just went flying down on your sled!

Snow Goats!

Here are Knit and Purl standing on their ramp with Knit at the top. Knit has this funny thing about using her hooves to paw at you. We can't quite figure out what she wants. She does it to her sister all the time too, as you'll see in the video. Knit has tonnes of personality and loves to do her little prancing, leaping into the air and has become very talented with walking on her hind legs trying to check out the food bucket when I come into the pen in the morning.

Knit really wants to play but she doesn't quite know what to do with me. Or maybe it's me not sure what to do with them. I'm cautious of those horns which they have no problem using on each other. Also I can't figure out if Knit racing around is because I'm scaring her or if she is just having fun.

I need to take the camera out and put it on the tripod and then play with her and get it on video. She loves to do these whirling leaps off of the little house and then race up the ramp but I need to clap my hands and sort of get her going which doesn't work so well when I have the camera in my hand. Not to mention the camera seems to be irresistible to them both trying to nibble on.

Purl has the curly coat and all the curls on her cheeks like big mutton chop sideburns. Knit has taken more after her mother and has no curl just this fuzzy straight hair that seems to stick straight out from her body. This should look pretty funny in the spring when it's twice the length!

The girls and the rest of us in the Galloping Goat Gang wish you a very Happy New Year!

Busy Hands Christmas Craft Show - This Weekend!!

This should be another excellent craft show since I know a few people that are bringing their wares to this show. Tim has been working hard on all his concrete sculptures so he has lots for the show. I have been knitting like a mad woman so that I have my crazy hats and some very funky scarves made from this new funky yarn with pompoms and also a few pairs of fingerless gloves. I even pulled out my sewing machine and started playing with some bright and cheerful polar fleece to make fingerless gloves that seems to be the new hot fashion accessory this year.
I'm also whipping up some yummy chocolate bark with cranberries and nuts for a little treat to pop in some lucky person's stocking.

Hope to see you there!

And the Winner is...

Knit and Purl!
Congratulations to Leslie Hetherington who submitted the winning names!

Thanks to all that participated.

Here they are, actually in this photo Knit is on the right and Purl is on the left.



In truth Leslie suggested Kit and Purl, as knit could be seen as a rather buggy or pest-like name. However, if you enter their pen and stand there for any length of time, Knit (or Kit) will start nibbling on your pants or shirt tail or whatever else happens to look tasty to her. Therefore a pesty name isn't quite so far off the mark.

We already have a small bag of their mohair in the house, and will soon begin the process of washing, carding and spinning it. Look for it in Lesley's hats in the spring!

In the meantime the goats will be proudly hosting their first December sale. December is our annual 'no tax' month, so come on over and say 'Hello' to Knit and Purl offer them an oak leaf from the lawn, and browse the shop. We're open Thursday to Sunday and our last day open this year is December 19th, so don't delay!

Let the Voting Begin!

We are all very excited to find out the names of our goats! We've gotten a great response and have a big list to choose from, so let the let's get voting!

Here is the link to vote for your favorite goat names:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8WBFHSS
You can only vote once, so make it count!

And no, I can't tell them apart either...

2 Days Left to Name Our Goats!

The deadline for submissions is Friday Nov 20th at midnight, then the voting begins!

Get your name suggestions in today!! They are too cute to go nameless for much longer. How else will Santa put them on his list??

(See the next post for details)

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.