No useful interesting blog post this month. Tobe perfectly honest i forgt to do my monthy email, if you are lucky i will send one out in a bit. That does depend on whether im called to help my youngest build his toy V8 engine on the kitchen table, i get distracted by dogs, tea, other children etc or not.
As you can tell we have a pretty busy life here, what with kids, animals, work and everything else that life throws at us. Our van broke down in November, it has now joined the queue for the garage to be fixed by Rich when he has the time, but is way down the pecking order because he already wasted 2 weeks working on it for the turbo to decide to do a fainting goat impression and turn up its pipes. So we decided to buy a new one. After initially going out to find a carbon copy of the other much loved vivaro, we ended up buying a huge fiat ducato mini bus, with 9 seats, standing room, a swimming pool and room for a pony. No, i do admit its lovely and so nice to have so much extra space. It will be far better for all the shows we have in the pipeine for next year. Even if it made the bank cough a little. Our parking area now resembles a vagely upmarket scrap yard with the amount of dead, dying and decaying vehicles waiting to be fixed.
Meanwhile we had an extremely sucessful event at English Garden Plants and their annual Christmas Fair. if you ever get a chance to go, you must. it really does get you in the Christmas spirit, especilly with all the beautiful decorations and crafts. Alison and her family always make the event so special and enjoyable, a real Franglais experience with the best of both Countries coming together and having fun. Check out English Garden Plants on Facebook if you can or their website www.englishgardenplants.com
At the same time as making all the stock for the events i have been busy with Christmas orders and suddenly with my Etsy shop taking off. I dont list everything i have on the website on etsy, just the things (at the moment) that i know i can replace quickly. Using Etsy has given my business a big boost and a lot more orders are coming in, especially for the toolbelts which have now been shipped to the USA, Netherlands, HongKong and even Malta! (i have to be honest, i really need to look where Malta is on a map) Using Etsy means that taxes are taken care of for me, which is a lot easier, but the downside is that prices have to be higher to cover my costs. I have been so busy though which is wonderful but a little stressful, luckily i can rope in a small boy who is always willing to cut out patterns for me and a grown man who will cut and stamp my labels. Small boy prefers to be paid in coins but the Grown man is happy to be paid in tea and cake.
I had a comission to make a set of Saddle bags for horse Trail riding. They have gone really well considering they were very complicated, so perhaps keep and eye out for them on the website in the future.
The weather is closing in, my fire gets lit in the morning and work is piling up, im not a huge fan of the winter. Horses need rugs, hay and they are up to their ankles in mud. The goat is often seen on the wrong side of the fence trying to eat something he shouldnt even though hes fat enough already. im pretty sure that if he went into hibernation he could sleep for about 10 yrs and only lose half his bodyweight. So, We are at the Haras de Pin Christmas market in December and then i shall probably shut myself in my workshop until Spring, busy building up my stock for net year; If you dont hear from me for a while, just pop over to facebook or insta and say hi.
Happy Christmas Everyone!!