A GREAT weekend!

I gotta make one of these! It is a great outdoor toy!

Sprout loved the giant puppets in the play Thumbelina.

Why is the Bluenose black, not blue? Answer: It refers to how cold the crews' noses get - not the ship!

First of all, I sold stuff at the May Faire at The South Shore Waldorf School and met a TON of wonderful people. We all had a fabulous time. I love the school and the staff I met and every family we met (or met again, we know a few as it turns out) and I got to hang out in a 16 ft yurt from Little Foot Yurts (I'm taking a workshop to learn how to build my own next winter) Then we went to Lunenberg for fish and chips and while we were eating met a neat family who it turns out had moved to the area from Toronto specifically for the South Shore Waldorf School. Then we chatted up the Blue Nose II crew and one of the crew gave us the copy of the Mariners prayer he'd been given on hs first day on board as a souvenier!

I scored a 1956 copy of Shakespeare for Children by Charles and Mary Lamb with Rackman plates for 25 cents and two Classical Music For Kids story tapes - for 50 cents and 2 - yes TWO handknit sweaters with pine forest sillouetes and starry skies for 4.00 at a yard sale, one fits Nature Girl and one fits Wild Thing!!!

Ever have so many plans you figure you can't fit em into one lifetime? We have two "5 year plans" one lets Papa Pan retire earlier and relies on a property that will allow us to get partially off the grid and have a subsistence farm and room for my toymaking business to grow to support us, supplemented with fancy fibre animals as we learn more about them.

The second is setting up shop with a gallery/toy shop/cafe- music venue (like Rasputins in Ottawa) in a touristy town area with lots of really cool people around.
Predictably, we'd name it the Wild Culture Cafe.

This weekend, by chance, we found properties on both 5 year plans. Both affordable, both totally dream worthy.

A 16 acre parcel of farm with a 200 year old house/potential money pit and several outbuildings 5 minutes from here. The house has genuine good bones and a beautiful property (ancient oaks!!!) but it needs to be COMPLETELY restored and its been empty nearly a decade, the current tenants are teens who party there on occasion, bats, and from the smell, raccoons. Scary scary scary, and very exciting.

An authentic 1930's general store complete with all the original fixtures and a 3 bedroom 1500 sq ft apartment above, 1.5 hours from here on the South Shore. Oh it would be wonderful...but it means setting up in a new community and thats a big deal. Scary scary scary, and very exciting.

They'll fuel a lot of daydreams this week (til we find out what is desperately wrong with each property!)