Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells! Jingle all the Way!

D'ya know what, this bloomin horrid revolting weather has had me feeling very glum over the past month and I am totally fed up with it. So I have decided to cheer myself up by throwing myself into the Christmas spirit with wild abandon!

The tree is now up and tinsel is strewn about on just about any surface that can take it :) And the cats haven't even pulled any of it down yet :)

I also had a fab day out at the Eden Project today where they are also being all Chrissy-massy and so had the double bonus of first watching people merrily skating on the ice rink with Xmas tunes blaring out, then got to wander through the Tropical Biomme where it was hot and well, as the name would suggest, all tropical :)
So I got the best of a winter wonderland and then got to pretend that I was in the Caribbean and feel all summery :) A definite cure for the winter blues :)

I did get trapped in the gift shop on the way out (lots of pretty things but all so very expensive), finally succumbed to buying some natural Christmas tree decorations which smell totally delicious, all orange-y and clove-y and cinnamon-y. Yum. I shall put them up on the tree as soon as I turn off the computer :)

Other than that Kes and I have mainly spent the month getting very wet and very muddy here at home. Everything is soggy including the cats (I can now track their night time antics by observing where the muddy paw trails lead on my cupboards and kitchen units, naughty cats!), and the lovely battery hens we acquired in the summer have turned their run into a swamp. Yuk :(

Muddy chickens they may be, but they all seem to be very happy though and are still merrily laying eggs for me. I've been making them a yummy 'chicken mash' once a week with all the left over veggie peelings and ends of loaves so they are happy despite the weather. I was a little worried that they might blow away in the gale force storms, but hooray our little home made chicken coop withstood the wind :) Lots of other things blew away, including my wood shed (grrr) and panes of glass blew out of the greenhouse. But I guess that's much better than chickens blowing away lol

Right, before I sign off and carry on with decorating, just a quick reminder to get your xmas orders in - the last posting date for xmas is the 21st December, but please order by the 14th December to allow enough time for me to get your order ready to send :)

If you have left it to the last minute and its after the 14th please email me to check the delivery time before ordering.

fayley xx and Kes (who is currently curled up in front of the fire dreaming dog dreams) :)

Halloween shipping info

IMPORTANT SHIPPING NEWS: all UK mainland parcels are being shipped with an alternative courier to Royal Mail to avoid delays caused by the postal strike between now and Halloween. This guarantees you a next day delivery with tracking so all your Halloween orders will reach you in time. Any customers outside UK mainland (including N.Ireland, Scottish Highlands and Channel Isles), please email me before ordering to discuss delivery.
 
HALLOWEEN ORDERS - please make sure I receive your payment NO LATER THAN 22nd October so I can get your order ready to send by the 29th October. If ordering after 22nd please email or call before paying to check stock availability.

fayley xx

Sometime in the Summertime...

Hey hey my beautiful web friends, how are you all keeping? I'm trying to stave of the frustration of rainy summer days, but am getting quite fed up of all the thunder clouds as I have a box full of clothing waiting to have pictures taken so I can add them to the website, but getting them drenched would not be a great idea so please, someone send some sunshine this way so I can get on with photo taking!

I've made the most of the gloomy day by getting a few more gowns online for you all, they are all very beautiful (of course) so have a closer look by clicking on the links below :)

Ashwyn Gown

Dress Beverly

Dress Rachel

We've been having fab fun at home and the place is almost turning into a mini farmyard! We are now the proud owners of six very beautiful ex-battery hens. They are such lovely ladies and we were so proud of them - having come out of caged battery life and then being transported for an hour in back of the car to our place, the next morning three of them had still left us egg presents for our breakfast the next morning! Super stars!

We've had them a few weeks now and they have very much settled into the life of happy free ranging hens, scratching, dust bathing and running around flapping their wings gleefully :) They are all also very friendly and inquisitive, to the point where it can be quite difficult to check their nest boxes as they all come running over to see what I'm up to and its hard to move for chickens under my feet!

I did make the mistake of going into their run in flipflops with glittery nail polish on my toes - oh my how they liked the look of it and all crowded around to peck my toes! I was lucky to get out with my feet intact!

We also bought some chicks from a freind and one of the young roosters voices seems to be breaking at the moment in an embarrassing 'teenage' way, he is making chick cheep noises half the time and broken hooting noises the rest of the time, oh dear! No cock-a-doodle-dooing to wake us up quite yet but I'm sure it won't be long... hopefully I'll still think keeping chickens is a good idea when I've been woken up at 4am by a loud cockerel!

Kes has been very good around them and despite licking her lips a few times when they first arrived she has managed to control her urges, except if one gets too close and then she'll give it a shove with her snout - the chickens are apparently oblivious to her wolf heritage hehe :)

Cats are super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings...

Just wanted to share something to make you giggle, a mail from one of our friends, 'Felix the Cat', enjoy :)

"If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on its feet. But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back. If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall. That's right, you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies. The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and pissed-off aliens crash on top of them.

Flaws In the Flying Cat Theory:
A logical analysis of the BFAD (Buttered Feline Antigravity Drive) propulsion theory clearly demonstrates the impossibility of such a system. Let us begin with a simple analysis.
1) Buttered bread must fall butter side down.
2) A cat always lands on its feet.
While both theorems are indisputable, the oracle offers no proof of the construct. The oracle implies that anyone who 'would' test this construct would immediately find the secret of BFAD. This is clearly nonsense. Let us assume a normal Einsteinian universe (although a Euclidean universe would serve our purposes just as well, the Einsteinian is both cheaper and drinks are readily available.)

To test BFAD, one must procure:
* Bread
* Butter (margarine, for some reason, will not work)
* A cat
* A strapping device.

Let us assume that all of these are readily available…. Attach the strapping device to the cat.

See?

No cat.

What has happened?

We have run up against an a priori universal law. By a priori, we mean that it takes priority over either the Buttered Bread Principle or the Law of Feline Landings.

What happens is that the instant a strapping device and a cat occupy the same four dimensional space, the cat disappears. Now, this can easily be tested, and has been repeatedly. There are two schools of thought about this phenomenon. The first holds that a cat and a strapping device are constituted out of different fundamental building blocks. According to this theory, a cat is constituted primarily of superquarks, (called meows by current theorists.) These superquarks demonstrate qualities that are both atomic (constituted as they are of groupings of normal quark particles) and feline (because these quarks exhibit characteristic of "charmed" or "lucky" particles.) Again, according to this theory, strapping materials are fashioned out of non-charmed particles. Bringing the two together causes one or the other to cancel out. One aspect of this theory that has not been sufficiently explained to date is the fact that it is always the cat, not the strapping device, that disappears. The second school of thought, and it is one that appears to be gaining ground in academic circles today, holds that cats are, in fact, super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who exist in our four dimensional universe only because there is plenty of good food and a lot of creatures stupid enough to provide the food, along with plenty of attention.

Whenever a strapping device appears, the cat simply opens a door to a different series of dimensions, and goes on an extended tour.

According to this theory, purring is a cat's way of maintaining a constant balance cycling across multiple dimensions. This school holds that antigravity is impossible, but that theoretically, a REALLY good grip on a cat, while reaching for a strapping device, could result in our ability to cross dimensions with ease (barring scratches, that is.)

Pessimists argue that if there were anything really interesting in those other dimensions, cats wouldn't spend so much time here, so why ask for a good scratching?"

Kes xx (and Fayley xx)

Happy Birthday to Dare!

Happy Birthday to Dare! Happy Birthday to Dare! Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to Dare!!

Oh my gosh, I can't believe Dare is 6 years old today! Makes me feel rather old (I guess in dog years that's the equivalent of 36 years - blimey!) ;)

In a way I guess it feels like we've been around for a lot longer, when I think back to the very first shop in Penryn it seems like a lifetime ago, Fayley had only just acquired me
as a second hand rescue doggy, so everything was very new to me, but I thoroughly enjoyed those first few weeks playing with all the new customers and racing around the vast space in the Penryn shop like a total hoodlum :)

Then we moved to Redruth just under a year later, less space but a much better location, and I enjoyed having stairs to run up and down and a park to race around at luchtime right on our doorstep. Made some great friends at Redruth who are still with us today and I think of all the events we look back on the little Redruth shop makes us the most nostalgic. We were rapidly outgrowing the space though, and after a few months debating whether or not it was time to move, the fire in the street finally gave us the push we needed to move on up and out to Truro - very exciting and very nerve wracking!

Truro was amazing, big space, lots of customers and more new friends, and the creation of DeviLution rock night, so SO much fun and I know Fayley still really misses getting together with you all once a month :(

We've been trading soley online for just over 18 months now (again how fast has time gone?!) and its brilliant to have the freedom of working hours of our choosing, for me being able to wander in and out of the office as I choose and get a lot more outdoor doggy time than I did in the shops, but I do miss all the attention (and presents!) I used to get as the 'Dare Shop Dog'. Mind you we still have lots of regular customers who, although we don't get to meet 'face to face' I still feel like we get to know each other, and I love seeing familiar email addresses in the inbox :)

So I guess as well as a 'Happy Birthday shout out to Dare, here is a big huge warm thank you to all of you, for supporting us over the past 6 years and for all the fun we've had and friends we have made. Oh gosh I'm getting all soppy and sentimental, time to say goodbye before I get all overwhelmed! Hugs to you all.... now its time for Birthday cake!! :)

Kes xx (and Fayley xx)

March... heckhm ok I'm a bit behind... April 2009!

Sleepy smile for the camera :)

Hey hey everyone! Kes here! *wags and licks* :) How the devil are you all?! The Howl seems to have missed a month (nothing to do with Fayley having a big scary landmark Birthday in March and trying to hide it all from you I promise!).

We've all been rather hectic with a house move last month which seems to have swallowed up every spare minute, and I wouldn't want to bore you all with tales of painting, decorating and lugging furniture (being a dog I was exempt from all the hard work thankfully, and even managed to avoid rubbing up against the wet paint this time!), I'll just skip ahead to the good bit and say yay! its all finished and looking wonderful! I finally have enough space for all my dog toys (although there's still not quite enough room for all Fayley's gubbins, time to declutter a little methinks!).

Its been a hideous stormy day today so I've been a good girl and have snoozed in bed all day, giving Fayley time to focus all her attention on updating the website.

More items have been added to the sale and discontinued pages, there are some real bargains and not only that there are a couple of absolute gems on the discontinued page so grab them while you can!

Here are just a few of our favorites, if you like them order quick cos I know Fayley's not going to be able to restrain herself for long and will end up keeping them all, and her wardrobe really can't hold any more ;)

The items on the sale pages are still available in other sizes and colours on the main site, so if you can't get what you want on the sale page please browse the main shop categories. The items listed on the discontinued pages are only available in the size and colour shown and once they're gone they're gone for good, so be quick! There are also some pvc discontinued items - all sale goth, pvc and discontinued items can be found under the main menu title *sales ~specials*

Fay's also been pottering away on the links pages, so there's a few more interesting sites to ramble your way through when your finished on Dare :) If you have a relevant banner and would like to swap links please email us :)

The customer gallery is updated with some new pics of you very beautiful customers who've been brave enough to send me photos this month :)

I think you'll agree the four of them look a little lonely up here, so come on the rest of you get shooting and send me your photos - I love to be able to see you all :)

Kes xx (and Fayley)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!

Wha-hey!! Snow galore! And oh my goodness isn't it so pretty? I hope you've had some where ever you are in the country! Its a rather rare event to get proper snow down here in Cornwall (a land much more inclined to mizzle or drizzle for 326 days of the year).

But yay and hoorah! We have had our share of blizzard :) Now I know I should probably moan about how tricksy it makes it to get anywhere on the roads, the delays it causes to the mail, the inconvenience of pipes freezing over, and the extra work involved with looking after the horses and other beasties during this white out... but NO!! Who care's about all that?! I LOVE SNOW!!!! *childish glee, childish glee, watch me dance in childish glee!!* Hehehe ^^

I did have a bit of excitement as I was travelling from Bath back to Cornwall this morning and got caught up in all the cancellations and delayed trains coming from London and the surrounding blizzardy areas, but made it home an hour before the snow hit big time here - and promptly got down to the serious business of snow ball fights (Kes thinks catching and eating snow balls is a great lark), and making snow angels, and well, generally running around screaming "Snoooowwwwwwww!!" at the top of my voice :) Happy days :)

Its also all three of the cats first ever experiences of snow, and although Mea and Dae were slightly more reserved, Nanook was pouncing and bounding around in it trying to catch all the snow flurries :) Utter cuteness!

Isha also decided to have a mad five minutes and galloped around the field a few times before rolling around in all the fresh snow like a mad woman lol Then she decided to be a snow plough and pushed her nose along the ground making tunnels and getting very snowy whiskers in the process :)

I think I just about have time to build a snowman this evening before it gets too dark, so I'd better dash, Kes and I still have some more snow time play to enjoy :) 

Hugs and snowflakes, fayley and Kes xx

Cold, wet and muddy January 2009!

Yuk, yuk, yukkity yuk, when will winter end?! I heard on the radio today that spring is due to arrive 2 days earlier this year than in the past due to 'global warming', but I seriously have my doubts at the moment, if it doesn't stop raining soon I shall start to grow gills!

We did have a lot of fun during the cold snap over December, Kes went on a few frozen walks and one pond she usually paddles about in was totally frozen over and so pretty :) She really wanted to go running about on it but I did my 'sensible mummy' act and wouldn't let her play on it, just in case.
I did let out my childish side as well though and thoroughly enjoyed stamping on all the frozen puddles - is it just me or does anyone else find the crunchy-snap of ice irresistible?

I've been making the most of the rainy weather by locking myself in the office and have finally updated the gallery pages, so thank you to all you beautiful customers who have sent in pictures, you are finally on the website!
Have a look at your fellow Dare shoppers in their wondrous new outfits!

Now all the excitement of Christmas is over and we're all feeling glum and skint, remember to check out the sale pages to grab yourself a total bargain and have some fantastic value retail therapy :) Everything on the sale pages is in stock to send immediately, and keep checking back as I've got oodles of things to add over the next week or two and all with at least 25% off the normal price - yay!

!click me click me! >>> *Sale ~ Special Offers* <<< ! click me click me!

Hehe ;) happy shopping, fayley xx