Howl has a new bloggy format :)

Howl and hello to you all! We've decided to try to keep more up to date with our updates, as it is we are hiding are heads a little in shame as our 'updates' seem to be past their sell by date!
As Fayley has been busy over the past few days getting lots of new stock on the website and has oodles more to get on in the next couple of weeks I thought I had better get my paws back onto the keyboard and remember to update the howl section of the website as well!
So, we thought we'd go all out and try one of these blogger styley things rather than simply updating the old website. Plus we've been asked a few times why we don't keep all our old howls up on the site any more, and we totally agree it would be nice to look back over all our years of shop adventures, so over the next week we'll also be putting up all our old website blogposts on here as well.
Just don't look to closely at some of the old pictures or you'll be able to see just how many grey doggy hairs I've gained over the past couple of years (eeps!).

So, hopefully I'll be chatting much more to you all this year (that's my doggy new years resolution) and just to show you how happy I am to finally be getting back to work as archiver of shop adventures, here's a little clip of me this morning :)

Dec 27th 2010

Hopefully you all had a wonderful Christmas, with some time to relax in between all the partying/family visits/extra work etc! We've had a fab few days with some time off to enjoy catching up with our friends and family, and eating 3 full Xmas roast dinners in 24 hours :)
Just a quick howl tonight to show you that both boys and Kes got into the Christmas spirit!

Although we are not particularly taking 'time off' over xmas (still checking orders and emails any of you lovely peeps may like to send us!), our manufacturers are all on a break until the 4th Jan, so we will not be sending out any new orders until then. If you have any questions in the mean time just email us :) Much love and Xmas tinsel, fayley and Kes xx

5th December 2010

December? December?! Good grief where does all the time go? I have a confession to make that we have not been updating this howl as often as we should, but we have been going through a really horrible couple of months at home and
its had quite an impact on how chatty we've been feeling; I like to come on here and update you all on what's happening so that we feel we can keep a connection with all you lovely online friends and customers, but as a generally upbeat and happy person its been quite hard to come
on and write when we have been feeling anything other than upbeat.
Work is going just fine, home life is going just fine and really I shouldn't have much to complain about, however my beautiful mare Isha (the horse I am pictured with in my 'about us' page), has been suffering from lameness and has been on box rest for months. For any of you with horses you will immediately share a sympathetic groan with me, as 'box rest' has got to be one of the all time worst things you can hear from your vet.
Basically it means shutting your horse in a stable, 24hours a day, 7 days a week - and for most horses this is incredibly stressful as they are not designed to be confined, for all owners it really is incredibly depressing and stressful as you are left dealing with a very unhappy horse. I think I felt more trapped than her, she actually coped admirably well considering she is a personality that cannot stand still for more than a minute and is always wanting to charge around at full speed. My stable wall does have large holes in it now where she took out her frustration with her back feet and her teeth, but after a while she got used to the routine and just kind of resigned herself to it. And that is when it got really hard for me.
I could literally see the mare I have had since she was a 3 year old disappear before my eyes - her cheeky playful nature became withdrawn and anxious. Normally outgoing she became neurotic and explosive when I tried to lead her out of the stable.
And after months of this we didn't seem to be progressing, some days she would seem to be in less pain, other days she could barely walk.
And I became very withdrawn and depressed myself, feeling very isolated as no one could seem to offer a better alternative or any advice.
By pure luck after a late night googling session trying to find other people in my situation, I stumbled across a center in Exmoor specialising in the type of injury Isha is suffering from - soft tissue injury in the hoof - and this is where my story takes a happy turn!
Any horse owner may feel that it would be a very hard decision to send their horse so far away from home, but we had reached a point where actually it felt like I had been thrown a life line. We decided to send Isha to Rockley Farm in Exmoor under the care of an amazing lady called Nic who has successfully rehabilitated horses like Isha.
She has now been up there for just over one month and is already showing massive improvement, she is now walking out happily not hopping on three legs and has other horses to play with so her brain is much happier too! She has a way to go yet but considering I thought she may never be sound again its all looking very positive :)
The only downside is my insurance company are being a nightmare and are currently refusing to pay towards the cost of her rehab (something that should have been covered under my policy but I shan't get into a rant about it on here...), so I am having to find £107 a week (yes you read that right) to keep Isha at Rockley at the moment - so if you have been saving up your pennies and are considering making an order, please, order like you have never ordered before!! Every penny is going to the Isha fund at the moment!
I will keep you updated, I'm going up to visit her in 2 weeks and can't wait to see how she's doing :) Fingers crossed everyone for a full recovery for a beautiful mare.
Ok, that's my chatter and apology for our absence over, I shall pass you over to a very bouncy Kestrel:

Howl hello to you all, not only is Christmas almost upon us but we've got proper snowy weather down here
in sub-tropical Cornwall to get us all in the festive spirit!
It has caused us a smidgen of bother as for some reason a few inches of snow managed to knock our internet connection out for the best part of the week, but we are back online and raring to go now :)
Its blooming freezing here but I am managing to keep snug and warm in my doggy pajamas (yes I do wear pj's, don't laugh!) and a doggy coat when I am out, so I have had fun playing in the snow:

You may notice some young upstarts creeping into some of Fayley's photos - don't worry she's not replacing me, but she has gone and introduced some new dogs to the herd of animals here - so, here's introducing Kobi and Kujo: 

In all honesty I am not very impressed, they are noisy, hectic and lack any social grace (honestly, they come bounding up to me and lick my ears without so much of a how do you do), but on the plus side Fayley is buying them lots of puppy toys and chew toys, which being top dog I get to steal and have for myself, so I guess I shouldn't moan too much ;)

Hugs and Howls, Kes xx

easter chicks :)

Howl hello and wags to you all, I hope you've missed me! Fay has finally let me loose on the keyboard again to update my howl, its all very exciting around here as we have some new members to our menagerie family :)

Fay has been incubating some of her hen's eggs and we now have seven very fluffy and very cute chicks! They are huge time wasters though, its amazing how a minute can turn into half an hour when watching chicks do cute chick stuff - they are only one week old but they are already practicing scratching in the sand and dust bathing, eeeps but they are so much fun :)

Other than chick gazing, we've been making the most of the gorgeous sunny weather, the greenhouse is now jam packed with tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, and lots of seedlings. Hopefully some will survive the inevitable slug attacks, and I've had to bark at the cats a few times for sneaking in to dig in the dirt - bad cats! I'm not sure how cost effective all this home grown produce is, but its certainly a lot more satifying knowing where our food comes from :)

The website is fabulously busy at the moment, remember if you have any special requests for orders, need something fast or need something shipping to the far reaches of the world just drop fay a line, we're always happy to help :) I need you all to keep up the good work ordering all your gorgeous clothing to keep Fay busy or goodness knows what other animals she'll decide to fill her time up with, I don't want to be forgotten if too many other cute creatures move in with us - I need to be the top dog! :)

Kes xx

Wow, so the 'naughties' are behind us and now we're stuck in the 'teenies'... sounds more like a bad kids tv show or the latest invention for a one-hit-wonder pop band than a decade in my opinion!

We've had a super time over Xmas here, its been our first Christmas in the chalet with space to put up the Christmas tree and the log burner keeping the place warm it's all been very festive :)
Kes loved opening her presents, although she was rather impatient waiting for Christmas day as she sniffed out the parcel with her new balls in it and spent a few evening with her nose pressed up to the parcel staring beseechingly at me to let her open it early!

We also had a minor incident with the cat's present - a big bag of catnip. Dae managed to get hold of the whole bag one night and ripped the whole thing open all over the floor... it meant we missed the fun of watching them play in it, and even now Me'a and Nanook are licking the carpet most evenings, the hoover just doesn't seem to be picking it all up lol

The snow was pretty good fun down here, not so deep as to be a hideous pest, but we were without running water for 5 days when all the pipes froze so I was very relieved when everything thawed.

It was the battery chickens first snow, and I'm not entirely sure that they were that impressed by it, I made sure to put lots of straw down in their run, just looking at their feet in the snow made me feel very chilly!

So, after a great Xmas its been a pretty rubbish start to the New Year. They say bad luck tends to come in 3's, well I've had four already so I want a break now ok? First of all my car's alternator broke just before the snow, £80 for a new one (ouch), thankfully I was able to use my man's car for the week but meant I had no four wheel drive just when I needed it most and we had to stack the little car full of all the animal feed just when I needed to stock up, grrr!

Then my wonderful old goat, Winston Pinkerton, had to be put to sleep. RIP Winnie, you were the coolest goat dude ever. It was his time to go, he'd reached the grand old age of about a million years old and he just wasn't coping this winter so it was time to make the hard decision.

Then Kes got a gastric bug, not sure if she found something gross to eat in the snow or just picked up a bug on one of our walks, but she was very poorly for two days and nights (lots of throwing up and tummy ache, so none of us got any sleep), and had to have antibiotics and painkillers, another £60 (ouch again) but thank goodness she's over it and back to her old self again. She really feels sorry for herself when she's ill and worst of all she was really hungry but wasn't allowed to eat, so she felt doubly sorry for herself!

Fourth (and hopefully last) my wonderhorse Isha has just been seen by the vet (I haven't had the bill for that one but it will be a BIG ouch), she's been diagnosed as having strained her suspensory ligaments in both front legs... any of you with horses will know this is a horrid injury :( She now has to stay in the stable for at least a month... now this is a horse who finds it impossible to stand still for more than 30 seconds, so its not going to be a very good month for either of us :( 

I've bought oodles of things to keep her amused in the stable and have looked up lots of stretching exercises that I can do for her while she's in the stable so hopefully she won't get too stiff or too bored.

She hasn't even tried to take her frustration out on me yet, she's being very polite about it all (we are only 5 days into the month though). I've bought a football for her and she does wang that across the stable, rather funny to watch, as long as she just keeps taking her anger out on that we'll be fine lol

So, fingers crossed that the year didn't start the way its going to continue and all the bad luck is done with now.

Now the hecticness of xmas and new year is behind us I've got loads of site updates to crack on with and lots of new styles coming soon, so do keep checking back. The first things to be put up online will be some new gown styles, new corsets, and also a new range of more casual tops and jackets. All very yummy so I'd better knuckle down so you can actually buy them all and send lots of money my way so I can pay all my vet's bills lol 

Maybe I should just put a link on the website "fayley's animal fund, all donations gratefully received"! Or maybe run a campaign like the WWF, but instead of sponsoring a panda you can sponsor one of my chickens? I'll send you a photo and box of eggs ;)

Happy New Years to you all, lets make it a good one from now on :) Kes and fayley xx

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