'Emily: The Musical' - Poster designed by Take Root Creative

I am so excited to show you a new poster designed by Take Root Creative for the show 'Emily' playing at the Historic Leaskdale Church from August 11th to 20th!

Canada Day Style

This Canada Day, be patriotic without dressing in red from head to toe. Whether it be pillows from up-and-coming Toronto designer Nicole Tarasick or a Roots t-shirt to wear to the fireworks, we've got you covered when it comes to showing off your Canadiana style!

[Roots Tee, Old Navy Tank, Nicole Tarasick Pillow, The Bay - Olympic Tank, Province Buttons]

Uxbridge Farmer's Market

One of the amazing things about living in a rural community is the accessibility of locally grown food. The Uxbridge Farmer's Market delivers just about everything you could want including fresh produce, baked goods, handmade soaps and jewellery and there is even a booth selling kettle corn! See the shots taken below this weekend at the market which runs every Sunday from 9AM until 1PM (until Thanksgiving).

[All photos taken by Take Root Creative]

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Mrs. McAllister, showed us a book called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. If you are not familiar with the book, I will give a brief explanation, but it is better to read the whole store here. In 1954, Harris Burdick entered the office of Peter Wender (a children's book publisher) with fourteen pictures and a caption for each picture. The images went with fourteen different stories. Wenders was drawn into the images immediately and asked Mr. Burdick to come back with the full stories.

Here is where the mystery begins. Mr. Burdick never returned and when Wenders attempted to track him down, he had no luck. All that remains are the fourteen drawings and their captions published in a book by Chris Van Allsburg who was also fascinated by the story. So back to third grade where my teacher showed us this book and explained that she wanted us to write our own story for one of the illustrations.

I was so enthralled by the whole story and the interesting (and kind of creepy!) images that I took the book out of our school library several more times until I received my own copy (the portfolio edition where each image is a poster) for Christmas. Recently Van Allsburg created a website where stories inspired by the illustrations can be submitted and read by others. Check out a few of the images below and visit the Uxbridge Library to see the whole book.

[The House on Maple Street - It was a perfect lift-off.]

[Mr. Linden's Library - He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late]

[Missing In Venice - Even with her mighty engines in reverse, the ocean liner was pulled further and further into the canal]

[The Third-Floor Bedroom - It all began when someone left the window open]

[All image credits: Harris Burdick and Chris Van Allsburg, Houghton Mifflin Company Boston]

Local Biz Feature - Twinkleberry Farms

I have a fairly vivid memory of picking strawberries at Twinkleberry Farms as a child. My mom would take my sister and I, and we would spend the afternoon crouched down in the field looking for the juiciest berries we could find - which sometimes ended up in my mouth before reaching the basket!

There is nothing as yummy as fresh strawberries that are still warm from the summer sun and luckily we have that luxury with locals farms such as Twinkleberry. They also sell the strawberries pre-picked along with a selection of fresh vegetables, pickles and fudge among other things. If it isn't grown on the farm, it comes from another local farm nearby.

So make a family outing and head on over to Twinkleberry Farms - 8900 Main St. N. at the corner of Sandford Rd. in Uxbridge.

[Twinkleberry Farms - 905 852 9498. Image Credits: Take Root Creative]

Type Experiment - Elastics and Thumb tacks

I'm trying to do these quick "creative exercises" to keep working my brain in different ways. This task involved creating a font by using something in my house. I chose elastics and thumb tacks. I didn't exactly adhere to the rules of typography while creating this but it turned out pretty good. I almost found it to be a calming activity as well. See the process and final product below.

[The materials I used - clear thumb tacks and a super big bag of elastics]

[I didn't have enough tacks to create the whole alphabet at the same time so I divided it in half]

[The final product after putting it together in Photoshop]

Local Biz Blogs

Did you know that many of your local shops have their own blogs? Add these urls to your favourite feed reader to stay up to date with new products, class information and upcoming trends! Do you have a favourite local blog that we didn't include? Let us know in the comments!

[The Passionate Cook's Essentials - Lisa Says, La Petite Fleur Blog, Blue Heron Books Blog, Strawberry Threads Blog, On the Lamb Blog]