Friday, August 26, 2011

Community Market

Today we had market number 7!

It was a great morning with a ton of stallholders including some folks who have been regular stallholders since the start of our market and new people who just came along today. The great thing about our market is the variety - we have everything from home made arts and crafts to secondhand goods, sausage sizzle (thanks ATC who used it to raise money today) and other home made baking (all fully compliant with ICC).

This all helps create a cool atmosphere and we are pretty proud of how the Glengarry Community Market & Car Boot Sale is developing. If you haven't already checked out our market I would encourage you to come next month (Sat 24 Sept). As we get closer to summer we will have even more on offer including a community stall to sell excess produce from the garden and a car wash.To give you an idea of what we have at the market we have plants including vege, knitting, cheeserolls, salt lamps, insence, hand made clothes, fingerless gloves, wooden chopping boards, candles, artwork, Donut Dude and so much more.

We want to support the community too so if you belong to a group that needs an option for fundraising perhaps our market could be the place where you could have a group jumble sale, do a sausage sizzle or car wash, busk or sell raffle tickets. And this means that people who come along to the Market and buy stuff are helping the community too.

The Market is held on the last Saturday of each month in the Yarrow St car park of the Glengarry shopping centre or Eastside Baptist if it's wet. The Market is on from 9.30-1pm. Next month we will have mussel patties for sale -yum! So consider coming along for lunch.

Finally I have challenged myself to do my Christmas shopping from the Market this year - so far I have bought a wooden truck for a nephew, cleaning clothes done up like cupcakes for the grandparents and a beautiful wooden chopping board for my parents.

Glengarry is a great community - perhaps next month you might like to see that for yourself :-)

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Glengarry Newsletter

We started the Good News Glengarry newsletter in order to highlight the positive things happening in the community and to promote the businesses in the area too. The latest newsletter - number four first this year - is hot off the press. I am really stoked with the support we have received for the newsletter - this issue has some new and old advertisers in it. It also has some infomartion about the recent community meeting and upcoming market.

The newsletters are delivered around Glengarry but also in some other areas. They are also available from some of the shops in the shopping centre like the Chemist, the fish n chip shop and of course Ree's Gifts & The Book Stop. So if you don't get a copy in your mailbox call in to collect one.

Optimism generate hope.... hope releases dreams..... dreams set goals.... enthusiasm follows. Martin Seligmon.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Making it Happen

Sometimes I find people spend a lot of time complaining about the way things are. Blogs seem to be a popular avenue for this type of complaint. I can't help but think that if we spent more time trying to make things change for the better and less time complaining things might be a little different.

Some of us down in the Glengarry community have been trying to do just that - make things happen that is. Over the last few months we have had some positive things happening in Glengarry - things that have been neglected for some time. For example the council's road sweeper now does all the streets in the shopping centre and the council has cleared all the rubbish from the service area for the shops. It's made a big difference to the appearance of the area.

Don't get me wrong there are more things we would like to see done, especially getting a rubbish bin next to the new public toilet and getting the bus shelter tidied up. We are confident that one of these days the Glengarry shopping centre will be just as full as it used to be, it's already starting to happen.......

Glengarry is a great place to I've and work :-)

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Glengarry Community Update

On Wed 27 July some folks from the Glengarry community got together to talk about the good things happening in the community and to discuss what could be done to raise the profile of the community and make it an even better place to live and work.

We had a great facilitator for this (thanks Diana Z) and everyone participated in a positive way.

People identified heaps of great things about Glengarry including a huge range of services provided in the shopping centre and wider area such as atm, best fiah n chips in town, great chemist, garage, doctor, the only laundry in town adn Habitat's Restore to name just a few. The area also a good bus service, new public toilet and a great monthly market.

People also identified the Glengarry community spirit as one of the great things about the area - for example it has a village atmosphere, people are very loyal to the area, there are very supportive churches, some great events happening and so on.

And the other great thing identified in the area were the people - people who are keen to get stuck in and help people, people who are prepared to get involved in the community, a diverse people and people who are willing to help each other.

We also talked about things to do to make the area even better. The main ideas from this were to promote the positive things in the area to change the negative stigma, improve the south side car park area to make a better first impression, provide a map to show people what is available in the area and to make a welcome pack to for people who come to the area.

We are planning another community meeting and would love to have lots more people along. So if you are keen please get in touch. Add your comments to this page or email thebookstop@xtra.co.nz


You can also check out our Facebook page for a full copy of the notes from the meeting or email thebookstop@xtra.co.nz