All summer long, we've been trying to fool you with stories about twelve of the objects in the Museum's collection.  Eleven of the stories are true, and one is not.

We've heard from a lot of you, mostly weighing in about why you think a certain story is true, and hundreds of people have voted at the Museum for the story they think is false.

And now, we've revealed the Artifiction! Check it out on the Artifact or Artifiction page, and see if you guessed correctly!

Summer is over. I know this because our summer students have returned to school. That's always a clear sign that fall has arrived, no matter what the calendar says.



Saturday was the last day of work for three of them, though Angalea's sticking around until tomorrow, so we had a little farewell party for them. Cake and lemonade, with some of our directors and volunteers.

It's been a great summer, girls, thank you - we'll miss you all!

The Creston Museum is one of the five finalists in the Creston & District Credit Union's 60th Anniversary Legacy Award competition. As promised, I've posted more information on our project.

Read all about Making Memories Last, and, if you're a member of teh Credit Union, we hope you'll vote for us on September 23 and 24!

This is the last week for Artifact or Artifiction!

You've probably seen some of the objects we've been featuring each week since the beginning of June. All summer, we've been getting visitors to the Museum to guess which of the twelve stories about those objects is fiction.

Yesterday afternoon, we counted up all the votes that each object received.  They're all posted on the Artifact or Artifiction page, so check it out and see if you agree with others, Remember, the votes indicate how many people think the story about each artifact is fiction - and only one story is fiction, all the others are true.

Next Wednesday, we'll tell you which story we made up. For now, though, just a hint: The object that the most people thought was fiction is, in fact, well, fact.

Brandy Dyer and Simon Wiebe, along with some very dedicated helpers, are running a week-long art camp for kids at the Museum this week.  Here are a few photos from yesterday and today:







They are creating sets and designing costumes and rehearsing lines for a production of Cinderella, which will be happening here at the Museum on Friday.

It looks like they're all having a lot of fun - though stray feathers from the feather boas made it look, as Jon said, "like a parrot exploded on the patio."

Oh, well, that's why we have a patio, right?

Thanks to Carol Huscroft for bringing in these wonderful figures from the Huscroft family reunion a couple of weeks ago:



As you can see, the figures have their faces cut out so you can put your own face in there and take a photo. Carol brought these in on Thursday, and we just got them set up today. Sure enough, not five minutes after we'd set them up, someone came in and took a photo.

These two children are on their way to school ... look:



There are two other figures, a man and a woman, which we still need to get set up, but look for them in a day or two.

Thanks, Carol!

The big news for today is...



We have made the Top 5 projects in the Creston & District Credit Union's 60th Anniversary Legacy Fund award!

I'm sure you've heard about this - the Credit Union will be giving two awards, of $25,000 each, to community organisations. Round 1 was the submission of brief written proposals, from which the Credit Union chose ten to go to Round 2. Those ten were invited to give presentations to the Credit Union's board earlier this week, and five were chosen to go on to Round 3 - and we're one of the five!

Our project, in a nutshell, is to build a new section of the shed along the edge of the property, to house large artifacts, and then to collect artifacts, photographs, film footage, and individual stories to create exhibits in the new and existing sections of the shed - fourteen exhibits in all.  I'll post more details about the project in the next few days.

But first, we need to make it through Round 3: the final two projects will be chosen by Credit Union members, who will vote for their choices on September 23 and 24. So, if you're a member of the Creston & District Credit Union, I hope you'll drop by their celebrations on thos two days, and vote for this project!

We've been having fun all summer with our Artifact or Artifiction challenge! We've fooled a lot of people, but not everyone.  Have you been following along? We've featured one of the twelve objects each week for the past three months.  Here's the twelfth and last, this week's feature:



Read about this little typewriter, and the eleven other objects, on the Artifact or Artifiction page.  You'll also find a coupon there for admission-by-donation, in case you haven't voted yet. Remember, of the stories that accompany these objects, eleven of them are fact; only one is fiction. Come down to the Museum to vote for the one you think we made up.

But don't wait - there's not much time left! Next Wednesday, August 24, we'll post the voting results so far, and on the 31st we reveal the artifiction!

Summer student Mary is just finishing up her project reorganising the 717 maps in the Archives' collection. I took a couple of photos of one that I really like, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with Creston (we have a few things like that in the collection!).



It's a map, dated 1911, showing all the grain elevators across the Prairies, along with the rail lines connecting them.  Here's a section in southern Manitoba, including the one at Baldur that my great-grandfather would have been running right about the time the map was made:



Look at them all! And an absolute maze of railway lines linking them - four different ones, including the Great Northern Railway popping up across the border every now and then. Compare southern Manitboa to this section, of southern Alberta:



Pretty sparse in comparison, isn't it? But wouldn't it be interesting to compare the 1911 map to one made today, when grain elevators are rapidly disappearing from the west?  What a difference a century makes!

What a perfect afternoon!



112 people, lots of time to visit, everyone enjoying themselves, delicious food, an art show, and absolutely perfect weather - yep, the Old-Fashioned tea today was definitely what we can call a success.



Thanks to local watercolour artist Laura Leeder for the beautiful paintings of some of the Museum's tea cups - what a special and unique addition to the Tea.  Kathy Sommerfeld won the St. Paddy's Day painting:



And if that's not perfect enough, we even had some special guests drop in for the afternoon:



I'll post more photos next week, but I have to go now - I'm tired.

We are all set up and ready for tomorrow's tea!



Tomorrow morning we'll put out the tablecloths and dishes; Laura Leeder has her artwork ready to show; and we've been hearing lots of hints that our guests are getting their costumes ready.

We have reservations for about 80 people right now, which means we do have a little bit of space left if you haven't made your reservation - but not much, so give us a call first thing tomorrow if you want a table.

'Bye now - gotta go make sandwiches.  See you at the Old-Fashioned Tea tomorrow!

The new section of our outdoor storage shed may be filling up fast.

Today, we were offered this machine:



It's a Clipper Cleaner grain cleaner, the original grain cleaner from Sunset Seed Company. It was put into the Sunset Seed plant on Cook Street in 1939, but, according to Ted Heal, it's a little older than that - probably early to mid-1930s - since it wasn't new when it was brought here.

As you may be able to see, it's made of wood, which surprised the heck out of me, but Ted says the hardwood (oak, to be specific) wore better than metal. This could be used for cleaning everything, from grains to the peas that it sorted while in use at Sunset Seed.

This cleaner is a good size - about twelve feet long and eight and a half wide - so, even with our new section on the shed, it'll be interesting to figure out where to put it and how to display it. Or even how exactly to move it here, for that matter.

While Ian and I were looking at it, we got a quick tour at Across the Board Creations (the cleaner is behind the old potato shed in Wynndel which the Galloways have turned into their workshop). Now that is an incredible business they have out there; have you checked out what they do out there? Everything from figures of oil field workers for a monument in California to reproductions of artifacts from the Smithsonian.

Only four days until the Old-Fashioned Tea - it's happening on Saturday, August 13.



Have you got your reservation yet?

We've trimmed the willow so it doesn't drag in your tea, and we're making sure the tea cups are sparkling clean and ready for you. Betty's ordered the bread specially-sliced for the sandwiches, and our volunteers are baking up a storm. Our summer students have their costumes all ready, and we've heard rumours that some of our guests may be arriving in special dress (and maybe even special cars) as well. Laura Leeder's got her paintings ready for the art show that accoompanies the tea this year, and e're all set up for the draw for the painting.

So, if you don't have your reservation yet, what are you waiting for?

Does anyone know how to operate an 8mm film projector?



We got this one from Margaret Berg, along with four rolls of film that show her family living and working on their farm on Nick's Island. I know Margaret lived out there for decades, and I'm itching to see what is on these reels!

The projector seems to be working, but I can't figure out how to feed the film through it properly. Please help!

This is all part of our latest project, to convert historic film footage of the Creston Valley onto DVDs. You can read more about the project, and if you have any film footage to contribute - or a manual for the projector, please let us know!

Summer student Mary has been hard at work organising the Archives' collection of maps. Now that she's got them all entered in the database, we have an easy way of counting them - 643 maps showing pretty much every part of the Creston Valley, and even a few places beyond.  And, once she's finished putting them all in folders and labelling the folders, we'll have an easy way of finding the one map you want to look at! Thanks, Mary - fantastic job.

But the very fact that she's nearly finished her summer project, and that Jessa has been making great progress on the storage areas, reminds me that we're into August already, the summer is almost over, and within a few weeks all four of our summer students are going back to school.

Not only does that mean we'll have to say goodbye to four fantastic employees, it also means we'll be looking for some additional volunteer help for the last few weeks of the season. So if you're at all interested in helping give tours (it's really not as scary as it sounds!) or even just staffing the gift shop between August 26 and September 17, please let me know!

Wow sure hope this happens, the extra space will make it so much easier to see and understand the displays

You know the Outdoor Shed at the Museum? The long shed on the edge of the property where we store and display all the largest artifacts in the collection?



If you've been down here any time in the past couple of years, you've probably noticed that the artifacts in the shed are pretty disorganised - a potato planter down by the trapper's cabin, the potato digger away up near the farm wagons, and ploughs and cultivators mixed in pretty much everywhere. A lot of that disorganisation is because we had to move everything out of there twice during our renovation of the Founders' Hall, and ever since then we've been wanting to get it set up into proper displays that really tell Creston's story.

Well, we are one step closer to being able to do that. As you've probably heard, the Creston & District Credit Union is celebrating its 60th anniversary by giving two local organisations $25,000 for a major project. We applied, and earlier this week got notification that our project, "Making Memories Last," has been recommended as one of the ten to go through to the next round in the Credit Union contest.

So now we're working on a presentation for the Credit Union's committee at the middle of the month, and then, hopefully, we'll be one of the five projects recommended for the final round, in which Credit Union members vote for the two projects they think should win. We'll definitely keep you posted on that!

If we're successful, the "Making Memories Last" project will see fourteen or more exhibits created in the shed, using artifacts that are already in the collection, ones that we hope to get donated (one aspect of the project is to enlarge the shed so we'll have more room to store these big objects), and audio-visual elements that really let the local long-time residents share their stories.

Now that we're into August, there are only three weeks left in our summer-long Artifact or Artifiction challenge!

I've just posted this week's feature object - the Grain and Company sign - and I have to admit it's one of my favourites of the twelve we've chosen.



Have you checked the challenge out yet? Don't wait - brownse the Artifiction web page to see the ten objects we've featured each week for the last ten weeks; and come down to the Museum to see the remaining two and vote for the one you think is fiction!