Willow Springs Creative Centre
10160 Mapleward Road P0T 1X0 Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

Last chance shopping on Thursday to Sunday this week, noon to 4pm. Lots of lovely, little items.

Cozy, delicious and comforting gifts for everyone on your list, Willow Springs Holiday Market open today from Noon to 4pm.

Willow Springs Holiday Market opens this week! Thursdays to Sundays from December 3rd to December 20th.

We all could use a little celebration now. Join us for our upcoming AGM, do a paper craft with us and help us highlight our year's work.

Take a few minutes to view a virtual glimpse of the Changing Seasons, Changing Times Art Show by Southbridge Lakehead Long Term Care Home residents. https://drive.google.com//1zTkmfigmtBSTEhjWH80OofIzg/view

To help celebrate a week of warmer weather, please consider walking or driving by a beautiful little art show hosted by the residents of Southbridge Lakehead Manor, Long Term Care Home. Willow Springs has been doing art programming at Lakehead Manor for the past 4 years. This show highlights artwork residents have been doing with us virtually and the home's recreation staff during the pandemic. The art will be exhibited outside and through the large windows along the front of the building.

Willow Springs wants everyone to know that our Soup & Bread Extravaganza is a long running training program for adults with disabilities. Trainees learn to cook and bake, work as part of a team, meet deadlines, offer awesome customer service and work within all the rules of safe food handling and commercial kitchen regulations. This program pairs placement students from Confederation College (Recreation Therapy) and Lakehead University (Inclusive Outdoor Recreation & Social W...ork), along with Willow Springs' staff, with each Trainee for an adaptive, one-on-one training experience. In the process of doing this, we make hundreds of litres of homemade soup and hundreds of loaves of outdoor, wood-fired oven bread, using as many local ingredients as possible. Right about now we would be gearing up for another round of Soup & Bread, but alas, we have no placement students and minimal access to new Trainees because of COVID-19 restrictions. We will not be running a FALL session of Soup & Bread this year. We are very hopeful that we will be back up and running in late January of 2021. Buying a share of Soup & Bread makes a great Christmas gift. Email us at [email protected] to order your edible gifts or come by our Holiday Market, Thursdays to Sundays, Dec 3rd to Dec 20th from Noon to 4pm. See more

It's been 7 months....and winter is looming. Mental health issues related to our lock-down and the pandemic are especially hard for people with depression and other mental health disorders. CMHA, The Canadian Mental Health Association, has a 24-hour helpline: 1-833 456-4566. The relapse and overdose rate has increased by 30% since March 2020. Take care everyone.

Celebrating Culture Days by partnering with the City of Thunder Bay to offer in-person, virtual and video instructed workshops with home delivered kits. Willow & cedar sign class yesterday was so enjoyable!

Thanks to all our Market vendors, customers and staff for supporting us this season. Beautiful evening at the last 2020 Willow Springs Market yesterday.

We're getting experimental over here. We made some peasant loaves into pumpkins and just look at them! We're looking forward to making this last market a good one. Come on out today for a harvest/farmer themed extravaganza.

A lovely view of our apple tree. We'll be having a few draw prizes for our last market this Friday. Come out and have the chance to win a lovely basket full of goodies from our vendors. We're hoping to make this last market extra special and we hope to see you there!

Fall is here and our last market is fast approaching. This Friday (3pm to 7pm) will be our final hurrah. Join us to salute farmers. Wear your plaid, straw, denim and working boots. We'll have apple cider and hot chocolate for all who come! Plus a special wild card pizza.

Well..... the leaves are changing and there's frost on the ground. This year we've decided to embrace the coming season instead of crying over summers end. We'll be having a harvest theme market this Friday and bust out all of those beautiful fall colours. Looking forward to to seeing you there! Only 3 markets left of the season so be sure to head out if you haven't. And remember September is a beautiful month!

It's crazy hat day at the market today! Come dressed up in your wildest hat and if yours is truly the craziest we'll give you a free pizza. Not a bad deal if you ask us!

Still looking for a mask? We've got you covered! Come to the market (3pm to 7pm) tomorrow to get one for yourself. While you're here you can get yourself a new outfit and a book to read! And maybe some pizza....

We have a visitor here at Willow Springs. If anyone knows who this friendly cat belongs to please let us know! She's been hanging out in our garage and we would like her to find her home.

Ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to our newly named car, Gertrude! She's got a trunk full of sunshine. Thank you so much for all of the awesome name suggestions! We had so much fun reading through them. So much so that we decided to include a tag line someone suggested as well! Come out and see her sometime.

We know everyone has been waiting with baited breath for the winner of our name the car contest. Well you'll have to wait a bit longer because we'll be revealing the name at the market this Friday! Come witness this extremely important historic event. See you there!

Our willow basket class is now full! Can't wait to see everyone next Wednesday.

Two more Lazy Dames of Summer classes! Wed., Aug 19th Spirt Animal Masks with Julia Tribe Wed. Aug. 26th (NOW FULL) Willow Basket Making with Judi Vinni... $40 + HST includes all supplies and tools, instructions and a decedant dessert & beverage! Email [email protected] to register. Social distancing in effect. See more

We tried out some bread scoring for our peasant loaves and had a blast doing it! Come check them out today at the market from 3 to 7pm. There will be lots of other yummy things to buy: pulla, bagels, BLUEBERRIES! We hope to see you there!

Since our car is getting an update we've decided to hold a contest to name the car! Come to the market today to write down your suggestion. If we choose your answer we'll give you a free large pizza. What could be better than that?!

You're Invited to a picnic this Friday at the market from 3 to 7pm. Bring your own blanket and have a little picnic in the backyard. Enjoy a pizza, a drink and the sun! Social distancing required. Hope to see you there!

Our Lazy Dames class tomorrow is a super exciting one! We have Julia Tribe teaching blind contour self portraits. It's such a freeing way to draw and create. We have a few spots open and would love for you to come out. The class starts at 7pm and we'll be having a decadent dessert once we're done. Call 768-1336 or email [email protected] to register. Class is $40 plus HST

Dust off your flower crowns and long skirts because this week's market theme is FLOWER POWER and we're giving away a free pizza to the best flower power outfit. See all you groovy people tomorrow from 3 to 7pm!

Help! Our car has been overtaken by morning glories. How are we supposed to get to town in this? Guess we'll just have to stay at Willow Springs!

Some awesome women in some awesome chairs!

Tomorrow is the day! Our Lazy Dames class will be Tea Foraging and Folklore with @teaoffortunata. Come out and learn to harvest your own tea, then stay to eat a delicious dessert. We have a few spots left. Call us at 768-1336 or email [email protected] to register. $40 plus HST.

Our next Lazy Dames will be Tea Foraging and Folklore with @teaoffortunata ! Come out and learn more about the best drink around (sorry coffee drinkers). The class will be on Wednesday, July 29th at 7pm. $40 plus HST. Call 768-1336 or email [email protected] to register.

We're celebrating Mexico at the market this week. Our wildcard pizza will have Mexican flavors and we've hung up our Mexican garlands! These were rescued from a garbage can in Mazatlan many years ago Now they bring us joy whenever we hang them up!

We'll have pulla at the market today!!! It's been tried and tested to make sure it's good....it is!

We had such a fun Lazy Dames class last night. Thanks so much to Jen from Clearwater Art Therapy for teaching us! It's always so cool to see how each painting is unique even though we were all given the same instructions. Check on the previous posts for more information about our other classes.

Look!! The first monarch we've found. She's just come out of her chrysalis and is drying off her wings!

There's a couple spots left for tomorrow's Lazy Dames class. Come out and paint this lovely summer lane with acrylic paint! Call 768-1336 or email [email protected] to register! And don't forget we will be having a decadent dessert once we're done the painting. $40 plus HST

Our pesto and wild card pizzas are both made with basil from our garden this week. Come out and try it at the market today! The markets starts at 3pm and ends at 7pm!

We had so much fun at our first lazy dames class last night. Such a lovely group of women that weren't afraid to get wet! We worked through the wind and the rain. We even ate dessert in it! Can't wait for the class next week.

Here are our upcoming classes for Lazy Dames. Max class size of 8. Please call or email to register. Looking forward to seeing you there!

As we move into stage 3 of reopening we have decided to hold off on our curbside pickup program for the market. However, we will be offering curbside to those in need. If you require curbside please phone us at 768-1336 and we will send you a full list of what is offered and how to order.

We just made awesome woven nature looms in our virtual art class with Lakehead Manor today. We talked about what we love about nature and memories that surround it. They all turned out great! Such a simple yet beautiful project.

Lazy Dames is back! Our first class is a woven willow obelisk on July 15th at 7pm. The class is $40 plus HST. The obelisk will be roughly 4 feet tall. After you're done making look forward to a decadent dessert and beverage! If possible bring your own pruning sheers. We will be running all classes outdoors with social distancing in effect. Max class size is 8 people. Email [email protected] or call 768-1336 to register. EDIT: Class is full! Look forward to more lazy dames classes to come!

We're excited to announce that Katrina Hill of Encompass Healthcare will be opening a walk in clinic at our market every Friday. She'll run it from under our outdoor shelter. We hope you come check it out!

We have eggs courtesy of Giantview Farms at our market this week! Come out this Friday to get a carton or two.

Our greenhouse is growing amazingly. Tomatoes and basil galore! Here's Abby watering, watering, watering. We can't miss a day with heat like this.

Good times at Willow Springs Market on Friday with the women from Bubble Ohs Soap Company. Crop tops thanks to Wild Badger. Come check out all the Market has to offer next Friday, 3 to 7pm!

It's a rose kind of summer so far! Here's our hedge of heritage roses in bloom.

There is a lovely feature about the Willow Springs Market in this month's issue of The Walleye. We are number 1 for Top 5 Things to Do in July (wow)! We just wanted to clarify that on Fridays the market will be open for customers to stop in and shop, no online ordering necessary. We will be implementing curbside pickup in the coming weeks for those that want to shop that way. We hope to see you all tomorrow and remember to follow the arrows!

We'll have this wonderful book available at our market this Friday. It's full of amazing information about wild plants of our area. We've discovered wild ginger and hazelnuts on our own property because of this book!