Goodbye for now...

Well I have been a busy Lizzie.

A ton of jewellery to make, birthday preparations, Yule/Xmas makes, trying hard to avoid materialism/Santa/crassness of Xmas, and plain old day-to-day living-ness has kept me nicely away from the 'puter this month.

So I shall sum up in pictures.

My new beanie, crocheted by me, actually FOLLOWING A REAL PATTERN!

I'm getting rather good actually, so I'll be working on this new-found skill. I made some lovely slippers for the big girl for her birthday in some yummy chunky wool.


Yule fire, complete with mead

The big pixie in one of her birthday dressing up outfits; with her birthday cake and looking just plain beautiful

The small pixie ready to go off out in the car for a ride

A rare bit of snow for Lancashire




This has been such an amazingly busy year. Our second beautiful daughter joined us, hubby was made redundant, hubby successfully started his own business and fulfilled his ambition, and I have been busy with the children, house, husband...it hasn't really seemed to stop.

But now I want to hop off the roundabout for a while, so I shall be taking a break from online life.

I have a full manuscript and artwork ready to send off to an agent, so I will be spending what little spare time I have polishing this up and getting it off. I should have done this last year, but really, I felt like crap for the first half of the year, and have spent the second half with my boobs constantly out at the 24 hour Milk Bar.

My green-ness will still be continuing, as will my crochet (am starting a throw for our bed with Granny squares).

But writing is where I have always wanted to be, so I think at almost 31-years-old, I should get off my ass and get back to it. A four-year break is long enough.

So I wish you love, health, happiness and mucho muffins for 2010 and will say goodbye for now.

Thank you for reading this year,

Claire

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Eglu Schmeglu!

A new house for the hennies!

Not being one to spend a whole month's mortgage payment on a hen house, we recently had to get a new one due to nasty infestation of red mite :(

The buggers invaded our little wooden house and cause the Warren hen to start ripping out her own feathers and become aggressive to the other hens.

We looked at lots of other designs, and husband, being the handy guy he is, said he could build a new ark. But with the red mite being so heavy, it would be likely that they would return - we had already tried the treating of them and even blowtorched the wooden house to scorch them.

And they still came back. Gits.

So plastic seemed the next choice.

Now, the Eglu, as lovely as it is, is bascially a lump of plastic. We already have a run and hens so it seemed pointless and frivoulous to spend a large amount of cash on one.

I scanned Freegle for days looking for old plastic Wendy houses etc, but nothing.

So I went to B & Q and bought a garden storage box. Here's what hubby did to it:

A hole was cut out of the side and an old kitchen vegetable scrap caddy door was used as the in/out flap, and the botton of the caddy was used with a coat hanger, as a feed trough. A broom shank for a perch and away you go!
Easy to clean - it hoses out great and is incredibly warm in there.

The hens love it. The brown Warren Monica's feathers are almost grown back, and all three are laying again. We treated them just before we put them all in the new house with powder, and watched satisfyingly, as the old hen house was committed to ashes in a mini bonfire :)