This will teach me for bringing plants inside.....

Flanny pyjamas

There are some things I love about winter and cold weather. A lot of the time I just hate winter (not happy in summer either, by the way!) but I do appreciate the nice things.

One of these things is flannelette pyjamas. I have a favourite pair of pink cupcake ones, which I could happily run around all day in. Comfy, pink, fluffy, cupcake, pretty, pyjamas.

They go along with a number of other things that I do like about winter. Warm blankets, a warm, happy cat, sitting in bed listening to the rain (sometimes watching it through window, too!), reading a book.

What else do I like about winter / cold weather? All the positive things for once.

• Cups of hot chocolate
• Open fires (not that I have one at the moment!)
• Electric blankets and hot water bottles
• Beanies and scarves & lots of woolen things, including blankets
• Bonfires
• Cuddling a warm cat or rabbit
• Frost on the grass in the morning
• Fog and mist, especially with trees and paddocks and cows
• Rain on the roof when you're warm & snug inside
• All those lovely warm comfort-food meals that you don't enjoy so much in warmer weather! i.e. casseroles, lasagna, rice pudding, nice hot baked fresh oven-y cakes & desserts
• Soft green grass
• All the bulbs that start flowering in the garden now
• Not having to water the garden so much ;)

who are the people in your neighbourhood....

I have new neighbours. It must be official, they must actually be 'in', because now there's a dog and a caravan as well. They have been moving in for maybe a couple of months now, I keep getting glimpses of them, sometimes there's a car there, furniture goes in and out (??). I have never actually spoken to them, so it has gotten to the ridiculous stage where I feel like I'm rude and like I'm avoiding them deliberately & am very self conscious about the whole thing. For goodness sakes.

In the past 6 months, we have had I think 4 of the 6 houses (or is it 5 of the 7?) in our little section of the street, go up for sale. One by one. I was starting to get paranoid :). At least people are moving back in now :). It was getting a bit deserted.

I just realised the other day that after years of living in a number of rental houses, not only is this the house I've lived in the longest since I was a teenager, but I actually know every person who has lived in this house before me? (And this is not a new house. It must be at least 60, 70 I don't know how many years old!). Well, it wasn't that many people. A family built this house, room by room, the children all grew up (I know who a lot of them are), the old lady sold it & moved out, my sister moved in here, she part-inherited the lady's cat, my sister moved out, I moved in. So I sort of feel like there's this big history thing there. It's nice :)

I can still hear the new neighbours moving stuff around......

Please DO try this at home

I don't think I've done this for a few years. Well, not just for the sake of sitting or climbing, anyway. I went and climbed the tree in my yard.
I was removing a tennis ball from a branch near my head & I decided I liked the feel of the tree and I climbed on up to the first fork. I think that tree has ants on it in the summer. It was very peaceful up there (I wasn't that far off the ground, but I felt very adventurous all the same).
I could see different things and I was positioned high enough in the leaves and enough behind the trunk so that I think I was a bit hidden even. It was getting dark, so I think I'll try and climb up tomorrow. I was liking being up in the tree, spying on the cars going past. If I'm not hidden enough from the joggers, I'll have to pretend I just really like my greenery.

My sister's stash....

Today I was visiting one of my sisters, who shall remain nameless.

I mainly went to plant some things from my garden that I didn't want & she had room for. That in itself was an adventure as I had to go to the service station in my gardening clothes (shock horror) and the boot of my car was full of plants, dirt and all, which I was desperate to make them all fit in, as I didn't want them in the back seat of my car, imagining things crawling up the back of my seat on the entire trip there.

So, gumbooted and gloved up, myself and the plants came and we planted. I met the new pet goat and we generally enjoyed ourselves, hard work and all. We even discovered a smell that was suspiciously like a 'dead mouse under the floorboards' smell. I'm sure my sister really wanted you to know that. Well, she is still nameless.

Long story shorter, my sister now has a blog, well no technically I now have an additional blog, on my sister's behalf. The whole story is on the first post of that blog, but basically, she somehow manages to find all these amazing things, and some of the wonders she has amassed we feel simply need more public appreciation. And as my sister a. doesn't need more public appreciation personally, she gets enough from crazy feral neighbours; b. doesn't have internet connected currently and isn't very computer-confident; and c. wants the sources of her remarkable stash to forever remain her own private secret mystery, I am now blogging on her behalf. Or am her ghost-blogger or something. Anyway.

So, go there, enjoy the one post that is there already. And I had a good day today. (But forgot to take my camera so the goat isn't captured for posterity, yet).

Enjoying rain

I was bypassing the supermarket on my way home the other day and it had just started raining. The sun still shone, and someone pointed out a double rainbow to me.

That was worthy of a photo in itself, but the street and the town looked so nice, the late-afternoon sun shining through the rain, everything all clean and shiny, people running from verandah to verandah (me being one of them, while trying to take photos at the same time, without drawing too much attention to myself!). It was very nice and sweet and peaceful in a busy-rain-avoiding way.

You can't really tell in the photo that it is actually still raining. I think it was actually even getting quite heavy by the last photo! :)

Bequeathments and Coathangers

I love special coathangers. Old wooden painted ones, coloured ones, fabric covered (padded and non-padded) ones, crocheted ones. One of my earliest, nicest memories is of being given a hand-made rabbit coathanger, which I still own.

My late grandma apparently either liked crocheted and special coathangers also. (I also think she probably just thought they were more practical for looking after your clothes). Well, for whatever reason, she obviously had been collecting them from op-shops and wherever and in a roundabout way, I 'inherited' them when she died. It is a varied collection which I shall enjoy arranging in my wardrobes.

Now, this is a very special collection next, which I sort of 'inherited' and by proxy at that. This nanna is not really mine, and has only moved on in the physical, not metaphysical, very final sense.

It is a treasured store of crochet cotton, all different weights and colours, with a few crochet hooks in the mix. There is even an unfinished crochet-edged handkerchief. Do I dare to attempt to finish it? It would be an honour of sorts to finish it, but I think I need to improve my crochet skills first :).

sleeping again

I know I could be in danger of creating a rabbit-blog (not a real dangerous thing, though), but I love watching my rabbit sleep. Something so peaceful and innocent about a sleeping rabbit. Even though she seemed to be having a very active dream while sleeping the other day. Here are some attitudes of rabbit-repose.

And that last one is a terrible photo, but it was very cute at the time. I think that was when she was dreaming. Involving lots of eating sounds, leg twitching and ear-wiggling.

Oh so clever rabbit

This is her latest trick. These socks had been hung on the two nearby clotheshorses at least three times. Every time I put a sock back, she'd take more and more neighbouring socks off , and the intervals between her sock-removing were decreasing. As they'd say on CSI, her behaviour was escalating. And it seems the wetter the sock, the better. As you may see, she doesn't just remove them, either (which is done with both teeth and by claw-scratching), but she then flings and bunches them all over the floor. Her latest (escalated) episode had them moved all the way out into the hallway. Rabbit fun. I now have to hang socks out after she's gone to bed, so they have SOME chance of drying....

Cosy Ipod

I am glad I now also have a nice pink warm cosy place to keep my ipod also....

bairnsdale easter

Easter this year, went and visited Dad again, sort of near Bairnsdale. Drove around a few places, the tip as usual, sprayed weeds, chopped wood, sorted out some old family photos, visited people, went & saw the koalas on Raymond Island, every morning went to check on the wombat trap (the wombat wife had already been relocated, now the man had to be stopped from digging up the dam wall) but no luck, so no photo, and the womble is still wombling free... (I had that song in my head every day I was there. Anyone else remember The Wombles, I wonder?).


An easter surprise waiting in 'my' bedroom when I arrived / Nice to open up curtains in morning and lie in bed looking at Gippsland Lakes in the distance


A favourite corner to read a book in / Regular visitors- King Parrots, Rosellas, lots of other very cheeky birds


Sleeping / Itching / Curious Koalas on Raymond Island

Everybody checking things out / Shazza & Marlene / Some kind of honeyeater


Ferry back over to mainland / Muffy the faithful furry one

kitchen cupcake love

This is a very special useful nice handy comforting gift my sis bestowed on me on the weekend.

Particularly as my sister was with me the other day when I burst out crying in a particular op-shop and then proceeded to sob for the next I don't know how long, snotted all over the carpet in some other shop, and made a general spectacle of myself.

There was a whole saga involving oven mitts and buying them and them being re-sold and a whole range of (dishonest or thoughtless or both, I'm not exactly sure) and also very rude shop assistants, which all ended up with me crying.

I seem to do an awful lot of crying in public. I never see anyone else walking down the street crying. Do you think other people do? And that people generally don't notice? Or maybe other people don't generally snot everywhere or sob in public? There should be a poll on people crying in the street. Involving free tissue stations as an outcome.

Crocheted Cup Cozy

I quite enjoyed making this little cup cozy. Beats a coaster. Didn't take very long either. I have orders for different coloured ones for family members. It came from a (simply divine, dearies) pamphlet my sis nabbed for me from some opshop (my mum and her thought it was rather hysterical & just for me & thought I'd enjoy the cup cozies in particular, even). So. I whipped one up. Quite enjoying the warm crochet comfortable fuzziness of holding it around my cups of coffee and tea.

Why oh why did she swallow the fly.....

Or, why on earth am I sitting up at 11:30, wide awake and wishing I could go to sleep? I need to put my rabbit to bed. It's past her bedtime.

Eggs

This book I scored in some op-shop somewhere is glorious. If this book were a shop I would never want to leave.

I have had a life-long umm something between a fascination and an obsession with little eggs. Wooden ones, ceramic ones, even those plastic ones we used to play with in kinda. Goodness.

I remember looking at pictures of Faberge eggs in a reader’s Digest when I was little and thinking how wonderfully amazing they were. Aren't they precious? :)

I forgot to give credit for this awesome book! It's 'A Part of Barb: A Collection of Decorated Eggs by Barbara Tison' Author Barbara Tison, Industrial Printers of California, 1984.

We could do duets....

Small Animal Fun - Trick Training

Bunny... Behave! Rabbit Behaviour & Correction Specialist - Tame & Train your Bunny! at Pets Classifieds

Bunny... Behave! Rabbit Behaviour & Correction Specialist - Tame & Train your Bunny! at Pets Classifieds

I saw this ad & my faith in humanity was restored. (But still, too much attention is paid to dogs, really).
Perhaps they could have helped with this earlier problem:


Although I would put up with twice as much mess because she is just so CUTE! And they are in the UK after all.... (maybe there's too many farmers remembering rabbit plagues for it to ever catch on here....).

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust


Have you seen the Tree Bee?
Let us know!


The world's first bumblebee sanctuary is blooming marvellous. Read more...

Now I have to worry about the future of bumblebees. Seriously, although I may be allergic to bees, I wish I could have them as pets? Bees. Poignant.