bobby bunny and friends       bobby bunny and friends       bobby bunny and friends       bobby bunny and friends       bobby bunny and friends       bobby bunny and friends      bobby bunny and friends

Saturday 24 December 2016

Christmas Gatherings & A Florrie Update!

Wow I'm not quite sure where the past few weeks have gone since I last blogged, but it seems to have passed us by like a whirlwind and we now find ourselves at Christmas already!

I hope that you are all now well and truly in the Christmasy spirit and that you are all prepared for the festivities that are very nearly upon us! I am all sorted now having done my wrapping yesterday as I knew that I had a full days work today which I finished late this afternoon, so I am now in my Christmas jim jams and slippers ready to chillout for the evening.

Below you can see the before and after of my wrapping efforts which took me many hours yesterday evening! But having my first Christmas movies of the year "Santa Clause Movie" one and two playing in the background did help!

However I would really love to have a proper Christmas break like my hubby gets one day, as having worked in retail since I was 16 I haven't had one in years! I don't think that that it's going to happen anytime soon though! But could be worse as I do at least have Christmas Day and Boxing Day off, and I very much looking forward to spending time with our families over Christmas, even though like I said it does seem to have crept up very suddenly!

I tend to find these days that I get into Christmas quite early on and then it all seems to tail off a bit and seems ages away, but then suddenly it seems to appear from nowhere! So until yesterday I hadn't had the chance to watch any Christmas films or anything, as we had been so busy throughout most of December!

Firstly we had our nephews birthday back in the first weekend of December where we joined a lot of my hubby's side of the family around his brothers house for a big celebratory gathering and meal, which was lovely if not a little hectic! This was then followed the day after by my work Christmas meal which was very scrummy, and also my first festive meal of the year!

You can see that yummy meal below!


The following weekend I had the birthday's of both my best friend and another two close friends, for which we met up around one of the girls houses where she cooked us a gorgeous meal before we spent the rest of the evening playing games and chatting until the early hours of the morning, which was lovely as we don't get much of a chance to all meet up like that regularly. Then on the day after this we then had our annual family meal with my dads side of the family, which again was lovely as it gave us all a chance to catch-up and get into the festive spirit.

By this point it was mid December and I would have liked to have had our tree up and decorated by this time so that we could have chance to properly enjoy it, but with us being so busy it sort of didn't end up happening. Instead I ended up going to buy a tree with the hubby one evening, which then proceeded to sit in our front room naked for a good week before I finally got a chance to decorate it!

Below you can see the results of when I finally got around to decorating both the tree, the room, and even our bunny and her hutch!


This weekend just gone was another busy one as being that I had a rare sat off of work I went up to see my Nan with my mum on what was a very foggy day! From ours to us getting over the South Downs there was very bad visibility, as you can see below!


However once we got the other side it was a lot clearer and by the time that we got to my Nan's the sun was even out! It's amazing how different the weather can be from one side of the downs to the other! Anyway once at my Nan's we all went into Chichester where we spent a lovely day browsing the shops and getting our last few prezzies, as well as having breakfast in our favorite cafe. By the end of the trip I think that we were all well and truly in the festive spirit which worked out well being that I has drinks with the work girls that night, which was then followed by our annual secret Santa meal around the hubby's sister the following day with all of his siblings.

So that pretty much brings you up to date with a rather hectic few weeks!

We have also had some lovely sunsets over the last few weeks even though the weather has been relatively unsettled with it not being able to decide whether it wants to rain, be mild, or freezing cold. But thankfully apart from some pretty blustery weather we didn't really get hit by storm Barbara that has swept across the north of the UK over the past few days! I hope that none of you got affected too badly by it either if you are in that part of the country!

Below you can see a lovely sunset that I captured a few weeks back both looking down our local high street and then overlooking the town from the top of the town car park.



On the Florrie front she had continued to settle in well and is such a little character! If any of you follow me on my Bobby Bunny and Friends Instagram you may have seen the video that I put up a couple of weeks back of her racing around the sofa!

She still continues to love the sofa now and has got even faster running up, down, and all around it. She has also grown so much in the month that we have had her that I have had to move her water bottle up three rungs! She can now also jump from the bottom of the sofa to the top without having to use us as a platform even though she still does! She loves to jump about more than sit still for cuddles, but she will still jump on us and say hello for a stroke, even though she is now too big to be able to nestle her bum in my neck anymore. She is also very well trained and very rarely pee's when she is out, instead starting to scratch at her cover on the sofa to let us know when she needs to go!

She also seems to love bells and music which tend to send her into a bit of a playful frenzy when out, but most of all she loves her food and chewing everything so I have to watch her carefully when she is out to make sure that she is not getting hold of anything that she shouldn't!

She likes to chew the wooden buttons on my cushions, the daydo rail, my pajamas and anything edible withing her hutch. She has chewed the tops off of her carrot toy meaning that she now struggles to pull the wooden carrots out of it, she has chewed her ladder, and has pretty much destroyed her sea grass hidey hole. However she prefers to lick rather than chew the sofa, my hubby's pajamas and her little fluffy outdoor bed that she sits in on the arm of our sofa.

Below you can see the trail of destruction that our little monkey has left so far!


She has now also been introduced to fresh greens on top of her hay and pellets which she loves, plus dried dandelion leaves which she loves so much that I had to wrestle the packet of from her the other day after she got hold of it. She also has a rabbit food stick which we feed to her sparingly. I say this, but we keep it onto top of the hutch or at least we did until she figured out that she was tall enough to reach the roof and try and eat it through the bars, to which she and proceeded knock it off the top of the hutch in the process where it smashed all over the floor. At this point I then got another out for her the following day and put the packet underneath the stick on top of the hutch, but the little monkey pulled the packet through the bars and chucked it down her ladder so that she could get to it. So at this point we decided that we could no longer keep the stick on top of the hutch and moved in out of her way. That was until I fed it to her the other day and decided that I would put it out of reach at the back of her hay rack on the outside of her hutch, which was fine until my hubby did the same thing and we then went for an evening out with friends. On our return I asked him where he had put the stick and he said back in the back of the hay rack but I couldn't see it. I then delved into the hay rack and realised that our clever little monkey had realised that it was there, and being that she couldn't reach it she proceeded to pull enough hay out of the rack that it then fell against the bars so that she could eat it or should I say devour it! The funniest thing is that she had been up at the bars when we got home acting half starved as she hadn't had her pellets so I had given her more food, which then got taken out as soon as I realised what she had done! Thankfully it didn't seem to upset her stomach, but needless to say she wasn't allowed anymore food stick for the rest of the week after that! So yes like I say she is definitely a little character!

Below you can see a photo that I took of her just as she realised that she could reach it!


Oh and she also sleeps in a number strange and comical positions too as you can see below!


My hubby thinks that she is crazy, and has spent quite a lot of time at home with her recently as he has had a lot of holiday from work that needed to be used up before the end of the year. Which has meant that he's had the time to go and buy her yet more toys! Proof that he is a big softie really and loves her as much as I do!


I also get up an hour early before work to let her out now which wears her out for most of the day, before then getting her out for another hour or so once I am home. We are also looking at getting her a run to attach to her hutch now that she is getting bigger too.

When I say that she has grown she really has and isn't really a baby anymore! I would say that size wise she is probably heading more towards the size of a Lionhead than a Netherland Dwarf, which I thought when we got her may be the case! However I didn't think that she would grow quite so quickly! I think because she was 12 weeks when we got her rather then the 9 that Mill and Moll were that she would grow just a bit more, but in the first week and a half she had a massive growth spurt going from 800gms to just under 1.1kg! I was a bit concerned at this point that I was over feeding her but it turned out that I wasn't and her weight has leveled now. But even though she had grown all over she is still quite a ling skinny bunny. Anyway as you can tell, now a month in we are very much smitten with her and I already have hundreds of photos and videos of her which I will share with you in my next post! But for now I will stop rabbiting on about her before I bore you all if I haven't already!
 
Anyway I hope that you all have the most amazing happy and healthy Christmas wherever you are and whatever you are doing! x       

Sunday 4 December 2016

A New Bobby Sketch and A New Arrival!

Hi everyone! I hope that I find you all well and that you have had a good few weeks, and a good start to this weekend!

As I mentioned in my last post both my hubby and I had the week off of work last week which was lovely, so we spent most of the week just being lazy and chilling out after a busy year. The weather was also not amazing for most of the week so that didn't make us particularly pro-active either, but we did venture out here and there; going to see my sister-In-Law in her new home, to have lunch and do a spot of Christmas shopping with my Mother-In-Law, and driving to Kent for the first time to visit my brother-In-Law and our gorgeous niece in their beautiful new home. It also gave me some time to start working on a new Bobby Bunny Christmas design which you can see a sneaky peak of below.


As you can see it still needs the colour and detail added to it, but I am pretty pleased with how it has turned out so far. I was hoping to have it finished by the end of my week off, however I have been rather distracted by a new arrival that came into our lives last Saturday.

It all started on the Friday of my week off when I went to go and look around the garden centers at the Christmas decorations with my mum, as we do every year. Whilst there I went to look at the bunnies as we usually do, but this time was a little different as I fell head over heels in love with one particular little bunny. She was in a litter of four Netherland Dwarf females, but she stood out to me as she was the only white one, and the only one that clearly had some Lionhead in her. There were also two Lionhead males in the next enclosure, but as I say there was just something about her. I haven't felt that way since I got both Dusty and then Milly and Molly and I honestly didn't think that would feel this way again, or want put myself through the heartache of loosing another bunny. Plus after having had my Mill and Moll for so long I didn't want to feel that I was replacing them.

Another factor was also that we don't have a garden and I wasn't sure about how I felt about having a house bunny, plus after having had two bunnies I said that I would never get one on it's one again. However I am also a strong believer that pets choose their owners and that owners don't choose their pets and I just couldn't leave her, and hot quite emotional about the ideas of doing so!

So after chatting to my mum for a while and making her see that it would actually be possible for both the hubby and I to have a bunny, and after seeing a lovely double-decker indoor hutch that would be a perfect fit in our front room I set about phoning my hubby for approval.

In fairness we had talked in jest about the possibility of having a bunny, my hubby he had mentioned before I left about a bunny that he saw with us at the same garden center the year that he loved called Thumper. So it wasn't quite as rash as it sounds, even though I hadn't really planned it.

So after getting the hubby's approval I set about talking to one of the staff members about her, and they kindly said that we could reserve her so that we could sleep on it. I think that they probably though that I was crazy as I had to go back and check before we left that they had definitely reserved her, but I knew that we would definitely be back for her!

So bright an early the following morning my hubby and I went to the garden center to pick her up. Again I think they thought that I was crazy as we were there before they even opened, but I just wanted to make sure that she was still there and to get her settled into her new home!

It was also a freezing morning that day so we opened all of the windows before we left to get her, as even though she had been kept inside it wasn't heated, and I didn't want to shock her system too much with the temperature change. I have to say though that at this point I was glad that she was going to be a house bunny, as I couldn't have put a tiny bun like her straight out in the cold at this time of year!

On getting her home I opened her little cardboard box and let her take in her surroundings whilst I set about building her hutch as quickly as possible. My hubby went over her box at one point and she went and hid her head in the pile of hay from her enclosure at the shop as she was so scared.

Once the hutch was built I transferred her straight over to it and left her to settle in. I tried to make the adjustment as smooth as possible for her by using all of the same bedding, food, toys, and food bowl that she had at the garden center, and mixed in her actual bedding from the enclosure that was in her box. Understandably to start with though she was very scared at every little noise, and got quite spooked by someone walking outside in heels and the sound of the metal bars of the hutch. At this point she wouldn't even let me touch her and would just run away into the hidy hole that we got her. She also didn't like the sound of plates being taken out of the cupboard, but by the evening I tried to gently stroke her as I put her food bowl in to gain some trust and she let me!

Below you can see my little bunny on the evening of first day that we got her home!


After some brainstorming of names the night before we got her originally went with Tilly, but it still didn't feel quite right, so in the end we decided to name her Florrie.

By the following morning she let me stroke her again when I fed her, so after I decided to see if she would let me pick her up. I wasn't expecting much, but she let me without a struggle and we had our first cuddles as you can see below.

 

Since then she has come on leaps and bounds! She comes out every day and plays with us on the sofa at the moment, as I don't really want to put her on the floor until she has her vaccines. She likes to sit upright on me, and also likes to snuggle and nestle her bum into my neck whilst facing the tv. Her little personality also is coming out and she is starting to turn into a bit of a monkey, using me as a platform to jump onto the top of the sofa and run along it. Most noises don't phase her now either bar the the hoover, which I didn't try out until late this week. She has also finally figured out how to use the ladder in her hutch which took a good few days after she first trialed out her jumping skills by hopping onto her hay cart. So now she likes to have crazy moments where she runs like a looney all around the hutch. Plus she is a little gannet and I swear that she has already grown somewhat in the week since we got her!

Below you can see pics of her hutch, her chilling in her hidy-tube, and the fist time that she jumped up on her hay cart which was then quickly followed by her finally learning how to use the ladder in her hutch.    

 

Both my hubby and I are very much in love with her, and he has fallen for her much more that her thought he would. He talks to her and even refers to himself as her Daddy! Holding her was also the first time that he had ever held a bunny let alone a baby one! I love having her around, and didn't realize how much I have missed having a bunnies until I got her. It's all of the little things like, the funny thing that they do, the smell of their fur, and being able to shop in a pet shop again. So you can expect a lot more bunny spam and a lot more bunny related blogs!

I hope that you are all having a fab weekend and that you are all getting into the Christmasy spirit now that it is December! x