Spring & Big Changes!

Hello everyone, and welcome to spring! In my last blog post I mentioned how the weather had begun to change here, that we were starting to get a few glimmers of spring, and how I hoped that it would carry on that way! Well what a difference a month makes! I am very pleased to say that it very much has and that we have had some beautiful sunny spring days with barely a cloud in the sky over the past week or so, then this weekend we even reached temperatures of 25 degrees which is practically tropical for those of you that don't live in the UK!

With regards to everything else this last month has been pretty busy as usual but also full of some very big changes for me that have been gradually being put in motion over the last month or so, but that I will get onto a little later on in this post.

Firstly I want to take you back to mid March where I left off my last post by showing you my new "First Mother's Day" card design. Shortly after I managed to mock up my design into a card, photograph it and pop it up on my Etsy shop in time for Mothering Sunday. Below you can see the finished article.   

 

 

 On another bunny related note I just couldn't resist the "Bertie" bunny t-shirt below which was released alongside a number of other animal designs in order to raise money for Comic Relief. Technically it is a pyjama top and came with red spotty shorts too but I ended up going for it anyway, as for some reason they only did the bunny t-shirt design in children's sizes! However the pyjama t-shirts and normal t-shirts were pretty the same in style and cut so it didn't stop me wearing it to work on the day! 

For those of you who aren't in the UK Comic Relief (also know as Red Nose Day) is a national charity and fundraising event which takes place every two years at the end of March, in order to raise money for those in need both in third world countries and at home. People wear red clown like noses which have a different theme each time, and wear them whilst doing funny fundraising events. The fundraising then culminates in a TV event which features a number of comedians and comedic sketches, with millions of pounds being raised by the public each time.

       

On the same week that I found my "Bertie" bunny t-shirt I also had my first go at putting my culinary skills to the test by cooking my hubby and I our first beef joint. It's nothing spectacular but I'm not very adventurous when it comes to cooking so I was rather pleased with how my first go turned out, and it was delicious! I did get my timing a little bit off so had to put it back in for a bit longer after I had carved it, but like I say it tasted fab and went down well with the hubby too! 

The weekend after marked the first birthday of our little niece, but unfortunately I couldn't get the time off of work in order to go to her Beatrix Potter themed party which I was rather miffed about. However I did get to go out shopping for her birthday present and found the lovely Joules outfit below, which I then wrapped up in one of their boxes complete with a little hare on the front which I loved just as much as the outfit itself!

The Sunday was then filled with me making a trip to the DIY shop to see if I could find some screws, clips and flooring for her ladyship's playpen. I then set about screwing some clips into the ladder that my dad dropped over, which he had kept from the hutch that he built for my other bunnies Dusty, Milly & Molly. That however was the easy bit as it turned out that the ladder was a little too long to fit in the playpen, so I set about sawing through it for the next few hours with a little handsaw as it was all that I had! I then also had to cut one of the pen panels in half and add one half to each side of the pen to extend it out a bit. 

But after all of that the little monkey refused point blank to use the ladder no matter how much I tried to coax her out! That was a few weeks ago now and she still hasn't been brave enough to use it, even though I have made her a makeshift step out of a grass covered hut from the pet shop, which I then weighed down with some loam gnaw bars to weigh it down and stop her from moving it! I have even tried having her out to see if she would go up it, but she wasn't having that either! Hopefully she will get there in the end, but we shall see! Below you can see a pic of the pen and of Florrie pulling her best "I'm not going down that ladder mumma however much you wave treats in my face" look!

          

 

 On that same week clearer signs of spring started to appear in terms of the weather, starting off with skies of sunshine and April like showers as you can see below and leading to beautiful days without a cloud in the sky which made way for some gorgeous sunsets!  

Also on the Florrie front we seem to have taken a few steps back with her willingness to be picked up since taking her to the vets for her second lots of vaccinations. She was very good with it again and didn't try to jump off of the table this time and was even a little inquisitive! The vet also said that she is still a good weight at now 1.8kg. But like I say since taking her the issues with her being picked up have now got to the extent where the safest way for me to get her out is for me to take off the top of the hutch, tempt her up with her up with food sticks, stroke her for a bit and then pick her up. It's an easier angle for me to pick her up so she is less likely to kick out and potentially harm herself, it's less stressful for her as I can get a better grip on her, and it also makes it harder for her to try and pounce or go for me which she had tried to do out of fear a few times. 

Prior to taking the top off of the hutch I had tried numerous other approaches such as using treats, leaving her in for a few days, stroking her to settle her and stroking her more towards her back to get used to the sensation more. But she's not stupid and would know every time when I was going to try and pick her up. Even after a few days of taking the top off of the hutch she has already started to cotton on that she will get treats and then I will try to pick her up, as the other day she had some food stick and then tried to run off down the ladder with it as she knew that I would try to pick her up next. 

I haven't wanted to leave her in for too long though because as much as she dislikes being picked up she still needs the exercise, and all the time she isn't brave enough to use her ladder I can only get her out by picking her up. The strange thing is though that she loves being stroked and coming up to say hello, she's also fine once you have hold of her and loves jumping about on the sofa once she's out, plus I can pick her up fine from the sofa it's just the hutch that's the problem. I'm not sure why she has such negative associations when being picked up as I have never dropped her and am careful to support her bum and try and tuck in her legs when I pick her up, plus when she is out she has so much fun playing and binkying about! I do wonder in part if it's to do with her hormones and her getting a bit territorial as it seem to have got worse as she has got older, but we will keep on working on it and see!

    

Below you can see a few pics of Florrie chilling this month, and of her cute little feet!

 

Plus Florrie having fun shredding her chewy mat on the sofa giving her best "I have not made this mess mumma there is nothing to see here" look!

So as I mentioned at the beginning of my post there have been some massive changes that have been happening with me over the last few few months that I can now reveal to you.

      

Basically back in Feb I was given the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy from my retail job, or to drop hours after having worked there for the last 13 years! After numerous discussions both within work and with my family we all decided that taking the redundancy was the opportunity that I have needed in order for me to get out and really try to pursue my illustration dreams. It's a massive risk for me especially when I am not a risk taker by nature and there is a strong possibility that it might not work out, but I am in the best position that I can be to do it now and I really feel that I can't waste this opportunity as I am not going to get it again! So the plan is to take six months out to really try to push my little business, which up until now I haven't had the time or the means to fully focus on. If I fail I fail but I'm not going to know if I don't try.

So I left just over two weeks ago now on the day before Mother's Day and of course after being there for so long it was quite an emotional day, especially so since I'm very close to all of my work colleagues to the point that we are like a little family. They gave me a lovely send off though by getting me the lovely hamper of goodies below, and as you can see they know me well!

Since then I have been busy putting plans in motion, coming up with my business plan, designing business cards and coming up with new designs. It's exciting but also a little daunting as I know that I have to make it work otherwise I will have to return to my retail job or something else in six months time. Some days I really feel that I can make it work but on others I can feel quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. So watch this space over the coming weeks for updates and new work!  

So as I said I left on the day before Mother's Day, but Mother's Day itself started with me as a bunny mummy letting our little monkey come for cuddles on the bed which she thoroughly enjoyed investigating as you can see below.  

We then moved to the sofa for another little Florrie photo shoot! Below you can see just a few pics of out little poser!

I then went around to my parents to give my mum her Mother's Day gifts which went down very well, especially the gin tasting kit! We then had a gorgeous family roast and dessert which my Nan also joined us for, as you can see below.    

The weekend after Mother's Day was not only my first weekend off but also the weekend that the really sunny weather kicked in here, so my hubby and I made the most of it by going out and sitting outside for a lovely pub lunch on the Sunday.

Below left you can see the lovely blue skies from out of our bedroom window, and below left a pic that I took of the beautiful weather and trees in bloom at the pub/restaurant.  

 

Florrie has also been enjoying the afternoon sun that hits her hutch by sun bathing as you can see below. 

 

The sleepy bunny below has also gradually continued to destroy her sea grass tube, to the point that she can't really hide in it anymore so I am going to have to invest in a new one! 

She has also now adopted the "Nutbrown Hare" that was originally for our little niece for Easter as she liked the bell inside it! Don't worry though my niece is still getting one!

Below you can see her having fun playing with it.  

So that brings me to the end of another rather long blog post! Thank you for baring with me again! They will be getting much shorter from here on in now that I have more time to post!

I hope that you all have all had a lovely weekend and start to the week! I spent it chilling and enjoying an evening of belated leaving drinks with my colleagues, which was lovely as I haven't seen them for a few weeks. I also hope that and that the weather has been as good for you as it has for us! Today we have another lovely sunny day out there, made all the more glorious by the fact that blossom trees that surround our flat finally bloomed on Friday.

   

Enjoy you week and thank you again for visiting! x

A Sprinkling Of Snow, A Wedding, & Valentine's!

When I last blogged a month ago I was just starting my week off. I say week off but I had so many jobs to pack in within the week that didn't really feel like it!

Firstly as I mentioned in my last post our little Florrie had the first of her vaccinations on the Monday, so most of Tuesday was spent with me milling around the flat getting jobs done whilst making sure that she was ok and that she didn't have any side effects. Thankfully though she seemed absolutely fine and got over the whole ordeal pretty quickly, but it did make her a bit more clingly than usual towards me for a few days.

The rest of the week then flew by as it was spent with me getting both the flat, myself, the hubby and Florrie all ready and organized, as both my hubby and I were going away for the weekend with my parents for my second cousins wedding. Plus as my sister wasn't going we conveniently had a bunny and flat sitter at our service! 

We left on the Friday afternoon for our journey up to Northampton, but typically on the morning that we were due to leave I woke up with my first full on head cold in well over a year! It just appeared from nowhere but it hit me pretty hard and I felt awful!

Having never been to Northampton before we looked up the journey and it said that it should take about two hours to get there, but with all of the motorway traffic on a Friday afternoon it ended up taking more like three. It was a pretty cold and dreary day when we left and the skies threatened snow for most of the way, then as we arrived at our hotel for the weekend the sleet that had started along the way turned to snow.

Below left you can see a rather blurry photo that I took out of the window of the car on the way, showing one of the wind turbines with the sunset trying to to poke through the snow clouds in the background.

When I see wind turbines on journeys are always a bit of a novelty to me as we don't have anywhere close to us that has any, plus they always remind me of holidays in Cornwall as they have a lot of them down there too!

The pic below right then shows the snowy view that greeted from the window of our hotel room when we arrived. As you can see we had a lovely view over the hotel golf course.     
          

Below you can see that our hotel room that we had for our two night stay was just as lovely.

The following day bought the day of the wedding and as you can see below we woke up to a further dusting of snow. As I have mentioned before I love snow, so with there being snow and a wedding it made the day feel extra magical despite how awful I felt!

Sadly the snow didn't last long though as on our forty minute journey to the childhood church of the bride where the ceremony was being held it had begun to rain, and by the time that we got there wasn't any snow left at all!

Despite the on off rain throughout the day it was still bitterly cold, but the wedding ceremony itself was lovely and the bride looked just beautiful. This was then followed by refreshments in the church hall to warm everybody, before we then made our way to the reception venue which was held about a twenty minute drive away within a gorgeous converted barn.

We has such a lovely time and it was really nice to spend some quality time with my parents whilst we were away, and to catch up with family members that we haven't seen for some time.

There was also soo much food! Which consisted of a starter of goats cheese and onion tart, a main of pork, that was carved by a designated member of each table with cheesy sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, sugar snap peas and baby sweet, as well as roast potatoes and lashings of gravy! This was then followed by a dessert of bread and butter pudding and teas and coffees! It was all lovely despite the fact that I couldn't really taste any of it, but I honestly don't think that I have felt so stuffed after a wedding meal as I did that one! So it was a good job that in the evening they had a traditional Scottish Ceilidh band (pronounced Kaylee,) teaching us dances to help us burn it off! I had never heard of or participated in ceilidh dancing prior to this, but it got people up on the dance floor and my cousin and I had a great time learning a few of the dances as my hubby doesn't do dancing! 

So all in all we had a lovely weekend away and it was also nice to go to a region of the country that we have never visited before too.

Below you can see a small selection of images from the day.       

The Tuesday after the wedding marked not only my first day back at work, and the first day that I had started to feel half normal again after my head cold, but it also marked Valentine's Day.

As usual my hubby and I just had a quite night in with our annual M&S meal deal, which this year consisted of a starter of Tai fishcakes, a main of steak with rosemary potatoes and peas, and a Desert of millionaire shortbread with chocolate heats. All of which was gorgeous and was washed down with a bottle of Cava.

Below you can see our valentine's efforts!  

We don't usually do presents for valentine's just cards but this year my hubby bought me my favourite strawberries and cream Lindt chocolates and a beautiful bunny charm to go on my Pandora bracelet. Whilst I bought him a chocolate note slab, which came with a transfer sheet so that you could write a personalised note onto the chocolate.

Below you can see the charm that my hubby bought me and our Valentine's cards to each other, (the chocolates didn't hang around long enough to be photographed though!)

Following Valentine's both my parents and my hubby caught my head cold which I was none too popular for! It also meant that I ended up sleeping in the front room with Florrie from the middle of the night onwards on more than one occasion due to my hubby's snoring! On one such occasion I was trying to get to sleep and had my ear plugs in but I could hear this animal like noise. I got up concerned that it was Florrie, but her ears were all pricked up so she could obviously hear it too! On hearing it again I went to the kitchen window and opened the blinds to find to my surprise two foxes play fighting on the grass right in front of me. I've seen and heard foxes many a time before but the noises that these foxes were making were a lot more low pitched than usual, so I stood and watched then for a bit but it wasn't long before they got spooked and ran off.

Below you can see a few pics that I managed to catch of the foxes even though they are not of great quality!

    

Since then the last few weekends or so have been a mix of quiet ones and busy ones! We have also just gone two and a half weeks with no heating and hot water as we have had major issues with our boiler, which have thankfully now been fixed after numerous setbacks! So we will look forward to that bill coming though! Anyway the busy weekends consisted of us having our neighbours around for a catch up and drinks a few weekends back, which ended up with us staying up until the early hours as usual. We then ended up having them, their lodger, and the hubby's best friend around last weekend so that the boys could watch the boxing whilst the girls went out on the town. We weren't sure how Florrie would react to having other people around for the evening for a bit of a party, so we were ready to move her into the spare room in case she got too distressed by the noise but she was fine.

However I took this photo of her the following morning which I found quite amusing as it looks like she has had a bit of a heavy night!

Talking of the little monkey, her weight has gone up yet again! I weighed her a week or so ago and she is now weighing in at 1.7kg, so I am hoping that her weight will level out from here as she is now the size of a Lionhead bunny! Plus even though still pretty long and skinny is getting a little bit of a pudge to her, so I will have to keep a track of it. 

As always she continues to amuse and has been quite playful over the last few days especially! She has also got into a habit of chewing the bars to her hutch even when she has had plenty of exercise or doesn't want to come out, so we have started to put cardboard tubes into her hutch which she loves to chuck about. We have avoided putting them in there much until now though as she will just sit there and eat them like they are food rather than shred them, but we are keeping an eye on how much she is eating! We have also got her a loam gnaw bar to chew on too as we don't want her hurting her teeth or mouth on the bars, plus yesterday invested in a bunny pen for her so that she can have a bigger play area for when we can't have her out. I just need to get some suitable flooring for her now so that she doesn't slip about on out wooden floors, which is why I can't really let her run free in the front room.

She is also getting a bit better at being picked up from the hutch even though it is still on her terms!   

Below you can see her having fun with her cardboard tube, but the photos are a little blurry as she doesn't sit still when she plays with it! 

You can also see a few other pics of Florrikins from this month. Below left you can see that apparently toys make good pillows! Then below right you can see Florrie in her lazy chilled out mode!

Plus this month after shedding her fluffy bum it has returned as fluffy tufts like a little skirt!

There has also been progress on the Bobby Bunny front as I have now finished the new design that I mentioned in my last blog. The design that you can see below is for a first Mother's Day card, and will be available in my Etsy shop in the next few days.

Thank you for visiting as always! I hope that you are all well and have had a good weekend! It's been a quiet one here with me working yesterday and chilling today, as the weather has been pretty wet and drab in contrast to the lovely spring like days that we had here both yesterday and on and off over the last week. Let's hope that there will be more bright spring days to come rather than rainy ones, and no more storms like that of Dorris from the other week, which I hope that none of you were too affected by! Thankfully we didn't really see any damage here, but it was just rather windy! x

A Gig and Bunny Things!

Hello everyone! I hope that you have all had a good few weeks!

Things have been relatively quiet here which I am quite happy with to be honest! Work in my retail job is  ticking along but is rather quiet and mundane at the moment, and so far the dawn of a new month doesn't seem to have cheered the weather up much as you can see below! Due to this I have quite enjoyed hibernating and pottering about at home when I have had the chance!

There has been a little activity here and there though!

A couple of weekends back we spent a lovely evening visiting one of my childhood friends and his wife in their lovely new home along with a few other friends. They cooked a lovely meal for us and it was great to have a catch up with them all, as it had been a fair while since we had all been free to meet up.

On the same day an opportunity also came up for me to go to a gig at the O2 London the following day, as one of my Download friends had a spare ticket going. It was a bit spontaneous, but it was for a couple of bands that we had seen at Download Festival before and that I rather liked. I had considered getting tickets at the time but didn't get around to it so I thought why not I don't do things like that very often, plus I didn't have work the next day either! Anyway I am soo glad that I went as we had an amazing time! The supporting act that I didn't know well were good, the next band was fab, and the main act were amazing! The crowd were also a lovely bunch as were the security team. Getting back after was a bit of a nightmare as the train timetables had changed from the morning meaning that there were no trains for me to get home until the following morning, but we had half expected this being that it was a Sunday and with the way that Southern rail trains are at the moment! So I ended up crashing at my friends for the night and she dropped me off the next morning. My hubby would have picked me up from hers but it was about was about 1:00am by the time that we got back, plus it was also extremely foggy and icy! So much so that when she dropped me off the next day it was still foggy and icy come 11:00am!

Below you can see a few pics from the night.

Last weekend was then spent with me going down to see my Nan with my mum on the sat as I had the day off, and my hubby went to take one of his nephews to his first football match along with his stepdad and one of his brothers.

Sunday was then a chilled one as the weather was pretty wet and horrible so I decided to spend the afternoon sketching little Florrie, which I really enjoyed doing as it has been a fair few years since I drew anything life like. Below you can see the result, which I am pretty happy with considering that I am rather out of practice.

This weekend just gone was just filled with me working on sat, before having a girls night out to catch-up with best friend who has just got back from her honeymoon. Needless to say after partying until the early hours of Sunday morning, yesterday was a quiet pj day filled with chick flicks.

On the Florrie front the little monkey is just that, but we wouldn't change her! She is still more often than not being difficult to get out of the hutch and def knows her own mind as one minute she won't come out and the next she will, so things are on her terms in that department at the moment the little madam! As I mentioned in my last post though she loves coming to say hello and be stroked, and has a right old time binkying and being very playful on "her" sofa once she is out. My cushions now have more holes in before, as does the throw that has now officially been adopted by her. She has also established "her" seat on the sofa which so happens to be where my hubby sits, so if he is not there she will be straight there and if he moves she will be straight there too! She has also grown back her fluffy bum which is all tufty, plus is now weighing in at 1.5kg! To be honest though that isn't really surprising being that when I went back to where we got her from the other day for hay supplies I saw that they still had one of her sisters there and she is now huge! They had also changed the sign from "Netherland Dwarfs" to "Netherland Dwarf Mixed Breeds", as she too is clearly not a Netherland Dwarf!

Florrie has also decided that there is something that she hates more that the hoover too, which randomly is me doing my workout DVD! I did it for the first time since having her the other day and she spent the whole hour stamping her feet! I thought that it may have been where I was jumping about as she is more than used to having music on and it doesn't bother her at all, so I tried covering one half of her hutch up so that she could shelter more but it didn't make any difference until I turned it off! Today she was much better with it, but we still got a few stamps! Strange bunny! The only other time we have stamps, squeaks or grunts are when she is having a tantrum about me not giving her food stick quick enough rather than her being scared!

Below you can see Florrie with her sister just before we got her below left, and just how big her sister is now right and below!

We do love our little bunny though as you may have gathered, so much so that I found myself waking up in a panic the other night as I thought that we had left her out. I woke my hubby up in the process and even when he told me that we hadn't I still had to check in my half asleep state! What am I turning into! I feel like more of a parent now that I did when I had Milly & Molly, which I think is due to her being a single bunny and a house bunny. Talking of which madam had her first vaccinations this afternoon! I was a little apprehensive about taking her as I didn't know how she would react, or whether she would have any side effects being that she had never been to the vets before. I also have never had a bunny vaccinated before as it wasn't really about a much when I had my last bunnies, and you had to have ten people wanting it in the area at a time to have it done then as it's a live vaccine.

She was however pretty well behaved! I took her in her cardboard box that she came is I thought that it would be easier to get her out from than a carrier. She was understandably pretty scared when we got there and was covering in the corner, but a bit of dandelion mix bought her out of her shell. Once out of the box she had a full check over and was weighed before having her vaccine. She kept trying to climb up off of the table onto me for safety, and at one point jumped so high that she nearly jumped over my shoulder. But when it came to having the actual vaccine she was soo good and didn't even flinch!

Since being home she seems to have settled down very quickly and has been munching and letting me stroke her still, so I think that I am forgiven! I will keep an eye on her, but hopefully she won't have any side effects!

Below you can see a few pics of our little monkey from the last few weeks.

 Me cheeky! Never!

 Like butter wouldn't melt
 

 Playful Bun!

 Sleepy Bun!

 

Claiming "her" seat!

 

Bunny Yoga!

In other bunny related news I have a few new bunny related items that I have added to my collection in the last few weeks or so. Firstly a rather lovely bunny cushion, which my mum treated me to on a trip to one of our local garden centres the other week. You can see it below, plus I hasten to add that this one will be staying away from Florriekins!

Then secondly I was so very excited to have my rose gold and dusty pink Olivia Burton bunny watch turn up on Friday, which I have been on the waiting list for months! I have to say that I am not a big watch fan and haven't worn a watch since I was about twelve, but I just couldn't resist this one when I saw it. It's soo gorgeous as you can see below and even nicer in the flesh!

Also in Bobby related news I have also sketched out a new design which should be finished and ready to show you by my next post!

I hope that you all had a fab weekend, and thanks as always for visiting!  x