A quiet festive season? - Part 1

As most people settle down for a restful Christmas, putting aside crafting and making, I rev up with a vengeance.  The coffee table had to change.  It was brown, it was boring, it was old and we didn't like it much at all and kept telling it so.  As is my way, I decided to start on Christmas Eve.  Yup.

I bought the papers as a PDF download from LilliBimble on Etsy - had a play with the colours, and got Mr Bunny Maker to print them off at work (heee heee).

Snip, stick, snip, stick ... Ta daaaaaaa....

It will need many many coats of varnish, because I always slop wine and coffee on it.  The feet have very neat sticky-backed plastic covering to protect the paper edges.

It now looks much better in the living room ..

So, what's Part 2?  You'll have to wait ......

December at The Warren

The run-up to Christmas is always fun at The Warren, but this year there is something missing!  Widget, the bun himself, is away being modelled by Kirsten at Quernus Crafts.  There is no one to keep the other bunnies under control and it has all gone a bit pear-shaped.  Nosy has been trying to help ...

We have had a big whoofle of snow here too, meaning that Nosy and Spike get to stay in The Burrow workroom a good while longer. 

 They now have a semi-permenant structure taking shape.  This must be alarming Mr Bunny Maker somewhat, although he hasn't said anything. Yet.

Nosy and Spike have been getting into a whole heap of their own trouble. Left alone at night, not content with chewing the back out of the cardboard box house, they can't resist LIVE power cables.  I forgot to hook up my sewing machine one the other night ....

They killed it!  I'm suprised they didn't kill themselves!  Faced with bunny orders and no means to sew them I employed by Girl Guide knowledge and cut, spliced and re- wired the cable.  The sewing machine even works again.  I am smug.

In spite of the lack of Widget and the freezing weather, lots of new snow bunnies have arrived and are now waiting for you in the bunny shop.

By the way, If you give the bunnies a dedicated power cable, just for them, one you have no need of anymore, they won't touch it. It has to be plugged in!  I think they get a kick out of setting their teeth on edge!  Odd bunnies.

(I never was a Girl Guide).

Halloween at The Warren

So, what goes on here at Halloween?  All sorts of things.  I found myself in a rather strange, very appropriate and not at all contrived, position last night - on the very eve of Halloween itself ...

Is this some sadistic ritual?  Is The Bunny Maker not all that she seems?  What on earth is she doing?
Yup - sorry folks, its just a custom order for a Skelly Bun in progress.  Off to France no less!

And as for this lot, I've not idea who they are or what they are doing .....

A few Thock Thakes insisted on posing for the picture too, before they were shooed back to The Burrow workroom.   Just for the record - we did eat the kids.

Waddya up to, Bunny Maker?

Er .... ooops, you've caught me unawares and all in a pickle. The Burrow is a bit of a mess as I have been re-vamping my Half an Acre shop on Not on The High Street . I've been checking I have the designs ready for posting off, all bubble-wrapped and that and that. I'm also painting up some new fish, which I haven't done for ages. I have some new fishies ...

 It's all the fault of those bunnies, they won't let me do anything else but make new ones and write about them! 

You can click on the image to see a bigger one - its messier close up!
I'm doing something most unwise, painting amongst all my socks and fabric bits.  Heading for a messy disaster.  Using the sewing machine for drying painted things on is perhaps not the best of ideas.

Most of my paints have dried up of over the summer.  Ho hum.  Time for a shopping spree then.

I've sneekily brought the bunnies in to The Burrow too.  It is VERY cold out, you see.

Can you see Nosy, fast asleep in his favourite spot?  Mr Bunny Maker doesn't like them inside, in fact, he doesn't like then at all! Old meanie.

It's my workroom .......... *stamps feet*

The Bunny House is Finished!

It's done.  It cost twice as much as it was meant to and is twice as fabulous as I hoped.

Inside there are up bits and down bits, corners for hiding in and straw for drying off and being cosier in.  There is a chair for me and somewhere to put a nice cup of coffee.

The sleeping area in the Wendy house has a smaller hutch in it, now filled with straw and baskets for curling up in when it's very cold.  As the nights get chiller and colder I'll just keep adding deeper and deeper straw and hay for them.  Their favourite spot is up on the top there, so they can see out of the windows!

Something new arrived today too - to complete everything.

It took them about 2 minutes to notice it but then they spent a good twenty going in and out, in and out, in and out ... you get the idea.
My favourite bit is still 'the tunnel'.

I have now fulfilled my childhood dream of having one of those play houses, the ones with the ladder up to an upstairs and little windows.  I've always wanted one of them and tried desperately to argue for one for my own children.  My plan was too transparent though! Now can rearrange all the plants and boxes, sweep things and plant flowers around the door.  My fantasy has been fulfilled.  In life, that is a good thing.
And to think, this is what the pet store sold me as a 'large run'.  Nosy and Spike can't even stand up in it.  Disgraceful.

Time to catch up!

Where did that summer go?  Wahoooosh! ... and it was gone!  We caught 1472 crabs in total for 2010 and balanced a lot of stones....

Now it's all back to school again. My biggest little boy has started secondary school....

  'Sniff'.

Things around The Warren have been a-happening too.  Since we have had Nosy and Spike, our bunnies, they have been slowly taking over.  Not content with their big hutch and two runs, the conversion is now finished!!  LOOK!

Dun ... dun ...duuuuuuuunnnnnnnn.  Bunny Heaven! 

The junk-holding Wendy house is now their *ahem* bedroom, with a weatherproof tunnel through to the ..er ... living room.

Inside the 'bedroom' is another hutch, £15 off ebay (bargainous bargain).  It's way too small to ever have housed a rabbit (shudder) but is perfect to fill with hay for them to cosy into on cold nights.

The 'living room' has a big shelfy thing which I will spend many happy an hour arranging ramps and ledges, hiding places, and sniffing holes around.

I couldn't resist, a big, wet patch of concrete?  Custom drawn floor by The Bunny Maker!  The whole shebang cost twice as much as originally quoted, as these things always do.  But, might as well do it properly, eh?
*shakes piggy bank pointlessly*
All it needs now is lots of runways, boxes, planks, hay, food, water and .... bunnies!

Where have you been, Sock Bunny Maker?

Boing!  Here I am!  Okay, it's only been a week but it feels like a month.  I've been off with Mr Bunny Maker and the three Sonbuns to the Isle of Wight again.  No computer or internet access had a drastic affect on me.  Total collapse.  With no way to get any of my work done my brain and body shut down.  Sleep.  Sleeeeep.  I even went to bed at 9.35 one night.  Unheard of.
We did the usual - chocolate croissants from the shop for breakfast and then off to catch those pesky crabs.  We like to keep score, it's a family thing.

Eldest SonBun got the creative bug and spent hours and hours totally absorbed in the art of stone balancing.

They got broken up each day but he still went back and rebuilt them.  He loved all the attention and comments he got from passersby and even inspired several people to do their own.

On returning home, on the doormat, was a big pile of envelopes addressed to 'The Handmade Bunny'.  What's that?  Aha! Glad you asked....... but I think it should have a spot all to itself - so, you'll have to wait a little while.....

Half term and the crab-fest begins.

I have been alerted by Grandpa Bunnymaker that I have not 'updated the blog' lately so, off we go....

Half term was spent in our usual way, catching a ridiculous number of crabs off the rocks in Seaview, Isle of Wight, using putrid limpits, prized off the rocks with a rusty screwdriver, pierced with bent coat-hanger wire and dangled from sticky, fishy, orange nylon line into the waters of The Solent. With this archaic method we caught 495 of the little beggers.  We are experts.  In the pipeline I have a little guide book to crabbing.  Actually, it's blocked in the pipeline but I will get around to it one day.  Son Number 2 caught the best one to date .... an Eddie!  Four hundred and ninety five boring Shore Crabs and one wonderful Edible Crab.

We didn't eat him - because he's called Eddie and you can't eat things with names.  He wasn't really big enough either and I wouldn't have known what to do with all those crabby parts anyway.  They are hard to catch on a limpit on orange fishing line, hence the greater kudos of the catch.  Edibles lurk under the rocks and let go of the bait if they feel a movement or tug making them very hard to get.  This one just came straight up.  Sweet.

What else?
 The Burrow got a new sign - custom made by Cinnamon and Hill on Folksy.

I'm hoping it will enable me to find my workroom more easily as I haven't been it in much over these last two weeks and keep avoiding the piles of work in there.  The Warren Bunnies and snoozing in the dappled shade with them is a lot more appealing.

What have the fuzzy-butts been up to?

A lot of bunniness, that's for sure.  They both escaped yesterday much to my terror.  I had forgotten to fasten one corner of the lawn run and they'd pushed their nosy noses out and bounced off into the corners of the garden.  Yikes!
You know now they are obsessed with their plastic carrier?  I put it in the middle of the lawn, called "Bunners, Bunners....." and out they both boinged, across the lawn, noses a-twitching in nosiness, and hopped straight into it.  I slapped the door shut and it was 'Gotcha' all round.

I gave in and made World Cup Bunny ...

And met with a very nice lady from the Rabbit Welfare Association because a percentage of every bunny sold will now go to the charity and there were 'things to discuss'. 

The Cloth Store (my part-time day job) has opened a new interior design shop just round the corner from it's Horsham branch, and I have been busy taking pictures for promotional stuff and sorting out some annoying email problems.  The shop looks wonderful .....

I'm finally catching up ......

A death in the family

 We kept him in the fridge as it was such a hot day.  Sticky the Stickleback was no more.  He died with one little stickle up - a testament to his slightly agitated nature.

I feel that I should say that he was kept in the fridge after he died, not 'kept in the fridge'.  That would have killed him for sure.

We decided a funeral was the right thing to do.  A matchbox was found, sprayed a suitable blue and a small cross cobbled together.  Youngest Son, and owner of said fish, dressed in suitable attire.

A few words were said and Sticky was laid to rest under the oak tree, by the vegetable patch.

Youngest Son was obviously traumatized by the cold, harsh realities of death as he spent quite a while afterwards trying to make red pepper stick in his ears.

It's a funny old life.

A problem with greenfly.

It's that time of year.  The roses are coming into leaf and the buds are forming.  That means one thing.  Greenfly.  We have an Albertine outside our front door, which fills the air with its luscious scent throughout june.  I have to spend most of May squeezing the greenfly off the flower buds.
The other day I went out to have a general poke around and found that we had the biggest greenfly problem of all time ...

Wah! He was HUGE!  I screamed.  He screamed.  I screamed.  He said "Is this number 3?".  I said it was.  He said that he had been sent to live with us and had come from Minxtures shop on Folksy.   He also said that he didn't really like eating roses.  Good news.

I asked him in and he showed me his two leaves that he'd brought with him to sleep under at night.  He said that he would try to not be too much trouble.  After hearing that he wasn't a rose-eating greenfly I was very happy to have him in the house.

So far he has been very quiet, every now and again having a little fly around and then settling down for a snooze under his leaves...

I'm hoping he will become good friends with Cheesy the Cheeselog, who also found his way to our house from Minxtures, a truly temptatious shop full of fuzzy creatures with 'take me home' eyes.  Although I did catch him sniffing a rose in the back garden earlier .... hmmmmmm