Kitten Chaos & Calamity

Greetings dear friends & readers

It has been rather a stressful kinda week here at My Threadbear Life .............
(warning photo heavy post - go grab a cuppa or a stronger tipple perhaps !!!)

Some despicable person dumped a very young mother cat & her 5 baby kittens at our depot yard while it was closed for the festive period.
The first indication I had of this was when the skinny, starving Mum began turning up on our lawn at nights, wild eyed & hungry. 
I fed her, thinking to myself "I am not quite sure that she actually is feral"
When the staff at the depot yard came back to work on Monday, they found 5 small balls of fluff tucked under a broken roller door at the rear of the building
Without thinking, they handled & cuddled the kittens .... that night the Mum moved them all ................. to under my house of course !!!!
The kittens found a small gap at the base of my house & came tumbling out .  .  .

Goodness me ............ how did that happen ???!!!

5 hungry wee souls .   .  .

Now I confess I have a bit of a wee problem .  .  .  whenever I come across anything abandoned like this .  .  .  .  I just want to keep them all, feed them,love them & give them a home.  My head goes foggy & my reasoning flies out the window .  .  . The Mr tells me that my eyes actually glaze over !!!

During the course of the week I was lucky enough to find homes for all the kittens
(believe me - this was down to sheer luck & Not down to good management !!!)

This just left Mum  .  .  .  .

.  .  .  . who begun to let me pat her as her hunger & malnourishment decreased a little .  .  .

However - the day the last of her kittens went away, she became distraught, & cried & howled under the house for 2 days. Meanwhile I was inside the house crying & howling myself !!!!
Eventually The Mr took her into town to our Animal Care Centre & gave them a generous donation to have her speyed & find her a good home with someone (who won't abandon her)

Right in the midst of all that stress .... there was one ray of sunshine. 
My friend Sue came over for a visit from the city.
Sue was the exact person you need in a situation like this ... not only is she friendly & cheerful, but also very confident as she has fostered kittens for the S.P.C.A herself.
And Sue came bearing gifts . . .

.  .  . wonderful Op Shop treasures that she knew I would Love !!

Not only that, Sue took one of the kittens home with her .   .   .  my favourite one actually, the polydactyl one with 
the extra toes

And very proud of his extra toe too !!!!!  Click on the photo if you want to enlarge it.

You can read Sue's post about her visit Here & see the ummm - "rather stressful & difficult" life little ToeBee is leading - I have pinched borrowed a couple of Sue's photos below
Thank you SO much Sue for all your help & encouragement with the kitten fiasco !!

ToeBee with Sue's older cat Big

So the 3 kittens below all went to their separate homes on the same day 

This just left the ginger & the black male kittens remaining.
I was worried about one going & the other being left behind so it was nothing short of a miracle when the girl came to collect the ginger boy, she agreed to take his brother too!!

This is why I had hoped they would be kept together .  .  .

Bless their precious wee souls.
Enough kitten overload for one day ???!!!

Hence there has been not alot achieved at Threadbear this past week.  As my sewing machine has gone in for a long overdue service, it was hand sewing projects only.
I noticed the glass dish containing the wool blanket lavender hearts in my Cottage was empty .  .  .

.  .  . as well as there being no mothball sachets remaining.

I was able to rectify both these this week as I had some muslin bags already sewn up, just needing to be filled.
You can find the recipe for the mothball sachets Here if you should want to make some up yourself)

Way back early last year when we did our lounge extension, we were left with one end of a set of french doors spare.
I masked up 3 of the panes & painted them black "diesel" - but then never did anything further with them.

Our extension ended up having one long expanse of wall with no windows in it .... this was partly our choice & partly due to the fact the we (me) could find nothing we could agree on.
I decided to use this false window to break up the bare expanse of wall.

My son screwed it to the weatherboards for me & we dragged my old concrete washing machine tubs along underneath the "window".
I then filled the tubs with red & white geraniums !!!
Yes I know !!!   Yes I did say white !!!
They just grew pink for some unknown reason !!!

In hindsight I am pleased we didnt put a window in this wall - it keeps the room nice & cool & also gives me more wall space to hang things on.
Thank you for staying with me through this lengthy ramble dear friends
I shall leave you with these pics of Miss Pippi "paying me back" for entertaining the idea of possibly adding more cats to our home !!!!!
How dare I ???!!!
She has taken up sleeping in my lovely Tilda lined suitcase as retribution !!

Take that you terrible Mother you !!!!!!!!!

Go give those furry friends a gentle pat & tell them you love them
With much love & friendship to you all,
Julie, Blackie & Miss Pippi x0x0x0x0

Lightening dull corners . . . . . harvesting Vegies

Good Tuesday Evening to you dear friends & readers  
A Special Welcome to all the new friends & readers that have stopped by recently

Sometimes when the Christmas decorations are packed away, the house can seem rather bare & things look a little shabby to me

This time of year I like to make an attempt to lighten things up a little bit & perhaps titivate some dark corners
A vase of freshly picked flowers from the garden will always bring a dull corner to life ...

Red Alstromerias & white Penstemons

I was given a $30 Bunnings Voucher for Christmas so off I trotted to buy myself a new rake to work on shifting my piles of mulch .
While in there I couldn't resist the beautifully healthy maidenhair ferns on sale so my Voucher purchased one of those also

Just perfect to sit in my old red ceramic duck planter .  .  .

.  .  .  & cheer up the fireplace hearth area

My Mums elderly friend Margaret is going voluntarily into Resthome care.
She had been sorting the piles of bits & bobs that 90+ years of acquiring & gathering brings !!
Mum bought me up a large plastic bag of goodies from Margaret.
To be honest, much of it was rubbish unusable but I did find these two vintage brooches & gorgeous old triple string of beads that Margaret had thought I could sell in my Cottage.
I made two little brooch pillows from some brushed velveteen to display the brooches on - & the necklace changed colour after a gentle soak in warm suds

At the very bottom of the plastic bag was this crumpled up piece of fabric that someone had intricately appliqued a Holly Hobbie girl onto.
I LoVeD her.
I decided to frame her using some of the oddments of vintage cotton laces that were in the bag.

Then I made her up into a tightly stuffed pillow - perhaps to sit on a bed or a bedroom chair

I just adore Holly Hobbie - she takes me right back to my childhood.

Well dear friends, all that worm juice/tea has been sure working its magic on my vegetable garden lately
We enjoy garden salads most nights & I have had some late season brassicas ready to pick also

The Mr & I both really love broccoli - it is MY favourite vegetable of all of them really

Though I have more young baby beets growing, I was able to cook up a batch of early ones last week for us to enjoy
The photo below shows just some of what I harvested over the weekend

The Mr is away today & will not arrive home until the wee small hours.
He has travelled to the other side of the Island to collect a (new) 2nd-hand mower to cut hay & silage at the farm.
The house is quiet as the 4 legged ones sleep & I am burning my new Eco Soy Candle - a gift from my Stepdaughter for Christmas
The fragrance is French Vanilla & the house smells rather heavenly ....

The beautifully gift boxed candle came with this little verse inside it . . .
"from birth to death
our entire lives have
a soundtrack written in scent.
One note of a half forgotten fragrance
is enough to place us at the
heart of every moment
we've ever
lived"

How very true ... I think the french vanilla fragrance is taking me back to Mums baking days & coming home from school to the house fragrant with delicious mouth-watering smells.
My Mum used to do the most wonderful baking.

Goodnight from me dear friends & readers
& Goodnight from the furry ones below
Wishing you the sweetest of dreams .  .  .

Thanks SO much for your visits here this late summers evening
with much love & friendship to you All,
Julie, Pippi & Blackie  x0x0x0

Happy New Year

Greetings dear friends & readers & welcome to a bright, shiny New Year !!

Lets hope 2017 is kind to us all

I was not sorry to close the door on last year but I Am thankful for a fresh new year & the chance to maybe do some things a little differently ...

I would like to borrow a comment my dear friend Willie left on a blog that I felt summed it all up rather perfectly  . . .

"we spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws but for potential."  Ellen Goodman

I loved this Jar idea above, & shall certainly be giving this a go for 2017 !!
With a new grandchild due in March there is much to look forward to & feel positive about this year.

Mum has gone home now & the decorations have been packed away both inside the house & the Cottage.

We had a lovely Christmas shared with various members of our family at different times.

I loved sharing it with a small blue eyed boy who just adores a large purple creature named Barney & who was simply delighted with the sandpit his Mummy & Daddy built for him

AND with the yellow tip truck his Granny & great Granny bought for him (from the SPCA Op Shop!!)

Dear Alec you bring me so much pleasure & joy

Danielle Hawkins is an author who lives in a small rural township not too far from us.

She also works part-time as a large animal Vet & just happens to be the Vet that The Mr uses at the farm.

He came home late last year after having had the cows pregnancy tested, & informed me he had 
"bought my christmas gift for this year"

I knew Danielle was working on another book so it wasn't difficult to work out what this might possibly be.

Imagine my surprise 3 days later when I walk outside thinking I had a customer, to see Danielle in person walking up the driveway with her new book tucked under her arm !!!

The Pretty Delicious Cafe is her 3rd book ... I have read mine already (yes - I know !!) & thoroughly enjoyed it, just as I knew I would.

I LoVe Danielle's writing & after sitting chatting to her I can honestly report, she is a lovely friendly, very down-to-earth person with a great sense of humour.

In the lead-up to Christmas - when I should have been concentrating on my orders - I decided I wanted to make myself a Tilda Tree just like the ones I made here

I had purchased a larger size rustic pot & traced off the largest tree pattern ...  I wanted it NOT to be Christmassy, but something I could leave up all year round.

After walking past it for a few days (as I tend to do ...) I decided it needed some small cream bells hanging from the branches !!

A quick google search took me to an etsy shop that had the exact cream bells I wanted for the princely sum of $3.50 for a packet of 6 !!

Just Perfect !!!

However ... when I went to purchase the bag of bells, etsy promptly informed me it would cost me $28.87c to post the teeny tiny package ALL the way to New Zealand !!

I don't think so somehow !!!
Time for Plan B ... whatever that might be ???!!!

I found a rusty tin heart & spray painted that cream instead . . . .

.  .  .  .  which will suffice until such time as I can be bothered painting fiddly bells myself !!

Well dear friends - it is hot out today but there is a gentle breeze blowing through our deck area - Miss Pippi is asleep in her banana box & Blackie is in the cool of the wood shed

Happy New Year & all that kerfuffle !!!!

I am off to try this delightful tea that my stepson gifted me for Christmas . . . black rose tea which looks rather like potpourri but smells delicious

Thanks so much for stopping by today
with much love & friendship to you ALL
Julie & the furry ones x0x0x0x