Gotta Love a Bargain!

Firstly, it was farewell to the baby plecs. Our original estimate of 80-100 was wildly out, and we handed in something more in the region of 150 - 200 babies. It took almost an hour to get them out of the nursery tank and I'm already dreading the job of fishing out the next set of babies will be for the much larger, full of lots of stuff, main tank. Yep, no sooner have I handed these little guys away when a new clutch of eggs have been laid. The male has cottoned on to my idea, and this time had the female lay her eggs on the glass, so there is absolutely no way to retrieve them out.

Plecs 1 - 0 Me

Not much to talk about out-and-about-wise, the weather has been gruesome and its finally beaten us all, even Missy cant be bothered with the rain any more. She's still walking plenty, and chasing all the squirrels, but we just haven't managed anywhere new or exciting. With the hubby working this weekend, I decided today was the perfect day to get cracking on with some projects - namely a new tee-pee cover:

So this was my bargain. I found two single bed sheets at £1.20 each in Asda, which gave me enough fabric to make a spare cover for the tee-pee. I'm always on the look out for cheap sheets - generally I wouldn't make anything super-detailed out of sheets, but they are great for projects that need a big chunk of fabric (petticoats, the underside of quilts, general lining etc etc).

Whilst I prefer her white one cover, Missy has managed to shake mud all over it and it sorely needs washed. Its still far too cold to just leave her bed bare and open to the night time elements, so I had to make another cover before I could wash the old one. Whilst I loved the butterfly print, I quickly panicked that it may have been too loud for the hallway, and perhaps the purple underside would be better. The solution? Why, make it fully reversible!

Fortunately, my panic was for nothing, and the butterfly side isn't nearly as loud as I thought it was going to end up being. Making it reversible was worth the extra effort as I'm really pleased with the final finish of this one, the seams are neat and the top stitching has come out perfect. And who knows, I might fancy it fully purple another time! I had another bonus with the fabric, there was a pillowcase with each sheet, and a sizeable enough portion of scrap fabric left. What to do, what to do?

Make a matching quilt of course! So, for 3 hours work and £2.40 (I had scrap batting lying about), that's a tee-pee cover and a quilt. I kid you not - this dog of mine has a cooler, more coordinated bedroom than I do! Spoiled rotten doesn't come close enough.

Missy hasn't given it a road test yet, she's quite happily sleeping on the sofa. She takes her job of quality checking all my fabric (read that as walking over and lying on every piece I place on the floor) very seriously, and has worn herself out!

Just a short post today, hope your all having nice weekends!

Teepees and Christmas Cards

Just a short post today - knowing that this time next week it will all be over has put me in a panic. There's been lots of baking and all the little odds-and-ends jobs that are so easy to neglect have suddenly come to my attention. So this week has been spent mostly double checking presents, wrapping the last few pieces and writing out the Christmas cards.

Missy 'helping' with the cards

There's been a lot of craft work over the last few weeks - the cat re homing place we got Ziggy from for my sister were looking for some winter donations so I put together some cat quilts. And then I had to make Missy some quilts so she wouldn't feel left out! Hers are the bottom two:

I am particularly pleased with the Monster High one, I will confess! The other big project for Missy has been a tee-pee! Now, let me explain before you automatically label me a crazy dog lady, as Missy was a stray, she cannot be left alone with access to the bins, so she has her bed in the hall under the stairs (like a little Harry Potter doggy, but with way more space!). 

We do try every so often giving her the living room, but she just cant help herself and after a few days of lulling us into a false sense of security will just decimate the bins. And I mean decimate - rubbish will be strewn throughout the ground floor of the house, its like she knows she's going to get into trouble so just goes daft. The worst one was the icing sugar. Icing sugar has a magical property whereby an empty bag can make it look like its been snowing in my living room and turn a black dog completely white. That was when she broke me, it was too funny to be cross, but it took hours to clean fully...

But I digress. It basically boils down to the fact that my kitchen door is one of these silly folding doors, and as the style is no longer made, I am not buying 5 new doors just to replace it. So Missy has the hall and access to a nice sunny spot on the stairs when the weather is nice. I've always had a curtain over her 'bedroom' to keep it warm at night and, with the -12C we had last week, noticed she was actually pulling the curtains into her bed and curling up in them.

I will not have a cold doggy! So, with the aid of this tutorial and some very rusty math skills in order to scale the whole thing up to make one large enough for Missy, I present to you, her tee-pee!

And one with her just chilling out inside:

It did take a small bit of bribery to try it out, but once she realised her bed was there and that this was her new 'room', Missy has taken to it really well. She seems to have figured out how to open the flaps herself to cool it down during the warmer nights and also how to close it up herself and, when she's had enough of all the cheesy Christmas songs, has been putting going there of her own free will to chill out.

I have also realised its plenty big enough to be a photo prop for my smallest niece and nephew - I'm thinking of having them as Tiger Lilly and one of the lost boys, and for Missy, well, she'll have to be Peter Pan! Perhaps if they visit in the summer...

I'm hoping to get another post in before Christmas, but if not, have an awesome day however you chose to celebrate it!