A mostly expensive start to the year so far

On Friday Millie was booked in at the vets to have dental work done.

We knew she had a build up of plaque and, for a while she has had very smelly breath.

but lately she has not been eating much, and although she has never been a fat cat she was starting to look a bit too thin.  

At almost 12 years old, she is getting to be an old lady, but apart from her teeth her pre-op check showed that she is in good health otherwise, thank goodness.

So I dropped her off at 8.30 am on Friday and at around 1 pm they phoned to say that she was all done.  Unfortunately they had to take the majority of her teeth out, 13 in total, she is just left with a couple at the front now.  Plus to get one of her teeth out they had to cut her gum, so she has a few stitches too.  She was not very happy with me on Friday I can tell you!  I expected her to be off her food for a few days, or at least not to eat much, but no, I opened a tin of pilchards for her, mashed them up and she was right in there, finishing off most of the tin!  

Happily she is now more or less back to her normal self, her face was a little bit swollen but that is mostly gone down now and she is eating more than she has done in months!  She has pain killers once a day and has to go back in 10 days for another check-up, but hopefully we should see a big improvement in her eating and weight gain now.

Of course those of you with pets will know that vet visits don't come cheap and this little visit lightened our bank balance by £318. 

What with Molly's abscess just after Christmas we have forked out almost £1000 so far this year in vet bills, and we are only in month 2!  We have no pet insurance, (I know, I know, not very insightful of me), but as they are getting to be quite 'old ladies' now  the insurance would probably be quite high and of course wouldn't cover what they have already been treated for, so, I have decided that every month I will put a little money away to cover any future vet bills.  

Touch wood, my two cats have always been quite healthy and well, they don't wander out of our garden and they are not hunters, and I think that helps, but there is no getting away from the fact that they are getting older and may need other treatment in the future, at least if I start a fund now at least I will know that some, if not all of the money will be covered.

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I'm still plugging away with the February instalment of the Joyful World SAL.

I have to say that although I love this, I'm not enjoying stitching it, does that make sense?  Plus, I've miscounted somewhere, so there will be a bit of fudging going on.

I will keep on with it because I've got so far, but I think it's fair to say that I will be glad to see the back of it.

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This weekend we went to pick up a little cupboard for the hall.  

Our hallway is not very big and I hate to see shoes cluttering up the space, this has solved the shoe problem perfectly.

(excuse the fuzzy photo, it was taken with my phone at night)

The mirror was a little make-over project last week, It was originally black, (another one of my Home Sense finds a couple of weeks ago), I liked the shape but the black was too stark so out came my trusty Annie Sloan paint and a couple of hours later it was transformed :-)
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I'm just getting over another cold, second one this year, I don't usually have many colds but these two really slowed me down, must be my age, lol.   I'm still a little bunged up but feel tons better than I did last week.  I bought a pack of multivitamins for 50+ when I went shopping this weekend, apparently you need a different set of vitamins when you are 50+, who knew!

Hopefully they will help to put a spring back in my step, ha ha ha, I think in order to do that they will have to transport me back a decade or two as well :-)

I hope you are managing to avoid the Winter cold germs and keeping warm and well :-)

See you soon

Have a great week

-X-

Some finishes & my February mantle

Hello again, I hope you survived storm Imogen without to much trouble.

Saturday was an awful day here weather wise, the rain and the wind were horrendous.  

I only popped out for a few bits late Saturday afternoon, it wasn't a day to be walking about town.

The rest of Saturday I spent stitching and catching up on some missed TV programmes, mainly Endeavour and Midsomer Murders, (Midsomer for all it's prettiness must be the most dangerous place to live in England, good job it's fictional)

I see lots of people joining in with the Joyful World SAL and who can blame them, the first two patterns are so cute!

I started with February because we were already at the end of January.

My little duck looks like he's got a deformed beak doesn't he?  Unfortunately the stitching ended just by a 'snowflake' and with the yellow thread its making it look a bit strange, I'm hoping it won't be so noticeable when it's all done.

Not sure yet if I will finish it as a flat ornament or look about for a frame and change the months around.
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I've also finished my first Christmas ornament of 2016.
The fabric is a little darker than this photo is showing, (night-time is not a good time for taking photos).

Just a simple gingham backing

This is  a free design from 2013 offered from The Nebby Needle, which you can find here 

I changed the thread colours to some that I already had.
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I was browsing Pinterest last week, (as you do) and came across some various ways that stitching hoops had been used, there was one in particular that featured red buttons and a heart that I particularly liked, well, I didn't have many red buttons but I did have some left over red/pink fabric from my February ornament and lots of white and opaque buttons :-)

It actually came out much better than I expected, to be honest I was just going to sew on one layer of buttons but didn't arrange them too good and there was quite a bit of fabric showing between them so I just kept adding layers until I thought it looked ok.  I think it's made a nice addition to my February mantle.

I wanted to get some pink candles but couldn't find any, so these cream ones had to do this time.  I happened to meet with this little jug in Home Sense just at the right time, don't you think it's cute, and just the right colour!

An ornament finish

A very quick post today for this first day of February.

My February ornament

For the first time I've used Crafters companion, stick & stay when making it up.  

Usually I get glue in places you would never imagine when trying to make these ornaments, (which other people make look so easy to do and which I find a right pain in the butt!).  But this time everything seemed to be working in my favour, for once.

I was hoping to have my first Christmas ornament of the year finished too but I'm still working away on that.

I've had a day off work today, so I'm off to sit and watch Columbo, which I recorded yesterday, and stitch on 'Christmas'.

Have a good day all

-X-