Not so Happy Eggs.

When a company bases all their advertising and marketing around a moral principle, it’s all the more sickening when it’s revealed that they are guilty of abusing this principle. That’s the feeling I have today after viewing the Sky News story about the conditions that the laying hens from the Happy Egg company are kept in.

The picture of hens happily grazing green field and riding an a quad bike (which I’m sure my chickens would love!) couldn’t be further from the truth. From the footage it’s appears little better than the battery cages that are so well publicized as being cruel.

I’m so glad I can be totally sure where the eggs I eat come from. Please support your local garden hen keeper… it’s the only way you can know the truth.

Big Bang Theory - Love this!

Size isn't everything!

A couple of weeks ago I put a little order in with everyone’s favourite online retailer and order one of these babies!

It’s a Pogo Printer by Polaroid and with just a teeny tiny unit that’s barely bigger than my memory card holder (and waaaaay smaller that my camera!). It has a rechargeable battery and simply connects up to a pict-bridge enabled camera or blue tooth phone to print the pics. It doesn’t even take ink, instead it uses clever Polaroid paper with crystals inside! (if that doesn’t sound like alien technology, then I don’t know what does!)

At less than 20quid I couldn’t resist the opportunity to print cute little pics especially if they were going to have ‘that’ Polaroid feel to them. I wasn’t disappointed! The pics are only a coule of inches across, but are perfect for multi photo layouts and they do have that Polaroid retro quality.

I've done a couple of pages using them and they won't be the last!

It's been a while...

I've had a bit of a busy few weeks.... some good, some not so good, but it all added up to no time to do much at all and certainly no time to scrapbook 'just for fun' or to blog.

I sadly lost a couple of my chicks in the last couple of weeks, but after a dose of medicine fingers crossed the rest are hopefully going to be fine... I hatched some Poland chicks a couple of weeks ago too and these are the latest pics of a couple of them -  check out the link to my flickr over on the right for the baby pics!

I also had a stressful and worrying time with Martha too. She suddenly became quite ill and was diagnosed as having a closed Pyometra - this is a womb infection and is a potentially very dangerous condition. The only effective treatment is an emergency spay operation before it ruptures (like a hysterectomy) and within about 10 mins of a diagnosis my fabulous vets had her on the table and operated to save her. Thankfully all went smoothly and later that night she was home safe and sound all be it dosed up on prescription pain killers! Of course after an op one of the biggest dangers is pulling their own stitches out so I spent the next ten days sleeping on the sofa to baby-sit her, as well as getting up two or three times a night to take her for a pee!

Here is her ladyship relaxing in the garden a week or so after the op...

As well as a big bald tummy with a very neat wound!

Coming back up to date, I've just put the new challenge live over at A True Friend - we really would love it if you joined in with the challenges - while the blog is all about pets, we won't hold it against you if you use the themes for pages about any topic!! Here's my page - it's all about a day when Lola pulled out a dubious object from a local river... I was convinced I was going to be on the local news for finding some body bits! Thankfully it was only an old delfated dinghy! The journalling is under a great big flap on the left of the layout.

I think that's enough for now... promise I'll be back soon!

Raffia Obsessive

I have to admit that at the moment I’m a little bit obsessed with Raffia. I hold my hands up and admit that when I got my first pack I poo-pooed it slightly, but after giving it a try, I’m totally converted. It can do everything ribbon and thread can do, but it’s more tactile, more versatile and generally more gorgeous! I’m also yet to find a project that doesn’t suit it and to that end you might be seeing quite a lot of it from me at the moment!

Notable examples are this page which was project of the week at docrafts last week  (a nice simple knotted piece in lieu of ribbon)

And this one which is for the new challenge at A True Friend.

If you are a member of the Creativity Club at docrafts you'll have seen lots more, but I'm forbidden from sharing those here!

What's your must have item at the moment?

Chickwatch...

While these little people continue to grow in their cosy brooder... (these were actually from the 20th so more shots soon!)

These even littler people hatched under clever broody-chook Dolly on Saturday. They ventured out of their house properly today and I managed to get a few pics!

They really are teeny weeny as they are bantam chickens and it's so lovely to see Dolly looking after them so carefully. I'm definitely a convert to the natural way of hatching!

Growing!

Two posts in one week??? What going on with the world!? Of course little critters growing is the perfect reason to blog and I can't resist sharing these couple of pics. I thought I'd give the little girlies (checkout the optimism!) another test of flash photography and while they weren't thrilled they seemed ok with my firing off a couple of frames!

It never fails to amaze me how quickly they grow their feathers, some of them (particularly the Blue Hamburgh and getting pretty big wing feathers now! You can also see the start of some gorgeous Gold Laced colouring on the cute Orpington at the front of this first pic!

Arrivals...

A couple of weeks ago I fired this up....

And a couple of weeks later, this happened...

And after several hours of agonising waiting... these emerged!

Apologies for the terrible chick pics, but my rather dull garage doesn't make for good photography conditions and chicks and flash don't really go together!! I'm sure I'll have more pics as they grow up though!

These girls (fingers crossed!) will grow up to be Gold Laced Orpingtons, Silver Laced and Gold Laced Wyandottes, Lavander Araucana, Salmon Favorelle and Blue Hamburgh.

A couple of weeks ago I met a totally different, but equally cute little person!

Meet Morris! A gorgeous little Maine Coon kitten owned by Carol and Alex who is certainly going to be a big lad!

Chooks about town...

Chickens are everywhere on the highstreet at the moment, of course it doesn't hurt that it's Easter, but even putting that aside chooks are big news at the moment. As a chicken keeper it's quite a treat!

On a (rare) recent trip to Tesco I couldn't resist rummaging through their seasonal offerings and picked up this big girly! I also grabbed a gorgeous Easter mug, that's safely nestled on my desk at work!

The other chickeny bits and pieces out there haven't gone unnoticed, but so far I have managed to resist them!

I really love this gorgeous folk art style chicken from John Lewis, particularly its dangly legs!

And from the same store this tea cosy is rather tempting!

The next two are from M&S... a cute ceramic egg basket -

And a pair of fun egg cosies!

And it's not just chickens - eggs are big, and who could resist a purple spotty egg timer from Paperchase?

Sharing...

As promised I'm back with a few pages to share from the last couple of months, there are more of course, but this is a sample of what I have in my 'waiting to go in albums' pile!

First up are a couple of Martha, who at three has just finished her last (I hope) growth spurt - she's shot up another inch and now weighs 72kg! She's currently going through her spring moult and it's like hair city round here! I fear for the dyson's life!
Next up are the chooks! My chicks that I hatched in the summer are now huge, particularly the three orpingtons! This is Roy my cuckoo orp, who had to go to live on a farm when he started to crow. He was such a big cuddly lad!

One of the other chicks is Prudence (a blue orp) who I think might be becoming my favourite (shhhh!).
The last page is from my first summer with the chooks - just a fave pic that was buried at the bottom of my photo-file and which was dug out recently!
And of course the end result - these are from my bantam hens (pics on my flickr) - the eggs are proudly stored on an egg-skelter which is exactly what it sounds like!
Most of the pages are using various Studio Calico kits as I've tried to regin in my spending a tad whilst I've been so busy recently and hate to see unused stash building up!!

I realise that I've failed to photograph a Lola page, but suffice to say she's safe and sound! After all the trauma of her cruciate injuries/surgery she's now almost at full fitness - there will always be a little uneveness in her gait, but she's able to gallop about with her sister so I can't complain!

As predicted the clocks going forward were a total treat! After a lovely sunny day the evening was marred with a bit of drizzle, but it certainly gave a hint of lovely long evenings to come!!

Has spring sprung?

It's funny the things that can spurn you into action... a little email from blogger today telling me all about their new blog templates has been just the push I needed to fire up my blog! I've had a little tweak, but I think I need to spend a bit more time freshening things up around here with a new header etc, but if it gets me blogging it has to be a good thing.

As you can imagaine I'm full of excuses about being totally swamped at work and at home. At work we're furiously working on our new website (coming soon!) and signing off the next issue of the magazine and at home the critters are keeping me busy!

I had a laptop fail a little while back and while I managed to keep up with taking pictures for my 365, my editing and uploading to flickr have suffered. I've been squeezing a bit in here and there and it feels really good to say I've just finished uploading images to get me right up to date!

Tomorrow is traditionally my favourite day of the year... It's time to change the clocks!!! That extra hour of light that we get tomorrow is so uplifting (even though it might mean an extra hour of rain!). After a horrendously cold (for the soft south!) and wet winter which has resulted in a quagmire of a garden the few glimspes of sun haven't been ignored! I've grabbed my chances to snap a few pics of the first signs of spring!

I guess the only  thing left ot catch up on are some layouts! But I'm saving that till tomorrow!