Nine Years

Nine Years ago I started this blog......nine years! and there wasn't even a photo on my very first post on the 1st of February 2009!

 nine years ago this little lady appeared a lot on my blog

 Now these three are the stars!

 So the last few days of January and the beginning of February and what has been going on?  The new sofa and chair have arrived for the lounge.

 The wall paper is going and we are in the middle of trying to pick its replacement.

 I marked out the pages for my embroidery sample book for #stitchaweek

 and I enjoyed watching The Miniaturist 

 We have had too few crisp winter days and too many grey and rainy days

 cake and hot chocolate helped!

view from the staff room at lunchtime

 We found a bargain on eBay......an original 1930's fire surround

here it is leaning against the one one we have at the moment

The lounge is far from finished but I will keep you up to date with its progress.

 I started my stitch-a-week

 The fire surround will be tiled and we have decided on these turquoise/teal ones. plain on the hearth and the smaller mosaic ones around the fire!

 we are busy planning our summer holiday, a week in August.

A walk up to church with school

There seems to be more photos of Daisy than the other two. The reason is she is the most sociable and is nearly always in the same room as us and she is so photogenic, Misty runs away when she sees me pointing my camera or phone at the her and Milo doesn't seem to show up very well being mostly black!

have you noticed we have managed to get a collar on her too!

They still have crazy time!

 We had a sprinkling of snow earlier in the week...

 This is a little green lane I pass on the way home and I often pull over to take a photo of it.

 This is the same lane this morning.

Titanic homework by class 3

In order to commemorate Votes for women I re-posted this photo on Instagram from November 2014 when I made a suffragette costume.

I popped into Touchstones one evening after work to pick up the latest brochure and have a look in the lovely little museum there. 

And so we are heading for half term.....I will no doubt have more chance to get out and about and have something to write about here so will be back before the end of February.

Lucy Boo

My darling Lucy Boo passed away in the early hours of October the 7th after 18 beautiful years with us.
A recent scientific study revealed the same emotional response was given by women shown a picture of their child or a picture of their pet. I truly believe a pet becomes one of the family and when a pet dies it is like a member of the family dying.

I would like to share Lucy's story in this post.

We got Bob in February 1992 and he was a loving cuddly cat but very nervous. In the summer of 1996 we answered a plea from our local Cats protection to foster a cat until a permanent home could be found. We took in an adult white cat (with no teeth and a bit of an attitude!) for a couple of weeks. This cat was called Lucy, she didn't let poor Bob in the lounge for a few weeks and in the end we decided it wasn't fair on him and a new foster home was found for Lucy the white cat.

In the midst of preparing for our wedding in the Autumn of 1996 we thought if we introduced a kitten to Bob he might not find that so intimidating. We went back to the Cats Protection and fell in love with a little scrap of a thing...as we had got use to the name...she became Lucy. The lady at the cats protection would not take our donation for her and said she was a wedding present.

She grew into her ears!

It was touch and go for the first few days as she was very ill. Poor Bob wondered what we had brought home she was such a skinny, scrappy thing and never really liked being cuddled.

Soon they were friends, we only have one photo of them curled up together but they were never far from each other. Lucy was a little more adventurous and even went missing over night a couple of times but she always came back.

She never ever put on much weight and lost most of her teeth when young but this never held her back.

When we lost Bob in August 2008 she was probably even more doted on and totally ruled the house.

Over the years I took thousands of photos of both Lucy and Bob (what will I take photos of now?). Of course I don't have them all on my computer so most of these are later ones.

She would follow the patch of sun around the house.

She loved the fire, she was a little heat monster. 

One of her favourite places was in the airing cupboard.

She caught a few wild creatures but was never a big hunter...although she could watch a mouse hole in the garden for hours on end!

She loved soft cheese.

Her favourite tipple from the bathroom sink.

Neither of our cats could use a cat flap...we had to hold it open with string!

 A couple soft focus photos!

 She loved a box....and a ladder.

We are finding it terribly hard without her in the house, for such a tiny thing she has left a big hole, I am finding it really difficult coming home to an empty house.

I found it hard to say no to her....if she wanted to sit on your knee...she won!

 Hubby is adamant we are not getting another cat.

We were with her in her final hours, she was not unwell before she died and not in any pain, her little body just gave up and she slipped quietly away. There was a rainbow that evening.