Two Drops

Here's Rosie's sister, Anne. They are as alike as two drops (the Spanish for two peas), however perhaps drips would be more appropriate.

Christmas!!

Well, I'd like to say that this is proof that we have been eating things other than our mushrooms, however, the hashbrowns (which were made by Ian for breakfast and were superb) were eaten with mushrooms and the roast potatoes were eaten with the lentil wellington which also included mushrooms. I noticed, without my initial enthusiasm, that another crop of mushrooms was coming through. It's a little like the Saucer's apprentice!

I recycled our wrapping paper and packaging into a toy for Larry. I thought that the bright colours might make a nice change for him from his normal toilet roll coloured toys.

This is his cage now, and this doesn't show his pomegranate or pine cones - or the cauliflower leaves that I put in yesterday.  I wonder if parrots can be over stimulated.

This is a fuzzy picture of Larry running towards his new toy with glee. Or is it horror that I've put yet more rubbish in his lovely parrot palace. The box which Ian's torch came in was a great shape for a parrot toy (bottom right). It is wedge shaped so I poked it through the bars of his cage and he can stand on it and peck it, which he seems to enjoy.

Here is my Christmas present from Ian - although there does seem to be a little confusion as to who it was for. It is a new cover for one of our bean bags. We had fun scooping the beans out of the old bean bag cover into this one, they hold a surprising amount! This style is better than our other one as it sits up right on its own and doesn't need to be propped against something. I can also get out of it without rolling on the floor, which is an advantage. We did a pretty good job of filling the bean bag cover as the potential for the house looking like it had been filled with fake snow was high!

And because we felt guilty about taking the sofa out of the living room, we left it in over Christmas for Rosie and Wilbur. Yes, they are probably spoilt!

Although here Wilbs chose lying in front of the fire with his little friend! People are often surprised that we have cats and dogs living together, I think we have plenty of photos that show that they can be great chums.

Our Second Mushroom Harvest

Our second mushroom harvest. Who would have thought we would be so good at growing fungus. Er.....

Our First Mushroom Harvest

Disfrutes

Here's a holding page for the Disfrut.es website - http://disfrut.es/  This was to show the association of extremaduran artisan head office in Caceres, although they had heard from the people in Llerena what we had to offer. You can scroll through and see a good selection of my work. I'm currently working on some low cost things, and I've decided to split the range between silver which will be premium and colored wire, which will be lower cost. From our one experience of being in the store in Llerena, it seemed that people were looking for souvenirs, so some things that are souvenir price will be good.

I had my last classes of the year yesterday, and I'm not doing any more now until the new year, although I am wondering about taking another month off in January to work on Disfrut.es. I was holding back until I knew if I was going to have my About.com contract renewed. I thought that I may have it reduced or cancelled as my site isn't doing as well as it was. However, I think that this is more of an overall trend rather than me specifically, but I was still pleased when my contract came through for renewal yesterday on the same terms as last year. If my contract had been cancelled then I don't think I could have stopped classes, however, we're wondering if the time might be better working on things to put in the craft stores. I haven't heard from the association people yet with a definitive answer or an explanation of how things work (for example I don't know how they decide what they'll stock and where they'll stock it), so I'll probably hold fire making a decision until then.

The house is looking great. Hopefully we'll be in the position of getting the website up and running before Christmas and then Ian will contact some magazines and see if they'd like to do a feature on it. Anyway, we can start advertising it and see what happens.

Ian de-flied the animals yesterday. The weather hasn't got cold enough to kill the fleas yet and I was aware of a few jumping around, so Ian gathered up our flea killing supplies and set to work. Unfortunately, this meant 'shooting' the cats with a fleaspray gun. Most were OK, however Miss Moppet who is extremely dismissive of humans at the best of time, looked absolutely horrified as Ian was chasing her around shooting her with the flea gun. She has no reason to be so grumpy. Luckily, Roland, who being blind could well have been scared, seemed a little surprised by Ian's actions, but was still happy to come in and snuggle down on his box in the living room last night, so he wasn't too traumatised by the process.

I had bought Dumpling a natural flea collar, but that just made her smell of lavender and didn't seem to worry the fleas in the slightest!

Mushrooms for tea tonight - this is our second batch!

A Few Pics of the House

I'm a bit behind on where I wanted to be with work on the house in preparation for putting it up for sale, but have now started getting some photos ready for the upcoming website.

The pantry has changed a bit and gained a new pendant light.

Less has changed in the back room, though the steps under the windows have now been tiled.

The red room has had a darker red band painted around the lower part of the walls and gained new halogen wall lights.

The shower room has had the exterior wall repainted - in white as we wouldn't have been able to match the original grey.

My office is next for a lick of paint, followed by the bedroom and then the hallway, so there will hopefully be more photos to come.

The New Bestseller from the Author of Wire Jewellery: 25 Crochet and Knit Wire Designs to Make

In case the title needs any explanation, this is our proof of Kate's new book.

Models

I thought that Alfie and Dumpling might like to be the models for a tutorial I have just written. Dumpling sort of entered into the spirit of it and looks quite cute...

Alfie, however, just managed to look extremely grumpy at the thought of wearing a hair slide!

Mushrooms

They are getting bigger!

Pirata Takes Pity on Rosie

We lit the fire early today, much to the delight of the animals. Pirata has a habit of attacking Rosie when she's lying near the fire, but today, perhaps in an early show of festive spirit, he snuggled up to her instead.

Mushrooms Are Going Great Guns

They're actually starting to look as if they might turn into mushrooms!

Parrots and Cats!

There is a surprising similarity between cats and parrots. Cats are known for their fickleness. One day they will decide that this is their most favorite food ever, only the next day to freeze with horror that anyone could dare to give them such muck. Parrots, or at least Larry, appear to be much the same. Although, admittedly it is difficult with Larry as we're never sure if his squawks are of sheer delight or dismay. He seemed to great a celery stick with enthusiasm, only to then, when presented with  a new one, spent much of his time nibbling bits off and spitting them out of his cage. One thing that does appear to be a success is a pomegranate. He can alternately attack it and kick it round his cage, and peck at the seeds. We lined the base of his cage with paper to make it easier to clean, however Larry then spent his time pecking at this and shredding it into what looks like snow. I think he was trying to get into the festive spirit.

Larry's cage is full of toys for him, even the vet commented on how many things he has to play with. We are hoping this is a good thing. In his previous house, he was in his cage on is own with nothing to play with, just a sad little budgie to stare at - we just hope that he didn't enjoy the minimalist life and wonder why we keep cluttering up his cage with rubbish (which is a good point as anything cardboard and peckable gets put in his cage rather than the rubbish bin).

Ian has started work on the house, getting it ready to sell. We've promised ourselves that we'll do this work in the next house before we move in, rather than waiting until we sell. It's not particularly big things - but useful things like getting proper lights hung so we can see things and having a hook in the pantry for the rubbish bag.

I've been asked to do some illustrations of the signs in American Sign Language, so I have been researching this. I was interested to see that it is completely different from British sign language. American letters can be signed with just one hand, whereas you need two for British sign language. For some reason, American sign language is based on French sign language.

We are going to join the craft association of Extremadura this week. We're going to sign up in Ian's name and use the brand name Disfrutes which means 'enjoyment' in Spanish. We own the website address disfrut.es so it makes sense to use it.

We appear to have the beginnings of quite a bumper harvest of mushrooms on the way. Could be Christmas dinner sorted...

This hopefully is the start of mushrooms

Or we are growing a new species...

Yum

Something appears to be growing

Teacher Incorporated

Over the last couple of months Ian and I have been working on a new project. I have written a book and Ian has laid it out, done the editing and formatted it into ebook formats. It's been an interesting process, my bit was easy, Ian's was a little more challenging, however now it is finished, we're going to do some more ebooks and maybe extend the service to others.

This book is for teachers who are selling lesson plans and other teaching material which they have created. This is a new and interesting business opportunity for teachers, and this book sets out to help them think like a business or 'get their business hat on'. If you'd actually like to see the book rather than just admire the lovely ad, you can download the pdf file here - Business Incorporated . To download the book click on the black arrow on the top left of the page.  I sold one copy last night, so fingers crossed more will follow...

Getting ready for Christmas

Montse s dad gave us big jar of olives. So we now have pickled onions, cabbage, olives and chutney. Yum!

Went to see an accountant today and her name was Maria of the angels. I told IanI wanted to be known as Kate of the fairies. He didn't respond.

Why do we have s bag of festering straw?

Because we are having another go at growing mushrooms! Given we can grow mould on most things with surprising ease, e have high hopes for a bumper mushroom harvest.