Little Cotton Rabbits

happy new year!

I hope your Christmas was a good one and you ate, drank and had a merry old time. We certainly did and our Christmas day, despite getting off to a shaky start thanks to Toby's lack of sleep, went well. We've visited family and friends and are now back home and able to play with all of our pressies!

I got a cold for christmas - not my favourite present and I'm hunting around for the receipt to see if I can give it back! Failing that 3 very large whisky hot toddies tonight might do the trick! I did also get some nice presents and had to show you my favourite one which is from my husband and (luckily for him) came beautifully wrapped and ready to give.

And inside was the lovely Hortense (dingy winter days don't make for great photos - you get a better look at her here)

I've long had my eye on all of the wonderful creations over at Sweet Nellie but I no longer have to admire them from afar now I have one of my very own to cherish! She even arrived with an extra cute little party hat which she will don tonight to see in the new year!

So from Hortense and me - very best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year!

prepped and ready

Well, we have the tree decorated (and it's still up!), the christmas cards have been posted, the presents have all been bought (although still need wrapping) the school play watched and exited with a pocketful of soggy tissues, the christingle service sang along with and exited with another pocketful of soggy tissues (come on who among you can endure the sweet, raised voices of children singing carols without shedding a tear or two?) and now we are in the last few hours before the official start of the school christmas holidays. Have I got all of the shopping? Probably not. Am I sorted? Well, not exactly, but to be honest I'm now past caring!

(* note to self, must iron that flippin tablecloth!)

Blog posting over the next couple of weeks will no doubt be sporadic but let's face it we all have other places to be! So, if I don't see you before, have a magical and special christmas with those that you love and that love you. Peace and goodwill to you all from all the little cotton rabbits and me!

Little Cotton Rabbit honeymoon!

It's become a bit of a tradition here at little cotton rabbits to show pics of some of the toys in their new homes and I'm really thrilled that people take the time to email pictures to me. Recently however I was even more overwhelmed when a big package arrived with the postman.

And inside...

...a fab collection of treats, lovely wool and some wonderful pictures of a bunny honeymoon in the Bahamas! So much thought and creativity has gone into this and there was even a little message in a corked bottle with sand. It certainly looks like Joey and Dolly had a fabulous time!

Thanks so much to Shawn for the wonderful parcel full of sunshine - it certainly brightened my week and I will treasure everything!

oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree...

4 broken baubles,
3 dodgy lightbulbs,
2 manic children,
and a load of deccies on the christmas tree!

The tree is up and so christmas time has officially arrived at our house heralding in a frenzy of excitement which will build and build over the next 9 days. I now have to watch the tree like a hawk to stop Toby from a) trying to climb it, b) chewing the non-edible decorations, and c) eating the chocolate decorations with the foil still on.

We had fun and games putting it up too. We put it in the spot it always occupies but Toby threw a wobbly as this meant moving his lego stacking table. Then we put the table back, moved one of the sofas and relocated the tree to the howls of another melt down. Still, as they say third time lucky and as it turns out we ended up wondering why we'd not thought of putting the tree in this corner in the first place!

We had a bit of good new yesterday from Mum - the halo has been taken off! Hooray!! Although she still has to wear a rigid plastic high collar for the next 3 weeks and is finding it very uncomfortable to talk and eat. But at least it's all progressing well and she'll soon be able to graduate to a soft collar for support which will really improve things for her.

frosts, visits and cold necks!

Winter has arrived here with frosty mornings and we've had a busy few days. At the weekend we went to visit Mum who is still soldiering on valiantly with the halo brace. We're all hoping that it will be off before Christmas while at the same time trying to keep in mind that it will come off when it's job is fully done. Hopefully Mum will know one way or another at the end of the week. Thanks again for all the continuing good wishes for her, I know she is really grateful for them all.

Thanks too for all of the lovely comments about my paintings. It's funny really as it seems like a different lifetime but then I think many of us feel that way about life before and life after children! I'm hoping to take some pictures of the rest of my portfolio of work and put them on flickr. If you wanted to see the 'storm in a teacup' nude picture it's on there!

And now I'm off to make myself a new scarf seeing as I've managed to loose the lovely snuggly big wool red one that I made a few weeks back. And just at the time when I need it most! Feeling a bit peeved with myself!

nudity, saplings and Donny

I'm a bit of a slacker when it comes to tags. Partly because it involves thinking which I'm not so good at these days and partly because there's not much to tell that I've not already blathered on about! Now Christmas toy knitting is out of the way and things are calmer I've had a little time to ponder 8 random things and I've dredged up some vaguely noteworthy things from the dim and distant past and so here goes...

My favourite childhood book was The Water Babes by Charles Kingsley and I still try and live my life just like Mrs do-as-you-would-be-done-by.

When I was six I won a fancy dress competition. There was a slogan that year "plant a tree in €˜'73" hence the tree costume! (thanks Mum!)

If you'd have asked me at 9 years old what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have replied "€œMrs Donny Osmond€"

As a 14 year-old on a school outward-bound week in Wales I took up a dare to do a midnight streak down the length of the dormitory corridor and was caught by a very perturbed male teacher - he didn't know where to shine his torch! It earned me the nickname of "white-bits"€™!

When I was 18 (and pert in all the right places) I posed nude for some photos in college which were displayed in the end of year exhibition. Not to worry though, I ended up marrying the photographer! (of course now I'm older and more saggy I've become less of an exhibitionist!)

I trained as an illustrator but hardly ever paint or draw these days. I think it's because when I paint I need to work on a piece uninterrupted until it's finished and just don't get the chance to do that these days. Luckily knitting is much easier to pick up and put down! (these are a couple of paintings done in my early 20's**)

During my 41 years I've lived in 7 different towns up and down the country. I'd like to move just one more time - to somewhere distinctly un-towny.

The older I get, the more I crave peace, quiet and simple pleasures.

Thanks to Moogsmum, Maddy and Patsy who all tagged me months ago! I'm not going to pass on the tag but I will pass on lots of good wishes for a good weekend!

** have taken off the nude painting photo after an email that suggested it might cause offence. I put it on as I thought it was fairly gentle nudity and I'm sorry to anyone who was offended, you can rest assured that normal knitted bunny service will resume and no more nudity!

getting in the mood

Amy is starting to build to that fever pitch of excitement that sets in on Christmas eve and has started her preparations by tidying her room without nagging (forgive me my amazement and joy but it's never happened before!) She then spent 2 hours colouring in strips of paper to make a paperchain and cutting snowflakes from folded paper.

Her room now looks really festive. I'm resisting the temptation to decorate the rest of the house yet - you can have too much of a good thing and I'd not want to be weary of Christmas before it gets going. We'll probably put up our tree the week before if I can hold out that long!

Amy and I have also been shoe shopping (it's nice to go with her as she gets as excited by new shoes as me). Earlier in the year we had our matching summer feet  and now we've ended up with matching snuggly toes.