Tupping time

Weather here has been appalling for days now -- windy from the North which brings the arctic air, interspersed with snow and hail showers/downpours...  Just as well then that Shetlands are more likely to come into season when it's colder because the boys went in on Monday!  :)

Here's Horatio with his girls -- just goes to show the difference between breeds -- he is not even a year old yet and already he's bigger than my three year old girls!

And here's Raymond with his lot.  Yes, the boys ALWAYS have their head in the feed bucket -- they seem even greedier than the girls -- then again, all that sex is hard work!  :)

And here's Eyebrows, photo-bombing my attempt at photographing Raymond nicely!

The boys will stay in until 30th December, and then we wait with bated breath for April and little lambs!

New from Old

Now that the nights are drawing in, there's more time to do inside tasks.  

This is a dresser that was in the house when we came (can't find a before photo) -- it was covered in many many layers of paint and the legs were held together with baling twine.  

I found a great product called Home Strip which is a non-toxic paint remover -- and it actually works amazingly well!  Then there was the sanding, by hand at first, and then aided by an electric sander I picked up second hand at Restart.  And then I refinished it in Hard Wax Oil. 

The original handles were destroyed in the process of removing them, so these new handles were handmade by Danny from scrap bits of wood!

And just like that, I have a brand new dresser for my office!

I had this LL Bean Boat & Tote bag new for the start of 8th grade (1985!!!!).  It's still going strong and I use it regularly for my grocery shopping.

The handles had started to fray quite badly (again, no before photo), so using some trim that I saved from an old bath towel and a bit of old flannel bed sheet, I've made myself new handles -- I think there's easily another 39 years of life left in this bag now!

Lesson learned: shopping & buying new stuff is totally overrated...!  :)