Advent and JYC

I put the Christmas wreath on the front door today. I should have done it yesterday because that was the first Sunday in Advent but I forgot.
I have made the covers and the pages for my Journal Your christmas class and tomorrow the first prompt will arrive. I am hoping it will lift my spirits a little. I am not sure why I feel so down in the dumps, perhaps the doctor is right and I am SAD - or did he mean suffering from Seasonal Affected Disorder. My feet are just as bad as ever and my fingers are going through the "let's-be-painful-and-swell-a-lot" stage -- again. so all in all I am not the person you want answering the question "how are you"
My girls continue to delight me. Noisy has decided that she is going to peck her own feathers out so she is still bare chested. Stephanie McQueen has a complete set of feathers and looks beautiful. I am convinced it is because she is so quick the others can't catch her. Mrs Pecky was scared by the fireworks on bonfire night and for three days she laid eggs without shells. She was just beginning to look a bit better and we had the ceremony for turning on the lights. this had a huge firework display so that meant another four days with egg all over the floor of the hen house.
Now I am worried incase she has egg peritonitis. There are no visible symptoms until they drop dead. She is eating well and scratching about when the weather permits.
Oh how they hate the rain. They stand in the sheltered part of the run or they nip across and stand under the table and they droop. The only thing worse so far is the wind. that makes them wander about like those Chinese ladies in the programme "Above the Clouds" or whatever it was called on Channel four about ten years ago.
Tomorrow I am having another go at baking a Christmas fruit loaf. If the yeast will work.

Photo accepted!

I have had a photograph accepted for inclusion in Schmaps latest brochure about the North-East. I took a pic of Warkworth Castle and put it and lots of others onto my Flickr account and then Schmaps contacted me and asked if they could use it in the brochure. I don't get paid or anything but my name - Ladkyis - is there for all to see. I am chuffed to little mint balls and, of course, I get a widget on my blog to take people direct to the website if they so wish.

Pumpkin Pie!

On Sunday Mr M and I were on our own in the house, a rare ocurrence these days but DD and her family took the opportunity to go out visiting so we enjoyed the peace.


It was also a chance for Mr M to sit quitely and doze - his pulled muscle won't let him lie down to sleep so he has been sleeping while sitting at the table.


He had the TV on quietly so I took the opportunity to make a pumpkin pie. I have never made one before so I had scoured tinternet and found several recipes then examined the contents of the larder to see what I had that fitted the recipes. I roasted the pumpkin according to instructions and then pureed the insides - all the seeds and stringy bits went into a mash for my girls, more of that later.


The pie is gorgeous

a little overdone on one side - that's cos the oven is old and tired. We had some with Frank's icecream and it was delish!

Because there was so much pumpkin puree left after making the pie I also made pumpkin and nut bread. This is really a cake and is also delish. I used fresh eggs from my girls to make the pie and the bread and the rest of the pumpkin puree - and there is still about two pounds left - is in the freezer for the next batch of pumpkin baking.

I made up the mash for the girls with the pumpkin seeds and the stringy bits together with the skin and some of the singed bits. I put them through the mincer on the Kenwood Chef along with a cabbage that had been forgotten and a couple of ropey carrots and some bread rolls that were supposed to be for little Miss to take to school only she wanted "proper" bread. I added a drop of water and boiled it all up then when it was cooled I took it down to see if they liked it. They practically ripped the dish out of my hands! so pumpkin is a hit. They also like sunflower seeds. We have some sunflower heads and I cut one off and hung it on the wire of the run, they love it.

Confined to barracks

The girls are confined to the little run because Slurpy showed off on Sunday and flapped her wings so hard she was able to lift herself up onto the roof of the nest box. From there it was a short hop onto the roof of the hen house and a simple step up onto the wall. If it hadn't been for my neighbour pushing her back across then she would have been into their garden and digging up the flower beds.
We have bought more trellis and tomorrow I will fix the chicken wire to it and then get it up onto the roof of the hen house. I can see that my back yard is going to be like fort knox with Slurpy the fly baby and Stephanie the escapologist.
The don't like being kept in the run but they have produced three eggs every day since Sunday so it hasn't put them off.
It was raining so hard today that I was glad I didn't let them out this morning. They would have got wet and cold so quickly because they are still growing their feathers.
I just hope the winter isn't too wet.

New Feathers!

I know I said I wouldn't show any more pictures until the girls were better clad but I just had to take some this morning. I realised that even though we have only had them for two weeks their feather growth is now noticeable!

This is Mrs Pecky and if you look at her scrawny chest you can see the quills of new feathers.

The only thing more pleased than me is probably her!

This is Noisy, her feathers are darker but that's probably because she is getting outer feathers while Mrs P is growing her thermal layer first.

I have been introducing them to the concept of "mash". This is the way we give them all the kitchen food waste. The vegetabel peelings and the scrapings from plates as well as out if date rice and cereals.

Until AJ and family came back home to live we didn't have much waste food. I am proud to say that my portion control was dead good so the plates were usually clean after a meal. Not so now. It breaks my heart to see food left on plates and I don't understand why anyone would put more on their plate than they can eat. I probably eat more than I should but I do make sure that I only put what I know I can eat onto my plate. I can go back for seconds if I want to.

In other news my eczema has been really bad this week so walking has been extremely painful. So painful that when I wake up in the night and need to go to the bathroom I drea putting my weight on my feet. I have still managed to use the Wii Fit that Mr M bought last week. It keeps telling me I am unbalanced but that's because my right foot is worse than my left so I am favouring it at the moment.

I think it is the laughter that does me the most good because AJ and Si are also using it and watching them doing the step dancing or the ski jumping makes me laugh til my sides ache. They get to laugh at me too so it is very fair. I love the fact that I can jog in my front room - and I don't cheat and just wiggle the hand control about - so I have built up to half an hour every day and I will start the yoga exercises too.

Not much scrapbooking done this week just a DLO for a circle journal called Desert Island Discs

I could not think what to do for this until I was choosing papers to use and found this bown. "If only I had a suitcase diecut that colour" I thought and then realised that I had pencils so I should try to draw it. I could have put more stuff in the background but I do hate cluttered pages. The titles of my songs are on the labels stuck to the suitcases with my favourite one on its own on the flowery suitcase. The label thingy in the middle has my photograph on the other side but I didn't want to photograph a photograph - if you see what I mean. Some of the other pages in this CJ are so clever I just know that the person who owns it is going to love it, when it gets back to her.

Eggs, lots of eggs

The girls are really settling in now. Mr M went to Wicks and bought a trellis panel that he then fixed some chicken wire to, so now we have a perfect gate at the bottom of the steps and the girls can scratch and peck all day in safety. This is much easier for poor Stephanie as she has places to hide when Mrs Pecky and Noisy start chasing her.
The garden plants are receiving a severe pruning and the weeds are disappearing too. The black and white cat from across the street is fascinated by them and sits peering through the wire on the back gate. The girls immediately peer back at him and this he finds very disconcerting. He has tried getting up onto the wall but they just stare at him for a minute and then continue their scratching totally unconcerned. He knows by the look they give him that coming into the garden would be folly so he sits and watches - and they all watch him too.
They have now been introduced to mash and after a bit of a slow start they love it. I give it to them in the afternoon when they have had all morning to eat "proper" food. They know where I keep it and as soon as I open the cellar door they are standing outside on the step waiting for the bowl to appear. This will be handy if I ever need to get them into the run before they are ready to go because they scurry around me and all rush into the run to eat the mash.
They also like the noise the water makes when I wash their bowl and water container and they rush to peck the splashes.

Chickens,

The girls have requested that I refrain from taking any more pictures until they have regained their beautiful plumage - and I keep forgetting to take the camera down into the garden with me. My S-i-L has promised to make the gate for the bottom of the steps tomorrow and then the girls will be able to go out in the garden all day unless it is raining.
They have lost most of their outer feathers so they are not weather proof yet, this can make them cold and of they get rained on they will stay wet for a long time.
For some reason poor little Stephanie McQueen is being picked on by the other three. She hides in the house all day until they go to bed when she nips out into the run and stuffs her face with food and water and then waits until it is dark before going back into the house. When they are out in the garden she can run away more easily so she scratches happily in the flowerbed, throwing clods of earth all over the place - including on Mrs Pecky - and she gobbles up the worms. She hates to go back into the run when the others are there so I have to pick her up and put her in.
Things will improve because tomorrow Mr M has promised to assist me in the wing clipping so that they can't fly over into next door.
I have spent far more time than I should just standing and watching them - very good for the blood-pressure.
Now I am going to start the double page layout of their arrival. These will go into the 2009 album.