December Photo Challenge 2018 – Day Two

Day Two: Today’s photo prompt is Advent. I chose this as today, is the first Sunday of Advent. Christian’s celebrate the Advent season in preparation for the Nativity, at Christmas. The term Advent comes from the Latin, meaning ‘coming or arrival.’ Some people prepare for Christmas with Advent candles, wreathes or calendars. Here’s a picture and short video of Artie enjoying his Advent calendar as he counts down to Christmas.

Artie’s Advent Calendar

Do you celebrate Advent? What are your traditions at this time of year?

Thanks for visiting,

Christine x

‘Time Spent with Cats…’

‘…is never wasted,’ so quoted Sigmund Freud. Being an ailurophile (I had to look the word up), or a lover of cats, I wholly agree!

For an early birthday celebration, I decided to treat my mum and David to coffee and cake at the recently opened Cat Cafe in Bold Street, Liverpool. I pre-booked our hourly session at the cafe, at £12 per person. This includes unlimited drinks while cakes and pastries were an additional cost.

Our time slot was 10 o’ clock, and even at this time the cafe seemed busy with parties coming and going. To keep the resident cats safe, there are three doors which patrons have to go through. After being booked in, a pass to note down any additional spends given and the dos and the don’ts listed, we were admitted.

Cat Cafe – Bold Street, Liverpool

Gallery

The rules

Resident cats

More rules!

The Liverpool branch is on three floors. We perused the decor and the many hiding places for the cats before pondering where to sit. On the first floor there were lots of comfy looking sofas but David chose the ground floor part of the cafe as this was where most of the cat action was happening!

We took our seats close to the kitchen. The choice of table seemed lucrative as I had not long sat down when Rose, a long-haired tortoiseshell came over and made a bee-line for my lap. She happily sat and suckled me for 10 minutes.

Christine and Rose

Christine and Rose

Christine and Rose

We ordered hot drinks and a selection of cakes. Mum had a toasted teacake, I a scone with cream and jam and David chose the cake of the day, which was a large slice of chocolate-orange cake.

Cappuccino

Scone

Chocolate orange cake

Toasted Tea-cake

Many of the cats as you can imagine were curled up asleep. All was quiet until the food was served and from a towering cat bed two cats emerged. Dobby the Sphynx and Sebastian the Siamese! The hairless Dobby sported a black jumper with orange bobbles to keep him warm while Sebastian cheekily tried his luck pawing at our selection of cakes. It was funny interacting with the cats who all seemed friendly.

Liverpool Cat Cafe

David and Rose

Liverpool Cat Cafe

Dobby the Sphynx

Sebastian the Siamese.

Liverpool Cat Cafe

Liverpool Cat Cafe

We took many photographs and spent a full hour with the cats of Liverpool’s Cat Cafe. I am happy to report we all enjoyed ourselves and would definitely visit again, even if we were scratched and bitten for milk and food! :p

Have you visited a cat cafe? If so what were your impressions?

Thanks for reading,

Christine x

Four Out of Five Birds…

By no means is this post sponsored by Haith’s – Bird Food Specialists since 1937. However, after previously testing their wild bird food, (you can read all about that here). I decided to purchase some of their foods for our indoor aviary, which houses seven finches, with two in the ‘naughty’ cage! Overall we have a mix of nine foreign finches.

We regularly offer millet sprays to our birds. We usually buy Chinese millet from a local pet store. On perusing Haith’s Cage and Aviary website, I spied French red Anjou millet sprays. Though a little more expensive than the Chinese millet I was won over by their deep red colour.

Foreign Finches enjoying Anjou Millet

French red Anjou Millet Spray

Haith’s delivery is supper fast. On receipt of my goods, I couldn’t wait to give the finches their first taste of the red Anjou millet. Needless to say the new millet went down a treat!

With two of our ladies laying eggs at present (in rather unsuitable places I may add), I purchased Haith’s foreign finch tonic food. This blend is to support staple foods and is enriched with nutritious seeds to help with a balanced diet. Like their wild bird seed, the foreign finch food came SUPERCLEAN™. You can read more about Haith’s cleaning process here.

Foreign Finch Tonic Seed

Granulated Charcoal

To help with digestion and aid in egg production I also purchased some granulated charcoal.

We are very happy with the purchased products from Haith’s. The birds are loving the new tonic seed and red Anjou millet. I will definitely purchase these items again from Haith’s in future.

Thanks to David for taking the pictures!

Christine x

12 Hours of Day #2!

I have been wanting to do a photo an hour challenge for some time, but I kept missing the dates! Finally, with some for-planning, and with the help of Sharon from Sunshine and Celandines, I have manage to partake in this months challenge. 🙂

Photo and Hour – 17th December 2016.

7-8am: Today, David and I had a loooong day ahead! It started at 7am when I got up for breakfast and a coffee before getting ready to go grocery shopping.

8-9am and 9-10am: The hours of shopping started in earnest. We headed towards Asda with my Mum in tow, where they have a tree with a countdown of the number of sleeps to Christmas Day.

10-11am and 11-12pm: With still a few presents to buy David and I headed towards Speke. We first popped into Taskers and had a gander around their Christmas displays, before heading towards New Mersey Shopping Park.

12-13pm: We didn’t come back with any presents but we did managed to purchase a wreath for the front door.

13-14pm: We spent the afternoon cleaning and getting the house ready for family visiting later that evening. David was cooking his curry again! But we managed to give Artie a treat from his Advent Calendar in between.

14-15pm and 15-16pm: While I spent some time dressing the dining table, a job I always love! David adorned the front door with the new Christmas wreath, (I think it looks good)!

16-17pm: I went with David as we drove to pick his Mum and Dad up. We passed a house ablaze with festive lights, they even had a Winnie the Pooh!

17-18pm: Once David’s brother, nephew and sister-in-law had arrived, we all gathered around the dining table to enjoy David’s cooking!

18-19pm: After tea and cake, we tasted gingerbread men made by David’s nephew.

19-20pm: An extra hour!

Once family had left and all the dishes had been washed, it was time for Artie’s dinner. I just had to share this photo of Artie being impatient with David as he prepared his tasty meal!

So there you have it! 12 hours of my day. It has been a hectic one! I now sit quietly writing this post before I head up to bed.

Have you been participating in today’s photo an hour? Let me know in the comments below how you have been filling your day!

Thanks for reading, Christine x

 

Sunday Sevens #6…

…although it is a Monday.

I have little excuse. I could have written this post on Saturday night instead of curling up with the last chapters of Kate Riordan’s The Shadow Hour. The novel is one of those that flips between different periods and has two main characters, this time grandmother and granddaughter. The narrative was slow to get going and I felt the protagonists were a little one dimensional but the story soon picked up and was rounded up successfully. I now have a short story to re-read for a Faceboook reading group. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, a tale of a woman’s slide into madness! I read it for an Open University course years ago so have fond memories of it.

The past week was plagued with spells of sunshine and showers.

Thursday turned out to be the best day of the week for me. In the morning my lovely mum dragged me out of the house for a coffee and a tea cake at Costa! Thanks Mum. Then in the afternoon I sat in the yarden for two hours and soaked up the warm spring sunshine. Artie stretched his legs and rolled about the cat mint. The magnolia tree is starting to come back to life. David came home early and surprised me with a big bottle of Philosophy’s Purity cleanser. It was only £5 in the company shop!

For Saturday’s evening meal I made a gorgeous Pearl Barley Risotto with Tomatoes and Spinach. I kept true to the recipe other than using a white onion instead of a red and goats cheese instead of feta. I also used 400ml of passata as it would have been too soggy with the 500ml it stated. I loved it, though David wasn’t so keen. The evening was topped off by drinking a nice glass of shiraz while watching gossamer cirrus clouds grace the sky at sunset.

How did you spend your weekend?

Christine x

Sunday Sevens was devised by Threads and bobbins.

 

Sunday Sevens #3

Last week, after a traumatic Saturday, in which my road witnessed a tragic, sad event. Sunday dawned bleakly. David and I decided it was time to sew the seeds I had bought. We planted sweet peppers, spring onions and green beans, in the hope that something will grow come summer. I am waiting for the frosts to end so I can plant maris bard potatoes and my dahlia tubers.

Now after a week of sitting in front of the window in the guest bedroom, we have shoots finally pushing through the soil! There is hope yet!

Mum decided to treat me on Tuesday with a little trip to Costa for a cappuccino and a toasted teacake. It was very restorative.

This was the final week of my Future Learn course: Literature and Mental Health. The six week course has been tremendous and I have loved reading an eclectic mix of poetry, novels and plays. The course has me reading again after a lull of some time and has inspired me to re-read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.

Aura by David Evans

It was decided that we should capture our elderly and much loved, Lady Gouldian Finch, Aura to clip his overgrowing beak. Last November Aura had the same problem and we don’t know if it was connected but he became very ill. He had fits and lay about the bottom of the cage looking exhausted. It was by fluke that his beak was sheered to its proper size and we started him on vitamin supplements. I put it down to David having healing hands and Aura was nursed back to life. Perhaps it was malnourishment due to an inability to eat with an over long beak? Either way I didn’t want a recurrence. So David captured Aura, not without some stress as the other finches were flying about the room! I held him and David clipped the tip of his beak. He seems much better now!

On Friday I didn’t have a clue what to make for the evening’s dinner. To be honest I am feeling a bit fed up with cooking. I find it exhausting looking for new recipes. So David defrosted the final serving of his curry base and made a vegetable karahi. It indeed had a kick to it!

The weekend was spent doing the usual, shopping, cleaning, cooking. Artie was exhausted!

While Artie slept during the evening. I decided to dress up, even if it was just for a salad dinner at our house, Bistro No. 49!

What kind of foods do you enjoy? Have you read any good books recently?

Christine x

Sunday Sevens was devised by Threads and bobbins.