he flew into my life and landed on my heart

this is the most beautiful ring I have ever seen

I love it so much! and I call it my Wings Ring :)

perfect in every way,

structurally, symbolically,

it exemplifies everything in my life

and every day I imagine wearing it and the love I feel

it's by the amazingly talented Andrea from Artigiano Jewel Box

and I love this ring too 'black with a twist'

and it will be such a compliment to my wings ring

with it's black star sapphire, fire opal, black diamond and black onyx - with every stone here telling a story

it's by Doris from Dadamietz ~ thanks for making it Doris!

and around my wrist I see a pair of wings,

keeping me safe,

leading me the right way in life,

taking my hand in his

so incredibly beautiful!

I love, love, love this Wings bracelet by Andrea so much and yes, I can feel wearing it too!

and not forgetting my decollete

I would be honoured to have this Silver Hare, watching from above as my wings and gems adorn me,

I love, love, love this necklace! big time!

by Shaun from Punk Jewellery, ~ thanks Shaun!

and in place of the sun and moon and critters I will have stars instead

because the stars always listen

and always deliver ~ thank you :)

the WHITE RABBIT(s) - Right on Time

a couple of weeks ago I was a winner ......

of a very beautiful white rabbits watch!

Wesley wondered what on earth all the fuss was about and why was I celebrating when he was still waiting on his delivery of gourmet rabbit treats from over the pond - surely that was selfish he said?

and... he went on ... - who was that other white bun in the house?

We only do one white rabbit in here, thank you very much, and it's him! ....

I said it was the beautiful card that Donna and Dot from Lavender Rabbit Hoppenings sent me, along with my prize of the white rabbits watch - and I held it out so Wesley could inspect it.

... but all he grumbled was .... the pond is late! the pond is late! it's 1pm here not 8am!

and then he wanted to know who that other white doe-eyed honey was shuffling thru the papers?

and I said it was Dot choosing the winning ticket for the draw!

- that's the ultra cute and amazing thing about entering give away competitions from house rabbit mums - the rabbit always does the drawing!

But then again, rabbit-mums all know this!

and even cuter - is having the bunny-nibbled ticket stuck inside the greeting card!

LOVE LOVE LOVE :)

Thank You Dot!!!

mwah xxx mwah xxx mwah xxx! (okay, okay, I know your fur is a bit wet now!)

Donna does a monthly give away on her blog and this beautiful mermaid amongst pink sea jewels is the prize!

It's really gorgeous! but I am so grateful to have won the white rabbits watch that I shall participate from the benches this time and cheer the winner from afar.

Donna has an etsy shop Lavender Rabbit Studios, where all her jewellery can be purchased, including the beautiful watch I won. Do stop by and have a browse.

browse? browse? barked Wesley as he looked at the plate of treats I set out for him - the mail man had arrived and brought gifts from afar!

I browse on grass not brickettes! what is this?!

and he went off for a nap!

There was silence around the treats plate as the birds ruffled their feathers then the Canada goose peered down at the black and orange misshapen mess at it's feet and honked in fright - Goodness me! what's that?!

Well, that darkened lump is my own home-baked rabbit dental treat (is there such a thing?)

I wanted to order Wesley some nutritious treats that would be excellent little workers in helping to keep the spurs off his back molars and his front teeth trim and in shape.

He has had to be anaethnetised twice this past year just to have his back molars ground down and I was wanting to avoid doing this if possible.

I got in touch with Jade - Mr Mick's momma, and asked for advice and she was a fountain of help and great ideas, all of which I followed thru!

Thank you Jade!

First stop was browsing online to find the best cookies for him and Jade said to check out BunSpace. They help rabbits get rehomed and have a super tempting online shop - I was even licking my lips!

After a rather long while of browsing I purchased the large square Banana Oat Cupcakes, and a bag of tiny round Banana Bites and Wes was given a small bag of Papaya cubes as a present from them!

Thank you so much Andrea for helping with my order and putting in the present for Wesley!

and whilst waiting for the postie to stop by I then decided to look for recipes to cook my own rabbit cookies, as Jade so helpfully mentioned!

First stop - Tamsin and Scamp's place! and the perfect solution! thank you

Well, I am not a very good cook and as for following recipes? - I could only but try and I did mix in a few jars of organic baby food and a few other bits of this and that, and after a couple of batches of lumps went into the oven, a clock that ticked over too, too fast (should have used my white rabbits watch!) and er, the edible and salvaged evidence of my attempt is above!

(I will write a separate post of the recipe incase anyone's appetite is whetted so far?)

and this stuff here - well, what can I say? black and hard and burnt and ....

can't win 'em all?

so i went back to the drawing board, em, I mean kitchen counter - and I made a fresh batch.

This didn't harden nearly as fast and I left it with my mum to watch it crisp up and dry out. Which it eventually did. Wesley likes it though, thank goodness. At least someone eats my concoctions (must be all the dehydrated carrot flakes and powdered herbs I threw in).

Verdict?

large oat and banana cubes - still here,

tiny banana bites - in high demand

papaya cubes - went within minutes!

my cookies - going slowly when nothing else exciting is around

and his teeth?

Well, Wes had his front ones trimmed the other day by Margot and we are still working on keeping them 'workable and snipping things' as much as possible, and his back teeth? - Perfect!! not a spur in sight! and that's 3 months on from his last burring down!

But I do make up small mash treats that he gets every day and I have been putting in masses of Alfalfa hay with stalks and that seems to have done an excellent job! (since my little bun is so not a hay eater!)

and incase you like to buy - or WIN - instead of cook - then make sure to enter the super fantastic Spring Raffle at the Buckeye House Rabbit Society!

- toys! tunnels! grass! bags of hay cookies! baskets! and a darling ceramic white bunny! WOW!

Herta and the rabbits will ship worldwide and tickets are sold by paypal

c'mon eh?!

Now who can resist that face?? get your tickets today :)

Wes and I have ours, er, his!

yeah! yeah! enough of these other white rabbits - just give me a cookie!

... oh, okay ... one of yours then, if it has to be ..... sheesh ....

Good luck everyone!

Enamoured with tasty small jewels ....

my latest mama hare, Enamour, is packing her bags and will be off to Australia in the morning.

She's a little worried though because you're not allowed to bring any foodstuffs into Australia - they have very strict customs regulations and an ecosystem that is protected from foreign seeds, plants, spores .... you name it ....

so she has asked me to check her bags before we go to the airport, as she knows that I grew up in Australia, and will have an eye for any offenders amongst her stuff

Mother Hare Enamour

Enamour is a very beautiful hare and she has turned quite a few heads, especially with her red speckly muzzle, not that she notices because she has eyes only for the tasty berries in the bushes.

And she is not a mama in the mama-plus-baby-hare sense of the word, no, it’s more like she is a mama in the gardener-pruning-her-beloved-plants sense. Her fascination for all things berry started when she was just born and before she had made her first foray out of the nest. Every morning when she awoke she would peer over at the bushes and gaze longingly at all the swathes of magnificent glistening plump berries in a multitude of hues - reds, purples and oranges, and my, my, did they look ever so tempting!

That sure was incentive enough for her to leave the nest and one morning when mama came to give her breakfast she could see her leveret no-where, then suddenly from inside the bushes she spotted her, up on her tiny back legs, neck craned high, stretching for the jewels. And on turning to greet mama her forepaws and muzzle were covered in red spots and stains! tut tut! Mama wiped her face and cleaned her paws and gave her a lesson there and then on the spot about which types of these small fruits were good and not good for hare stomachs, as some made you so ill you couldn’t eat for days, let alone lope off without falling over in pain! Enamour’s eyes grew big as mama pointed out the dangerous ones, and she sheepishly rubbed her small belly because, yes she had ingested rather a few of them. And it wasn’t just today, it was yesterday also, she had had about 20, maybe 30 of them from the lowest branches! And not a pain at all!

Mama sensed Enamour’s uneasiness, but continued on with her lesson only to discover that her baby had eaten all the poisonous ones and didn’t even show a single symptom of discomfort! Goodness! Well, Enamour was a little worried about how many of them were actually unfriendly to eat, but then she reasoned later in her small hare brain, that she was fine and fit after all, so she would just go on consuming them.

Ofcourse, she wouldn’t be telling mama this! Nor any of the other hares! And she hadn’t told mama about when she got stuck inside the berry bush on that first morning and had to chew a branch off to free herself! She had managed to climb up the bushes but her rear toes had slipped off a branch as she stretched across to the end of a twig laden with the most delectable fat orbs she had ever seen and she ended up upside down in a fork! deary me! and chewing thru that branch sure took a long time! But she decided she would continue on with her bush climbing because those berries at the very, very top branches looked just so tasty, and she bet that they tasted the most delicious of all the berries born!

Enamour is looking forward to resting cosily on your armchair by the French doors. Not the same armchair as Majestic though, because she doesn’t like to share her chair thanks! Besides, she usually leaves stains on the upholstery from the berry bits on her paws and muzzle and she doesn’t want to hear any complaints from anyone more house proud than her, or be accused of miscolouring someone else’s coat.

And make sure the French doors are left open as she will be going out every day to inspect, taste and prune her berry bushes. Now that she is a devoted berry raiser she has many jobs to do every day, making sure that all the white peely wally fruits grow safely to adulthood for when she can dine on them! And she has a lot of different berry bushes to go around as well.

A while back mama had taken her up the brae to the heather moor and shown her the scrumptious blaeberry bushes and Enamour soon found her days spent gobbling the blaes amongst the heathers. She had even nibbled one or two heather buds in her berry eagerness, but eurgh, they tasted rather ghastly! She’ll be sticking to the berries for sure!

And she is pretty good at climbing inside bushes now too, her delicate feet are very good at splaying out to give her super purchase and her slips have been few and far between. And she is growing her nails long to help with the clinging and scaling.

You are welcome to come along and assist with the berry minding. You could bring a basket perhaps and Enamour will pick off a few for you to dine on. You could pick them yourself ofcourse, but you’ll end up with red stained fingers and she doesn’t want to hear any grumbling from you later when you find out that no, water will not remove them. Neither will soap nor scrubbing!

So what’s it gonna be? A few choice berries and clean fingers or a basket of succulent spheres and crimson digits?

Enamour raced over to the armchair to say goodbye to all her friends!

she shed a tear of happiness that she had a loving forever home to go to!

and then loped over to her bags to see what I had pulled out .... hoping that it wasn't her secret stash of berries!

(er, sorry, but yes it was!)

cripes! blurted Clipper - keep those berries away from my snow white coat thanks! I don't want to be red spotted!

Yeah! me too! barked Velvet - I ain't wanting no blotches neither thanks!

and besides,isn't it high time I was getting into your etsy shop? amongst all my other friends?!

I'll head off there now - you can get your act together later ....

well, well! what can I say? my hares have a mind of their own eh?!

safe journey Enamour! and say hi to Australia for me :)

a glass of freshly squeezed Mango Juice

Mango juice? mango juice?! blurted baby hare Mew, - Well, I don't know about that! more like a glass of freshly squeezed carrot juice!!

yeah! make it two! barked Sea Feather

I'm so thankful to Popi from Mangojuice Gallery down in Worcester, England, for placing a wholesale order with me! and having these two youngsters for sale in her new gallery - a dream of a lifetime for Popi! Thank you so much Popi!!

All my baby hares come with their very own original story and I print it out on paper and stick it in a small tag. When I sell my hares on etsy it's easy to put the tag in with the hare, and usually their story is also on their etsy page, but in a gallery where the customer has yet to discover the joy of a small story I thought I would make a special presentation of them.

If Popi's customers are like me, then I am sure they will like to read the whole story first, so I printed it out and stuck it onto an 'upcycled' book page.

Mew's and Sea Feather's stories are on a John Le Carre (I had 2 copies of the same book, Our Game, - typical for me :) and I put it into a cellophane sleeve so that no matter how many people read it, it won't become dog eared. Or should I say hare eared?

hey lady! how's about my story then - surely the non-gallery visitors want to hear all about me eh??

Baby Hare Mew

Mew has always been a very good baby and never caused mama any consternations or trouble what so ever. At first mama was a little worried that Mew might not be making the most of her leverethood, but mama soon saw that her youngster was more than capable of enjoying life. Mew was never really interested in playing with the other leverets and would much prefer to follow mama around all day long. It didn’t take much time before she had learnt all the different berries, what leaves were dangerous and which ones were beneficial to hares. She excelled in weather forecasting and that really surprised mama! Most weather watchers can spend many, many moons before they are able to accurately foretell a frosty day, a dreich day, a windy day or foggy day but Mew has been spot on from the very beginning. And coupled with her excellent domestic knowledge she will go far indeed!

However not all subjects have been as captivating for little Mew and she has shown her childishness by throwing a tantrum when it comes to insect identification skills. Mama had explained that all hares have to learn about the creepy crawlies (ofcourse never call them that to their faces she said! tut tut) but Mew turned a blind eye and a deaf ear when mama’s furred foot pushed over the rotting log and a million shiny black and brown bodies scuttled away, with a couple of over eager ones scuttling towards her! It gave Mew a big shudder up her spine! Yeuch! she grimaced, behind mama’s back. But mama was patient with Mew and explained that the crawlies have always helped hares in times of trouble and started to tell some very interesting tales. Goodness me! and did Mew not listen with both her ears, tiny mouth agape and wide, wide eyes!

Mew is looking forward to dozing cosily on your armchair. She’d love the window left open please because every morning she will be out with mama, learning new skills to add to her belt. And she is so excited because mama has promised to show her the different types of tree bark and which ones will taste best in the harsh winters! Yummy! She’s always eyed up those tree trunks as she’s loped past them and now she’ll be getting a taste of them. Though she did hear one of the other mamas say something about trunks tasting like cardboard. Not that that will bother Mew though, because once she did come across some cardboard in the glade and mama showed her the best way to eat it and it was surprisingly, really rather tasty. Except the sellotape on it, that was ghastly and nearly choked her, but she prefers not to think about that. Anyway, you are welcome to come along too to look at the different barks, maybe ever have a nibble here or there. Mind though, no complaining about any blandness, and who knows – you could even ingest a crawly or two if they are sleeping in the ridges! Hmm, now that would be funny!

and how about mine too then? eh?! bleated Sea Feather

Baby Hare Sea Feather

Sea Feather loves to play down by the river all day long. When he was tiny mama took him to kindergarten so that he could start his socialization skills with the other babies and learn the basics of reading and writing, but little Sea Feather had heard some babbling and trickling coming from just over the brae and at break time he scampered to the edge to see where the noise was coming from. Well, well, wasn’t he just delighted when he peered over and saw the sparkling water! He was straight down to the river’s bank in an instant and spent the rest of the day there, and the next day and the day after that! He soon became proficient with currents and eddys and flow and drift, he learnt swimming in no time and he made many new friends who taught him so many strange and interesting things. And we’re not omitting reading and writing either, because the water has brought a page here and a snippet there, sometimes a complete book, a guide sheet, a map, half used pencils, the occasional biro pen and even charcoal twigs! So Sea Feather has made great progress, though he is not sure actually how to tell mama that he hasn’t spent a single full day in kindergarten. Nothing that he has learnt down by the river has taught him how to tell mama about this passion. His friends have been racking their brains too, even the fish in the river have been helping him with their thinking, but no-one knows what to say to his mama. Sea Feather has been getting a little worried incase mama tells him to stop going there, so he decided to make a present for her. He’s collected some very beautiful shells and shiny things that he found on the bank and put them onto a thin, thin strand of colourful rope. Now he’s waiting for the current to bring him a beautiful piece of wrapping paper!

Sea Feather is looking forward to dozing comfortably in your armchair but he would love the French doors left open a little please because every morning he will be out to the river and won’t be back till evening. And when he comes in he’d like a warm fresh towel left on his chair to dry his feet thanks, they do get rather wet from all his adventures and it’s so much cozier to doze off with fluffy dry feet instead of cold wet ones. Have you ever had that happen to you? You are welcome to come down to the river with him, you would be surprised at all the things there is to learn. You can swim can’t you? if not, Sea Feather will teach you. Though if you have a fear of water and the still, dark, deep patches and think scary thoughts of crocodiles and stuff like that, then it will be best for you to stay paddling in the shallows instead. Infact you could look under the bushes and bank growth for some wrapping paper please. Everything Sea Feather wishes for, the river brings to him – why don’t you try it? Just don’t be asking for anything silly like matching gift tags or an encyclopaedia Britannica set – then again, you never know?

Popi also ordered some of my handmade cards - with hares on them - ofcourse!

the card for these comes from a paper mill in Scotland! yay! nice to stay local if possible, and especially nice because my cards go all over the world and it's nice to have a bit of Scotland in your home that's not whisky or haggis.

and along with the baby hares and cards are some tiny ornament hares!

When I sell them on etsy they are all packaged in a cellophane bag with a notecard and have a small card hare holding the bag closed, so I thought that would be a lovely way for Popi to sell them as well.

And it would also keep them clean because when I see fabric anythings in a shop all I want to do is feel it! Touch it, squeeze it! and this way the hares will go to their forever home in a pristine condition.

A little sitting hare - rather cute if I may say so myself

a sitting up hare in a warm totem style fabric

a bounding hare in all white - as white as the driven snow! and with delicate blue and grey eyes

and my very popular bounding hare in pink flowery fabric.

hey! snapped little hare - don't forget to mention that we have a small story too, a paper insert in the back of the sleeve!

and just before I seal the order up I hear a familiar voice - 'yeah c'mon - let's get back to the carrot juice!! is it ready yet??!'

If you are in England, and down Worcester way, then do stop in to see Popi's new gallery and say hi to my hares! maybe even adopt one?

Mangojuice Gallery

9a New Street

Worcester

many thanks again Popi!