How Goes the Nursery

As I have revealed already the room at the top of the stairs is more than just a bedroom, its a Nursery. I have been planning the nursery theme for a while and am going with a Farm theme! It was a fight between Jungle and Farm and farm won, as there are so many Jungle themes already out there! The first thing we needed to do was make the wall that splits the existing room. Farm Dad and Farm Guy made huge progress with that, so much so that we managed to get a plasterer in while I was in the hospital!

The plasterer made a fantastic job! The finish on the walls can only be described as feeling like glass, it was amazing to paint on and meant we have an amazingly smooth finish on the paint! The first step was to paint some blue for the sky.





After painting the sky I added some hills with green and painted that green all the way down to the skirting board - or at least to where the skirting board is going to be! For those worried I am not actually doing any of the painting, I have some great helpers actually doing the work while I recover from the hospital. All I have actually done paint wise was the top of the hills! The green on the picture looks quite dull, it is in fact called 'Spearmint' and is quite bright and cartoony!

Next step put on the skirting and door and get it all wood stained. Then on with the next step of the painting....

Accident At The Farm

This is actually about an incident that happened nearly four weeks ago but I hadn't wanted to say much about it at the time as it was quite difficult and I didn't want to have to report bad news at the end if I had given an ongoing commentary!

On Sunday night (Sunday the 5th September) one of our cats, Rocco, appeared on the doorstep at about half eleven at night looking very sorry for himself. He had obviously been there a while and was shaking with the cold. He could barely walk and only just made it in through the door. His tail was limp and dragging behind him and he was struggling to breath. There was blood around his mouth. We scooped him up and put him on the living room chair, it was too late for a vet appointment so we called our local 24 hour vet helpline. We were advised to keep him warm and quiet and his symptoms were most likely shock based and they would see him at an appointment in the morning (Monday) at 9am. I have to admit I wasn't convinced that it was shock based, he was unable to lie down and seemed totally 'out of it'. We left him overnight and the following morning found him in exactly the same sitting position as we had left him, nothing had changed. We headed to the vet.

They listened to his chest and said he had a heart murmur and appeared to have fluid in his lungs and stomach. He was given an injection to help clear this fluid and we were told to return him the following evening for a check up. Over the next few hours he did seem to pick up but he was still uncomfortable when he tried to lie down and wouldn't eat or drink anything. We returned him that evening and his lungs were now apparently clear but the vet was still not happy with what she could feel in his abdomen, she asked to keep him in and give him and x-ray; she would call us to say what she found. And call she did. We were shopping for a few groceries when she called, it wasn't good news. She believed that he had severed the duct from his liver and his chest was filling up with fluid. Without an operation he wouldn't make it but the procedure itself was extremely risky and he only had a 50 - 60% chance of making it through that. The operation wasn't cheap either. Money was no matter to us, we wanted to give him every chance to pull through and after a great deal of heartache we agreed to let them proceed. His operation was on the Wednesday morning and that was a day of great apprehension.

We finally got the call saying that he had made it through the operation and was okay. Phew! They wanted to keep him in till Friday to watch him as it was touch and go as to whether the operation worked and the fluid may return. By Thursday however they decided he could come home as he was doing so well. He had to be in a cage for two weeks however to stop him injuring himself. When we went to pick him up we were told the full extent of his injuries. They believed that he had either been hit by a car or had fallen from one of the outbuildings (this was our preferred theory) and in basic terms everything that should have been in his abdomen was now in his chest! His liver and spleen had punctured his diaphragm and gone through, he had also ruptured various other organs. Luckily his heart and lungs had remained undamaged so he was able to pull through. The vet had said that she wasn't sure why he had even made it back to us on Sunday let alone through the operation.

Fast forward to today: his last visit to the vets resulted in the all clear. Lungs and heart are strong again and he is healing up fine. He has now been given the all clear for going outside, which has cheered him up no end although he can't do much and quickly gets tired and comes back in. His tail is still quite limp, but they believe that it will heal and is most likely fractured but he can lift it slightly now which is a vast improvement from it dragging along behind him!

So he has made it through but he has definitely used up one of his 9 lives!

A Reason for the Interlude...

There has been an interlude in the Realising the Dream blog updates and I have a perfect excuse...

Our little family of two became a family of three. Our new little girl was born on the 14th of September and is our first baby. We were in the hospital for about four days and since coming home we have all been learning a new routine.

As you can imagine our new little one is taking up a large chunk of our time so there may be some delays in the posts for a while. However, rest assured that the blog will continue and the house and garden have lots of news which I will share with you shortly!

Farm Mum has been looking after the garden and dutifully weighing and preparing all the vegetables while I have been away and Farm Guy, between visits to the hospital and looking after his new charge has been organising the plasterer for the upstairs bedroom - which I can now reveal will be a nursery! I have some grand ideas for it so I will be keeping everyone up-to-date with how that goes!

The Bells, The Bells.....

Okay, I haven't said much about the house itself at the moment but I intend to rectify that this week. First things first, the door bell. The house did not have a doorbell, this meant we relied on being able to hear someone knocking at the door, which, when in certain rooms or upstairs was pretty tricky.

But hear lay the first problem, what kind of bell. I wanted something traditional looking, Farm Guy wanted something cheap and simple! My traditional bell was somewhat expensive and so even I had to admit that it probably wasn't the most economical but I couldn't shake the thought of not wanting a tinny rendition of 'Oh When The Saints' every time we got visitors!

But my luck was in, heading to the local DIY shop for something else I spotted that the bell I was after was now less than 1/2 price!! No stopping my negotiating this time and Farm Guy relented... Awwww...

And so the bell was duly bought, brought home, unpacked and... deemed to not be working! Nuts, after all my fuss about wanting this bell the thing didn't work. Back to the shop it went and a replacement was secured.

Home it came and it worked! Hurray! Farm Guy put it up on the wall in the hall above the living room door. (It looks squint but it honestly isn't!!!)

We tried out our new bell. The mechanism was so violent that, with the fittings supplied, there was no way to stop the thing flinging itself against the wall. The sound of the wooden box hitting the wall was almost louder than the bell itself. And to top all of that off, the buzzer from the back door didn't cause the bell to ring at all! 100 metre radius my Aunt Nelly!

The only way that Farm Guy could stop the box from flapping about was to put a couple of 'stops' on either side. These now need to be painted or stained!

But at least we had a door bell. Only problem is... it rang every time you walked into the dining room. Or sat on the sofa!

Oh... My... Lord!!!!!!!