Birds.

It's been a while since I posted anything here.  In fact, the last post was about Anna's birthday.  So's this one...
I found some nice watercolours of birds in a local shop.  I thought they'd make a nice pressie.  Then I thought I'd have a go at doing them myself (while keeping the shop ones in mind as a competent backup!).
Having not done watercolour before (or at least, not since school days!) I had to go and get some kit (don't worry, I had a £5 off voucher).
Once kitted out, I had a few practice rounds:

Then I did four paintings (three based on what I'd seen in the shop, one from a bird book we have):

The goldfinch is probably my least favourite (sorry goldy) and was the one that relied on the book.

 I think it looks lie a crow in disguise, perhaps because of its beak...
There's the diminutive wren, not exactly vibrant, but I thought he was quite sweet:

The blue tit seems to have a nervous twitch, but is blessed with a little more colour than the wren:

Then my favourite, the robin:

So there we have it - really quite enjoyed trying my hand at some watercolour! 

A new home.

Ok, so it's not exactly huge, but it's still home (with a bit of luck, anyway...) for a couple just starting out :)


As usual, it was a joint operation involving me and Joshua. It's SO easy to make though. You just need a plank of wood and you chop it up. Roughly speaking, it's a long bit for the back (bearing in mind you'll be using this to attach it to the tree or whatever, so it's gotta be longer than the box itself) then a front with a 1 1/2 inch hole drilled into it, a base, the two sides cut at an angle, and the roof, which is from the same plank, just mounted sideways. In terms of dimensions, you just need to make sure it all fits together using your chosen sizes. As you can see from the pic (if you click on it it's bigger) the front and back are 'inside' the sides, which means the roof fits. If you screwed it together the other way, the roof would be too narrow, and the birdies would get wet.

We painted it blue coz that's the only colour we've got in at the moment! I'm sure the birds won't mind. There are plans for more bird-related stuff in the pipeline.

And while I'm on 'things made outside', here's a picture of our creation from a couple of weeks back:

I'm particularly pleased with the hat and the goatee :)