caturday: introducing Roo

remember how in my last post, i showed you all a gif of a cute kitteh and said something about wishing it were mine?

um.

on Thursday afternoon, we were having a big ol' family photo shoot in our back yard when M.E. says something along the lines of, "there's another cat in the bushes over there - a black and white one. it's really small!" so Huw, Sindi and i go trampling into the bushes to find it and i eventually emerge with one tiny yowling kitten.

skip forward a couple days and said kitten is camping out on our deck, happily napping in her makeshift bed of box-and-towel when she's not scurrying around the yard chasing whatever she can find (including her own tail - no joke)...

"ooooh, a yellow flower! must sniff it."

"well, these rocks smell rather peculiar."

...or chillin' on someone's lap or back...

"yes, of course i'm meant to be camped out on Huw's back, silly!"

...or eating voraciously....

"you make me self-conscious when you watch me eat, ya know..."

...or just plain meowing at the top of her lungs to be let in the house. (for now she's an outdoor cat only, since she's usurped enough of Gimli's territory already, much to his major chagrin.)

she has earned several nicknames in the last 50+ hours: Chicken from Huw, Knuks from Sindi (since she's a reverse-skunk), Pascal from Mom (because the black markings on her back look remarkably like Pascal the chameleon in Tangled) and variations of kitten and sweetheart from everyone :) But the name that's semi-stuck (for now at least) is Roo, because she runs around chasing things and then suddenly will hop three or four times in a row, like a kangaroo. (she also found a temporary home in Mom's pocket right after we found her so we could finish off the family photo shoot, and the sight of her peeking out of said pocket may have influenced this name!)

we're not sure about what her future is right now, but i'm hoping she sticks around for as long as possible because she is, as Sindi so lovingly phrased it, "stupidly cute". wouldn't you agree?

(all photos taken by my awesome father Kevin  :) )

ornamentses

remember how i said cats love ornaments? no joke.

   

disclaimer: this is not my kitten. i only wish it were my kitten.

also, Huw and Mary Elyse (my brother and his fiancee) are finally here and we have a tree and the lights are up and i baked reindeer cookies and we opened presents and stockings and we've eaten an enormous amount of food and we watched Elf and we're gonna play Apples to Apples just now... so, it's been an amazing Christmas, yo :)

i'll update with photos and better detail later in the week, but for now i hope you all had a fantastic Christmas! love ♡

wishing on a star

it being the day before Christmas, and after going shopping eeeeeearly this morning for last minute things (the shops were already getting banonkers, so i don't even want to picture them later today), and after seeing Harley and Jane's wishlists, i decided that - for fun - i'd draw up a wishlist of stuff that i will NEVER NEVER have :D (the majority of the stuff, i might add, is from ModCloth... naturally ;) ) of course, when i was compiling it, i found a lot of very classy stuff... and even more quirky stuff. so i made two wishlists. um, yes, two. because i have a split personality. anyway, onwards!

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12

in all honesty, i'm just so ecstatic to be surrounded by my wonderful family, to have amazing food on the programme (it's scary how much i'm excited by the prospect of food, i know), to have hot water running through my taps and a roof over my head... to have less than ten days before Chris is with me :D i am so super blessed that it's unbelievable.

what pie-in-the-sky products would you love to receive for Christmas, dear readers? :) 

have a FANTASTIC Christmas - i'm sending love and hugs and joy your way! 

and if you still have last-minute shopping to do? strength. 

trust me, you'll need it (o.O)

P.S. yes, those are PENCIL SHOES. ModCloth never ceases to amaze me. okay, i'm really done now. BLESSED CHRISTMAS!!

caturday: IT'S CHRIIIIISTMAS TIME!

well, you could probably predict the theme for this week, huh? :P welcome to the Christmas edition of Caturday!

and let's kick off with the all-important question - what present do you buy your little fluff-ball of wonder at Christmas time? what a tough decision! thankfully, we have Pusheen to help us out:

I love this cat... so much greatness. in fact, here's another Pusheen Christmas classic:

thanks, Natalie, for sharing this one with me! :D too much love. mostly because that methodology followed by Pusheen right there? I would so follow that methodology. and ruin seeing Santa ;)

then, of course, there's the story of your cat and the Christmas tree. aaaah, a constant struggle. it starts off all innocent-like, in this fashion:

oh, hi there,Christmas bauble. let's be friends! wanna shake hands?

but before you know it, your cat is mesmerised... and wild.

and if you don't watch it, you'll eventually have this on your hands:

which is probably why we never get a huge whack of a Christmas tree. (in all honesty, my family doesn't even have a Christmas tree yet... but it's no biggie ;) )

also, unless your cat is one of the rare kind who actually don't care if you dress them up, DON'T DRESS THEM UP. the result is never like the photoshopped, cozy, cute Christmas kittens you always see advertised at this time of the year. (observe:)

aaah, so cute! and the cat is so happy with being dressed up!

yeah, your cat won't look like that. it'll look something like this, instead:

and you may even end up with a Severely Grumpy Cat on your hands... a grumpiness that will even be used for nefarious purposes, perhaps.

so... let's avoid dressing our cats up, shall we? ;)

and finally, if you plan on giving a cat as a gift, here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to wrap a cat:

with a little help from our friends Pusheen, Grumpy Cat, the wrapped cat, and numerous cats who demonstrated their love for Christmas trees, i think we've got a pretty fool-proof guide to Christmas with cats, so all that's left to say is...

Merry Caturday to all, and to all a good night! :)

blessed / Christmas

YIKES!

what a crazy few days have transpired in my absence from this here little blog. sorry for that absence, by the way - you'd think that during my vacation, i'd have more time to blog, right? ha! here's what i've been doing instead:

1) counting down days
Chris is coming to Lil' Hometown - and to ME - so soon! in under two weeks, he'll be at my house - and i honestly cannot wait :D my countdown chart is coming along fantastically; now i just reckon it could move a little faster ;)

so today's technically day 13... but i'll only put the sticker up over the 13 at 3:30pm, cause that's when Chris arrives. cause i'm obsessive-compulsive. okay.

2) going to the game reserve with my dad
...on Sunday, where the highlight of our day was seeing this lovely lioness just chillin' in a tree for a good 40 minutes :D

(i took this photo... HA! *boast boast boast*)

3) making Christmas cards
my beautiful friend Kate decided that what would be really fantastic this Christmas would be to send actual Christmas cards... in the post, not via e-mail or Facebook. so i picked up the baton and then decided that i had time on my hands and so i could even MAKE the cards... myself. which i did. and which took a lot longer than i expected! but it was lots of fun :)

i finally sent them all off yesterday morning (15 of them... which sounds sorta little but is a lot, let me tell you), each one enveloped and stamped... and now i'm just praying they all get to where they need to go!

4) getting end-of-year varsity results
...which were, um, very pleasant. and hey, everyone - my sister has a teaching certificate now, and she got it with a distinction! :D we had a celebratory lunch with my mom on Tuesday, and then ordered pizzas for dinner and watched Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (which i'll talk a little bit about just now). on top of that, sometime yesterday afternoon i was also offered a really incredible studying opportunity that i'm still struggling to wrap my head around... needless to say, i feel seriously blessed.

5) reflecting
after the horror of Friday, and after finding out that sweet Daisy Merrick, whose story my family and i have been following for at least two years now, is once more facing chemo and an uphill battle after two new tumours were discovered in her abdominal region...

(follow Daisy's story here)

after watching Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, a movie adaptation of a book with the same title that deals with a young boy whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks... after all of these things, i've been reflecting a lot in the past few days on the value of life and how important it is that we make the days we have been given here count.  so i've been doing lots of thinking - EXCITING, yo.

6) baking
....aaaaand then i had to get into the kitchen, obviously :P you'll recall that i baked cupcakes for my mom's class a couple weeks ago and i was itching to try something new (since all i make most of the time is... cupcakes). the marvellous Mirtle posted a cute semi-illustrated recipe for ginger biscuits on her Facebook page a few weeks back and i decided that i'd tackle it with gusto. the cookies are DELICIOUS, guys! here's the recipe:



it's worth noting that you should set your oven to 180°C (±350°C) when you start mixing up the batter; she omits a temperature on her instructions, which yielded interesting results for not-an-everyday-baker Hannah, who didn't know at which temperature to bake her cookies... ha!

yesterday morning i made more of 'em ginger biscuits...

no, wait, not those ginger biscuits! these ones :P

om nom nom.

...and then i made some "cinnamon cookies" yesterday afternoon - which turned out exactly like a kind of cookie my mom occasionally makes called a Snickerdoodle. they are scrum-diddly-umptious, friends!

here's the recipe, if you're interested, as designed by me :P

speaking of baking, i can smell cherry-chocolate muffins from the kitchen... yummmm.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

and those have been my last four days, in a nutshell! in other news, Christmas is approaching swiftly and i'm excited and grateful that my brother Huw and his beautiful fiancee Mary-Elyse, as well as my Grampa Mac, will be spending the day with our family - biggest Christmas party EVER :D

how are all of YOU?!

♥

caturday: hats edition

it's caturday AGAIN?! whew, this holiday's going pretty fast.

after hearing the news of the shooting in Connecticut yesterday, i haven't really been in a fantastically happy mood, and struggled a bit to come up with a theme for this week. so i looked through the stockpile of cat photos i have on my computer for some inspiration, and i found a recurring theme...

CATS IN HATS.

and as i looked at these marvellous kits adorned in a variety of head-gear, i had to grin a little.

so i thought i'd share the hat cats with you... cause maybe they'll put a smile on your face, too. and smiling's important :) let's get started, shall we?

how about a cat in a wig?

pretty fabulous...

and then we have an aristocat:

spiffing, good fellow.

and then just a cat in, you know, a rather terrible (and feathery) hat, with the most unimpressed expression you'll ever see:

actually, i lied. THIS cat has the most unimpressed expression ever... it's indisputable:

who would actually be cruel enough to buy this for their cat?! also, can we talk about the irony of the blurb stating that "CATS LOVE IT!"... ha.

and then we have a little Halloween kitty, about whom i forgot at Halloween time:

and while we're hat it (see what i did there?! yes, you may roll your eyes...), here's a cute little Mexi-cat :)

oh, amigo, you are too adorable.

or how about a cat with a lobster hat?

"um, guys, it's getting hot in here..."

and a rocker kitten:

...and a lion-hearted (and -hatted) cat:

...AND a little pink ball of fluff...

aaaaaaww.

and then, i would like to introduce you to Spangles, who: a) got his name after being born on the 4th of July; b) is cross-eyed; c) is awesome; d) loves posing; and e) looks fantastic in head gear. observe:

 Spangles the reindeer

 Spangles the pirate

Spangles the sailor

and in case you're wondering what he looks like without a hat atop his head, here're some portraits sans hats:

what a babe, right? :D you can read more about Spangles and follow his adventures on his Facebook page here. 

finally, i thought this photo was rather appropriate for the current, erm, season:

heh.

and FINALLY finally, i want to wish my beautiful aunts Kymmie and Mia the most fantastic birthday - i love you both so much (more than this much, in fact):

...and am phenomenally grateful to have such amazing women as my aunties! HUGS!

kbye everyone :)