Cozy Creative Space

We haven't done any update on our move, we are still moving :D It has been almost 6 months, we are still in our old home, going to the new house 3 times a week. Our workspaces are now all there, and everything is almost ordered as it should, I'll blog about the new workspace once everything is done.
With the workspaces not under the same roof Mum has been knitting a lot, here she is very comfy and strictly supervised by the 3 Juanita's. Here an old blogpost about the Juanita's (Lulu, Olivia and Truusje).

Lulu's crescent moon eyes don't miss anything, not a stitch can be dropped under her supervision.

 Mum is right now knitting something that requires 8 skeins at once, kind of hellish if you ask me, so she needed a comfortable set up to keep sanity.

The Juanita's do get exhausted, luckily there are 3 of them so they can keep guard in turns.

I do hope that this set up will keep my mother sane, things don't look that good, and she only started yesterday :)

Goodbye Ernie, Hello Luna

We lost our sweet curly Ernie. He was the brother of Lili, Mimi and Toffee, all four grew up in our house and after 14 years it was tough to see him deteriorate all of a sudden. He had dementia, causing him to walk around in circles all the time. He lost a lot of weight and he just wasn't there anymore. We miss him terribly, he was incredibly sweet and just one big teddy bear and the King of the curls. As the second of the siblings is gone we are trying to prepare ourselves for the other two. The only hard part of taking care of so many dogs is losing them.

With losing Ernie and Simon we were down to eight dogs, a number we haven't had for 15 years, at one point we had 15 and for many years 13. In the past few years we kept the number at 10. A lot of people find it crazy to hear how many dogs we have but honestly, they are pure joy and love and we love having them. Their favorite hobby is sleeping and they are pretty calm and quiet as we are usually home. We have a big garden and a doggy door so they come in and out whenever they want, they also have each other.

Last Sunday we got up at 6am and drove to Izmir. We first went to the flea market as it is a 3-hour drive we wanted to visit there as well. We scored some awesome finds.

And then we picked up this pretty girl. She was taken from the shelter and brought to the animal hospital as she was so skinny.

You can see her ribs but her spirit isn't broken, she is very cheerful and already very attached to us. She is very sweet. She is extremely obsessed with food. but we're sure she'll calm down when she realizes she never has to stay hungry again. We've never had a dog that was that emaciated. People...

Although declared healthy at the hospital she has diarrhea and an eye infection, it might be side effects of her weak immune system, we have her eyes under control and will keep a close eye to everything else. It will take months for her to get to a good weight and be completely healthy.

She felt at home right away and has a good bond with Mimi. We called her Luna.

Goodbye Simon :(

Today we had to let go of our sweet, sweet Simon. The sweetest, friendliest dog we ever had. He was with us for more than 15 years, he came when he already was an adult, and it was instant love. He was always cheerful, sweet and gentle to both people and all the other doggies we have and had throughout the years. We will miss him terribly.

For the past 2 months he has been having seizures from time to time, but the past 2 days he had 5 and was clearly suffering. He had already been on Rimadyl for the past 15 months to manage arthritis. It pained both him and us to keep him around so we had to put him to sleep today to let him go peacefully, he now is resting between trees, flowers and butterflies in the mountain close to our home next to more fur babies we lost in the past. Even with the amount of dogs we have they all have their own place in our hearts, Simon's place is big and impossible to fill. Words can not describe how special he was and how much we love him, our home is not the same without him :(

A Few Make overs

It is Spring, or here almost Summer, we don't really have Spring here. Which means all doggies are having a make over :) I've already done 8 of the 10 and Lulu is so funny, before and after, that I thought to show you :)

Lulu has naturally a mohawk, which I find hilarious. She is a sausage/ terrier mix and both sides you can see in the most fun way.

Her under hair is brown, so once trimmed she has a totally different color.

But where the mohawk was, is now black, creating a wide stripe. We find her adorable each way:)

The other make over are these tables.

They had a very tough varnish on them which took ages to remove and they were crooked and wonky.

After they were stabilized I painted them in white with turquoise.

To match marbled paper I had made during my course this Winter.

They are a set of nesting tables and I painted them to match in a fun way.

I love how they turned out, very beach cottage :) They are available at StarHomeStudio.

And in case you wondered what I did with the remaining of the spoon, I turned it into a very cool keychain.

Betty Boo-Boo

You might remember, although if you don't I won't blame you because of the number of doggies we have :), Betty Boo-boo who we adopted last year.

She was in bad shape, one of the worst we've had, much worse than we initially thought.

Her hair has grown back beautifully, even though she is still rough around the edges it is a huge difference of how she was. Her hair loss was due to Mange which was also the source of a nasty smell. We also found a few bumps which turned out that it could turn in to cancer, those were removed. She had a cough for months (most likely kennel cough) which finally went away after several antibiotic treatments. On the bright side it turned out she was neutered already (while that was initially the reason why they did not want them to release her to us!), most likely in a different kennel or by a previous owner, but we did not have to put her through that.

Initially, I thought her legs were bad due to lack of exercise in the kennel but it turns out a skeleton problem, the vet thought it might be malnourishment during her puppy period or a birth defect. She kind of has a waggle-walk like a duck but further than that it doesn't seem to bother her. She still seems always surprised when she gets called, loved or pet, and she always has a wagging tail for us. She most likely is about 9 instead of 3 like they said, she has the start of cataract in her eyes, even though her eyes look clearer than when she first came. All this does make you more aware why we shouldn't go and buy puppies but help the forgotten bigger pups instead. Like always: adopt, don't shop :)

Number 10, again...

While I was away during my trip to Seferihisar, Mum called me on my last evening telling me 'I've sent you an email, did you see it?' I said 'no', and asked her what it was about, when she said 'just look at it and let me know what you think', I knew she was up to no good...
It was a adoption ad on Facebook... Of this little black fur ball. Who was in İzmir, 1 hour away from were I was but 3 hours from our home so I could pick her up on my return back home... I resisted for quite a while but Mum is a stubborn goat  *sigh* and she wanted her so badly as she looks like Elsie, her favorite doggie ever who we lost 3 years ago. FYI we adopted Olivia with the same excuse...

I called them but they did not want to release her without her being neutered first so I would have to go back 1 week later or so. This was on Sunday evening.

Monday afternoon, I just had driven 4 hours and was back home for just half an hour they called me back telling me I could pick her up anyway... aaarrgggggg

I rested on Tuesday and we went to pick her up on Wednesday, a total of 6 hours driving, I'm an angelic daughter which my mother will never admit. While the shelter was in surprising good shape...

The doggie was in a very bad shape, her fur was all matted and parts were gone leaving bald spots. She also smelt horribly and her eyes were all droopy and dirty.

Of course this does make it up for the long journey as black dogs (and cats) are already much less likely to be adopted, this sad girl didn't have much of a chance.

I groomed and washed her right after arrival and after that she wouldn't leave my side, she also wanted to meet the rest of the pack right away and she adjusted in a matter of hours.

We do not know her exact story and for now we are just letting her recouping, there were vets at the shelter but we will be taking her to our vet soon. Her legs are very thin with barely any muscle, I suspect she was in a cage for a while and the lack of walking didn't do her good. They all have a story non are very happy but we do our best to fix that :)

We called her Betty Boo -Boo :)

Zeyno

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to sweet Zeyno, our biggest dog and one that has been with us for fourteen years. It was her time and she has had a very good life. She has been loved and pampered.

She never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a big, good hearted dingus that let all the other dogs use her as a mattress  and boss her around. We haven't known an other dog as patient, innocent and with good intentions as she.

Zeyno, thank you so much for all the love and the smiles and the warmth you gave us all these years, you will be missed.

Goodbye Leo

This week we had to let go of Leo, son of Daisy and brother of Ufo, whom both passed away a few years ago. Leo's health was getting worse, he was practically blind and completely deaf but worse was he had hardly any strength in his legs, which was both awful for him to feel and us to see. Leo was born in our house as we had found his mother (unknowingly) pregnant. He was never a happy doggy, somehow even though he never had it tough and his name was Leo and his color sunny he never saw things on the bright side. But he we still loved him and he will be missed...

A Little Wild Trip

Today we went to the Animal hospital, a mountain drive of about half an hour, for our Zeyno. We discovered some large lumps and as we have had these kind of shocks a lot lately we did not waste any time and went straight away for her to be operated. It looks like she has the same cancer as Simon ( who is doing well) but we'll know more when the pathology test results are back. She is a big 12 year old dog, but we love all our doggies and like to keep them around healthy and happy :)

While waiting for the operation we discovered a fox pup in one of the recovery cages, oh so very adorable and pretty and very small. She will go to a wild life park once she has been vaccinated and has stayed there for quarantine for a while. I never have seen a fox so close, let alone a pup so I took some pictures for this beauty.

The operation went well, 4 lumps are removed and we'll know what is going on in a few days.
On our way back we stopped by an abandoned greenhouse, literally exploding with greenness, so magical.

I often love pictures of abandoned places, the way nature takes back the place and slowly makes it green and pretty has something satisfying, the ability of nature to heal is amazing (of course it can heal to a certain extent).

We must have passed it dozens of times, in a fast going car you do not see everything, but this time I realized that the greenhouse was a little too green and we made a mental note to stop on our way back for pictures.

Girmek Yasaktır - Forbidden to Enter, not that you can actually enter, I did break that rule by poking my head and camera inside :)

Funny enough just when I was about to write this blog post I came across this image on BoredPanda, it seemed to meant to be featured here considering the combo of the fox and the greenness that she could have been in that greenhouse :)

Here some 'forbidden' peeks inside.

Zeyno is doing well, lying on her favorite couch with a comfort blanket and her appetite already back to normal, and her tail waggling like nothing has happened, animals are so strong!