The work of my hands.

      "And may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful!"    Psalm 90:17 New Living Translation

    I paid bills and ran errands today. While out running errands I decided to get Alana her new bunny, since Atwoods had some very cute ones that won't get to big. The only problem was, Connor's guinea pig "JayJay" was in the rabbit cage. We had planned to keep JayJay  in a tote, since that's what he had been kept in at the school (where we got him from). The problem came when I got him home, in his previous tote, and realized he could jump out. Which he did about 2 seconds after the tote hit the floor. The one we had planned to move him to was bigger across the bottom but shorter. We were about to leave on Christmas vacation and I didn't want a rodent having free run of my house while I was gone. So, since Alana was rabbit-less at the time, (She had to give her rabbit back to the people we got it from, because I didn't know it was a Flemish Giant when I got it, and it got HUGE) we decided that would be the best place for JayJay. Now I had to remedy JayJay's home situation. I am to cheap to go buy an actual cage, because a good one costs about $40. So, I bought some screening material for $4, and modified the tote we had planned to use.

 I used a box knife to cut out the center section of the lid. Then I stretched the screen under the lid and up around the sides, and duct taped it in place. I went under the lid so JayJay couldn't climb atop something in the cage and chew on the cut section of the lid.

 Then I used the box knife to cut a square big enough for the water bottle spout to fit in. The two holes for the wire clip were the easiest part because all I had to do was spin the knife in circles until the holes were big enough. I should have done that for the spout also, but it was an after thought.

 The lid still clips in place, as shown by the green on the edges, so JayJay is guaranteed not to knock it off.

Now he is safely contained and still able to breathe. We had tried just setting the lid slanted when he 1st arrived. However, when I moved the lid to check on him after just an hour, the smell was enough to choke me. I was surprised he could survive it! So after all that I made the kids clean the rabbit cage and took Alana to choose her new bunny.

This is "Caramel". Not sure if its a boy or girl, but it will only get about double that size. So it should be quite content in its cage.

     After getting back from the store, I started on dinner. I don't cook very often, and when I do it's almost never from scratch. Tonight I was feeling brave, or creative, I'm not sure. I had an Idea in mind what I wanted and started looking up recipes online. Nothing was 'just right', so I took part of 2 different recipes, and part of my own imagination and made a chicken vegetable pasta in cream sauce. It turned out Amazing! Well I thought so anyway. Connor, my normally picky child, took 2 bites and said "This is good!". Alana was not so impressed, she decided to go eat with the neighbors, since she is staying the night there. James is not home from work yet, so I don't know what he will think of it.

If its a hit with anyone besides myself, I will post the recipe. I took pictures as I was making it, and made notes to how I was making it. It seems any time I make something GOOD, I can never re-make it. Its normally just throwing things together to taste as its cooking. So my plan from now on is to make notes. If its no good, they can go in the trash. If it is good, I can make it again.