Belated Christmas greetings!

So there we were, all ready to broadcast our Christmas message to the nation, and then the Madwoman in true Grinch style said she wasn't going to turn the interweb on during Christmas day.

So we are sorry it is late, but here it is now:

Have fun.

Be kind to everyone.

(Actually we nicked it from John Finnemore's ultimate bucket list,

but it is so good we thought we'd steal and then repeat it)

And now we are off to watch the Madwoman swabbing down the kitchen.

We could have told her it wasn't a good idea to turn the half-full bottle of Bucks Fizz upside down to mix up the contents.

No matter how gently it was done.

But who would have thought it would be quite that lively?

Very few parts of the kitchen have escaped.

We're thinking it is maybe karma for not letting us

do our Christmas broadcast yesterday.

Getting ready!

We have been a bit busy getting ready for Christmas,

which has made us a little late posting our blog.

Exercising the Madwoman too ...

First of all there has been practicing the working-up-of-an-appetite

ready for our turkey dinner.

Then there has been the eating-of-the-Advent-calendar biscuits.

These have not always been arriving on the right days, 

so that sometimes we have had to force ourselves to eat two gravy bones.

The Madwoman is not very good at keeping track of the days of the week it appears.

We will be adding it to the already lengthy list of her faults.

Soon it will be time for us to help put up the Christmas decorations

- which we do, of course, need to prepare ourselves for, by taking a little nap.

  

zzzzzzz....

 

 

Feeling festive!

It was all looking very festive this weekend at Chiltern Open Air Museum.

Typically, the Madwoman's usual incompetence meant that

she got the opening times mixed up and we arrived an hour early.

However, that didn't stop us mooching around and annoying people

as they rushed round trying to finish setting up.

There were Victorians everywhere,doing festive things ...

there were some really lovely craft gifts ...

 

Not to mention a stand-in for Rudolph, being decorated by a reluctant elf. 

We rushed the Madwoman off to the woods before she got any ideas about

garlanding us with tinsel, paused for a quick kiss

under the mistletoe and then, feeling suitably Christmassy, 

went home to write out our present list for Santa.

Out and about again

We're very happy to be out and about again!

We've done a bit of exploring new please-keep-dogs-on-leads walks

but today we had a quick stroll round one of our favourite destinations, 

Chiltern Open Air Museum.

We admired Leagrave Cottages, which someone seems to have 

beautifully gift wrapped ready for Christmas

... they seem to have got a bit carried away though as one of the horses 

appears to have been gift wrapped too.

Bet they'll have trouble fitting that under the tree on Christmas Eve ...

The we admired all the blacksmithery going on in the forge ...

and were dazzled by the newly repainted Maidenhead Pavilion.

Then the Madwoman trod on Angel's toe, making her squeak

and hop around on three legs:

injured and exhausted by all that admiring,

we decided to go home for restorative elevenses.

 

 

 

 

Outstanding treats

We are thinking about enrolling the Madwoman on some kind of class

where she can learn to do sums.

It is quite clear that she has absolutely no grasp of even the most basic of

arithmetical skills - which would be fine if it wasn't that her deficiencies in this area are seriously impacting on our enjoyment of life.

Let us explain: 

We got lots of scrummy treats for Christmas.

They turned out to be outstanding in more ways than one though.

Fish skins! We LOVE fish skins!
And it says we can have 5! Each.
We got one. Each.

Nom nom nom.

Sea jerky! We love sea jerky!

And it says we can have 9 each day.

We got one each.

Yum! Special Lily's Kitchen Christmas biscuits with turkey, cranberry

thyme and cinnamon. They smelled so good the Madwoman even nicked one.

Angel read the packet VERY carefully.

It distinctly says we can have 5 biscuits a day.

Each.

How many did we get?

One.

Each.

Right, you're getting an idea of the nature and scale of the problem now, yes?

This is a pack of luxury chicken, banana, honey, chamomile and lavender biccies.

On the pack it says 'feed any time'.

We got one.

Each.

                                     

This is a pack of bics for Chubby Dogs.

Bit rude, we thought, but a biscuit is a biscuit and if they're low-cal, then hey,

that means we can eat lots of them, right?

Wrong.

We got one. Each.

Can't go wrong with these, surely?

A tub full of liver training treats.

The label says we can have 60 - yes, that's right, 60 - of them a day. Each.

But you can see the pattern that is emerging, can't you?

We got one. Each.

And because they are training treats we had to do a sit and wait for them.

It appears the Madwoman is unable to add up beyond one.

It's a miracle we haven't starved.

We can only be grateful that division and fractions are equally utterly beyond her.

But just in case, we are keeping sharp knives away from her and

we will be buying her an abacus for her birthday.

Christmas round up

Wow.

Has it really been that long since our last blog?

Although we have been busy ... hope you all had a good Christmas. 

Ours went like this: 

First of all we had to pose in our new Christmas jumpers.

Nice and warm and snuggly, and its not that we're ungrateful, but we really wanted to get on

with the presents and the turkey.

But oh no. We were redressed in our Tron outfits and forced to

go out for a Christmas walk. The Madwoman reckoned it would help us work up an appetite

for Christmas lunch.

As if we needed any exercise to help us stuff ourselves with turkey ...

Finally we got round to present unwrapping ... we had presents from Grandma, our Madwoman, our Auntie Ju and our doggodmother Sarah. Hope they aren't all expecting

us to write thank you letters. We're only just catching up with our blog and

Facebook pages.

Our Grandma immediately tried to steal one of Archie's presents,

a honking crocodile. She said she was just trying to play with it with him.

But we know better. Pensioners are getting a bit out of order these days.

We politely removed it from her before she could try and

take it home, pretending it was hers. 

Angel sensibly took her presents a safe distance away, out of reach

of Grandma's light fingers ...

And then, at last, it was Turkey Time!

As you won't want to watch us eating, we'll leave you with a musical interlude instead...

All wrapped up

You never know what you're going to learn from one day to the next.

As it is nearly Christmas, this week we thought we would share some of the gift-wrapping tips we have learned while on walks at Chiltern Open Air Museum.

This is how you gift-wrap a wall

If you have a really big present, 

you can always substitute tinsel for wrapping paper.

This is how you gift-wrap a Visitor's Centre.

Animals can be more difficult,

but we thought this was a fair attempt at gift wrapping a horse

 And this is us, also all wrapped up, although against the cold rather than for Christmas.

The Madwoman says we look like special effects from Tron, but what does she know?

Wassailling ...

 We went a did a bit of wassailing this morning outside Grandma's door.

The Madwoman failed to appreciate the finer points of our little recital and said 

that if you took the double esses out of the wassail it would be closer to the mark. 

And then she remembered she hadn't yet delivered our Christmas presents to her godson and his brother. More incompetence and inefficiency. We're just surprised she didn't wait a 

little longer and call them Easter gifts.

And then after a busy morning playing Santa Paws, we had a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Very lazy.

That's why we're late posting.

In case you were wondering ...

In which Two wise wippitts and a Madwoman follow a star

A walk with a seasonal feel at Chiltern Open Air Museum yesterday.

They were having a Nativity themed afternoon. 

So we suppose that means we went a bit native.

We arrived early to avoid the crowds and found this star.

So we followed it, as you do.

The Madwoman started humming "We three Kings of Orient are," although

we pointed out that actually we were two wippitts and a Madwoman.

Unfortunately this observation failed to shut her up and instead she just changed the words from Three Kings to Two Wippitts instead.

Our first stop was Jerusalem.

Really.

Us wippitts get around you know.

It may look like the village green to you, but the sign was unmistakeable.

As there is a place called Egypt just a few miles away from here, our credulity wasn't stretched too much.

Then we went on to Bethlehem.

The Madwoman said that she visited 

Bethlehem in Wales once and it was just as cold and wet.

Definitely sleeps two wippitts

We checked out the accommodation at the stable: plenty of straw and a cosy looking crib.

But no five star Michelin catering and so we went home. 

Because for wippitts, that's what Christmas is all about: roast turkey.

 

Evicted from the stable.
We would have invited them home
with us, but there was no spare room on the beanbag ...

What we did at Christmas

We hope you all had a good Christmas!

This is sort of how ours went:

Oi! Don't you think it's time

that we got our presents?

Oh for goodness sake.

They're up here!

Tear it! Just tear the paper!

Grandma has no idea how to have a good time opening prezzies!

Come on, get your teeth into it!

Look, like this!

Oh at last!

Thought we were never going to get our presents.

And once the paper is off, the squeaking of soft toys is of course, one

of the traditional sounds of Christmas ...

What did you get?

Do you want to swop?

Roast turkey dinner!

 

Time to catch up on a nap now ...

Not quite the night before Christmas

Yes, we know!

But it's nearly Christmas, so you can't still

expect us to fit in all our usual blogs!

We've been busy doing this

 

 

and this

 

 

and are trying to catch up on this

 

 

And if that wasn't enough, the Madwoman has pressganged

us into helping do the 12 days of Christmas for Haunting Hounds and

Dog Friendly Gardening.

We told her we already did it last year, but she says it happens every year.

Does that count as recycling?

Being good AND busy ...

We have once again been busy ...

Let's see, there's been:

 

 helping with The Madwoman's Advent calendar on Facebook

to help raise funds for Scruples Whippet Rescue;

 

 

inspecting progress on the Dog friendly garden at Tilley Farm near Bath;

 

helping to put up Christmas decorations;

 

visiting our dog-godmother Sarah Fisher - she refused to pose for a photo as she'd left her make up bag at home so here's a picture of The Madwoman's horse Flash instead, who always looks good wearing a veneer of mud ...

 

So Santa, yes, we have been very very good!