It's quite worrying when your husband finds a mouse on the carpet.....

Dear All
Well folks I have struggled through my first week back at work after a month off sick.  It WAS hard work so it is with great gratitude that the coming week is a four day week with tomorrow being our May Day Bank Holiday - YES! 

Not a lot to report to you all this week with regards to St. Hils except to say I have asked my sister, Catherine, of Dollhouse Heaven, to make something for me which will hopefully feature at Pentecost. I won't give away too much at this stage however because Catherine is already busy with two other commissions so I don't want her to feel over burdened by her sister's requests!

I guess from my title you may be able to work out that my husband has been vacuuming and cleaning near to where St, Hils is!  I have to be very grateful to him though because, when he finished he came up to see me whilst I was lazing in bed (yep - energy levels still not 100% so morning and sometimes evening naps at home work well!) to tell me he had found a mouse on the floor!  My initial reaction was - WHAT mouse?  Now before you all worry too much I was not thinking of a REAL mouse!   A slight detour is necessary here to explain that we did find something on our lounge carpet one morning some years ago and it was............a beautiful green frog!  We had left the patio door open the evening before so the frog must have jumped in without us knowing!  Fortunately we returned him to the garden with relative ease.  You can see below a photo taken from our baptisms page where two frogs came into St. Hils and thought they could make thier home in the font much to Esther's and the vicar's irritation.  The frogs, by the way, were made by my sister, Catherine.  As Catherine says - her frogs may not be anatomically "perfect" but they have such character...........and she is right they do!  Such cheeky little frogs as they are!

Where was I?  Oh yes.......a mouse found on our carpet!   After all the last time I checked St. Hils, despite the two dolls that had fallen over, the wildlife and pets were all present and correct! 
So initially the questions was - WHICH mouse to which Andrew replied that it was "The brown one".  Ah..........now that still didn't quite narrow it down completely because my rat, Sepp, is also brown.

However we soon understood each other.......it was my metalic/solid one, ie Nunc Dimittis.  HOW Andrew managed to retrieve poor Nunc Dimittis off our blue carpet I have no idea but I also have NO idea how he fell out either.  I do have a confession though.  Since my sickness I have failed to bother putting our acetate sides up for the church so anything may have happened if one of us had knocked the church.  It just goes to show doesn't it?  How easy it is to lose miniature things in your dollshouse........frightening!  If you all remember I have already lost one domino piece in one of my previous photo shoots.  I never found it again either.  To explain further...........we feed the wild birds and also have a free range cockatiel.  Either way it means that we almost always have loose seed that has escaped sitting on our carpet so you can imagine it can't you?  There's me on hands and knees trying to find one of my most tiny items and pick up what I think is something remotely domino shaped and when I bring it to the light is is a black sunflower seed husk discarded by our ground feeding cockatiel or something similar......arghhhhh

My two tiniest wildlife characters are Percy, my spider complete in his web and also a butterfly. 

Both, as you will understand, come out very infrequently and are only in the church for the time of the photo shoot!  Above you can see my butterfly!  How tiny it is?!  Apologies for the rather wonky floral display which was sitting on the pulpit for the day!
This photo was taken and used for our Easter page in 2005 and is no longer on the website so it is lovely to share it with you all again.  Incidentally both our spider and butterfly was made for us by Tinytail Miniatures.

As you all my know I LOVE to digitally manipulate photos and the one above is a typical example.  I loved the idea of the butterfly flying on to Alice's hand and she decided to let it fly off towards the pulpit where it landed on the flower display on the pulpit.  Again taken from our Easter 2005 page.  I chose to include my butterfly in our Easter story of that year because a butterfly is a symbol of new life because it begins life as a catterpillar and, after it pupates, it becomes a completely new creature and new life!  So a butterfly coming into St. Hils on Easter Day has such significance as Jesus has been raised to new life Himself after he was crucified. 

I love including wild life and pets in St. Hils because God made them all too and in the church all of our pets and wildlife are considered so special by God that they have their own patron saint in Saint Francis of Assisi!

 I have no boundaries either as to how many more we will eventually include either......bats in the belfry is a most recently mentioned idea......... so watch this space! 

I confess my energy levels are a bit depleted now sadly so I will leave you all in peace.  I also hear my husband making a pot of tea so that beckons too..............
Til the next time
Sarah
x