Busy, busy

Winter is going to be here soon... Boooo!!!! Yuck. We've been busy around here lately getting ready for it. Of course, Connor isn't our only "kid". I have two horses, a rabbit, a dog and fish too. We're trying something new with the water tank for the horses this year. Every year we've had to run a tank heater (it gets below zero here), and that adds $100-300 to our heating bill each month. Jon and I are working on a solar option. Hopefully it works. I need to finish painting the tank box today since it's going to rain the rest of the week. I'll post pictures when it's done and keep my fingers crossed that it works well enough that I don't have to run the darn heater.

Yesterday, I re-did the rabbit cage. Well, pen is more like it. Cocoa is about 6 years old. She's a castor Rex and came from the humane society. We got her in August 2005. The bunny cages they sell in the stores are too small unless you give them tons of play time every day. So she has a puppy exercise pen (x-pen). It's 48x48in. Jon attached a sheet of vinyl flooring over a piece of plywood for the floor. She's had this set up for pretty much the whole time we've had her. I wanted to give her a shelf for more exercise and more privacy. We used a piece of scrap wood, used dowel rods below for support, and carpet stair treads for the top. The new shelf is 18x48 and gives her lots of space to stretch out. I added the new hay rack too. It's a wire basket I found at Big Lots. The rugs are 100% cotton and also a Big Lots find.