Sadi And Her Mini-Me

I found a free pattern for an amigurumi Pit Bull Dog. Though Sadi isn't a pit bull she looks similar. We  have come to the conclusion that she is a 'Dalien Dervish Dog.

Wild Things

The other morning we had several visitor come cruising through. We counted 12 deer, the most we've seen on our property in quite some time.

Yesterday we went for a drive to see if we could find any wild horses. Here's granddaughter posing in front of the BLM sign that talks about the wild horses of the area.

And speaking of wild things... My daughter and her daughter!

Finally we found some wild horses.

We knew they had to be close because of all the horse potties on the road and the tracks in the snow.

This one was hiding behind the big fallen log.

Hello!

I love it when we go looking for the wild horses and we actually find them. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Santa comes to our house on Christmas Eve. Here are a few photos of the fun.

Everybody went to look at the lights at the fair last night. I had to stay home to take a bath.

Looks like all is ready.

Our stockings are stuffed to the top and overflowing. Maybe next year Hubby and I will have separate stockings instead of sharing. (More room!)

The tree with the goodies.

Coming back from looking at the lights.

Hubby opening a gift.

My brilliant children.

Granddaughter opening gifts.

Santa ran out of paper for this one.

A beautiful pink guitar for a beautiful girl!

The aftermath.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and rest of the year!!

Leftover Yarn

You may have seen the Fed Ex commercial where Grandma has made a bunch of "cozies" and sent them to her family. I figured Clyde needs a cozy but maybe not quite as dramatic as the one she made for the family's wirehaired pointer (I love that even his tail is covered like a sleeve). 

I certainly don't have that kind of talent but I thought I'd give it a go. I have a bunch of leftover yarn from my various crocheting projects and used some. Every so often I'd call Clyde over for a "fitting" to see how I was doing. The only thing I didn't do was put the buttons on. I fastened instead with safety diaper type pins.

Look how happy he is! He just loves it. Okay, maybe not. I guess it needs a little more work...

And here is the colorful yarn eater blanket I finally finished. I think the varigation is making it look kind of off.

But here I took a picture without the flash. You can see the texture better and it looks more even. In any case I am not going to rip it out and redo! (PS-It's draped on a queen size bed.)

And just for laughs I took a picture of a sign I made at work.  Caligraphy is definitely not my strong suit! Probably why they don't ask me to make signs. (The regular sign making people were off.)

I started my vacation today and all I can say is YIPPEEE! 

Christmas Decorations

I love decorating for Christmas. As far as I'm concerned I just can't decorate too much. The only problem is getting stuff out and actually putting it up. 

This year I added a new thing. I strung some silver star garland back and forth over the entry way and hung small ornament stars and crocheted stars.

 Trust me; it looks better in real life than in the pictures.

And once again Hubby got a giant Charlie Brown tree. The only thing that saves it is I found an unused pack of tinsel and it really helps fill in the empty spots.

On the plus side it's really easy to fill the water bowl on the backside because the branches are not real close together. Also, you can't beat a $5 cut your own tree! (Permits cost $5 from the Forest Service.) Maybe I'll be able to go with him next year to help him choose a tree.

And since I was crocheting all those stars I had to figure out what to do with them.  I took some to work and hung them around the Service Desk. And then I put some up in our windows. The paper chain is a countdown to Christmas (pull one chain off every day until the last one, which is Christmas Day).

I also learned how to make 3-D snowflakes and hung them and more crocheted stars from the ceiling fan.

I don't think I'm finished yet. I still have some star garland, but I don't know how much. I can whip out the crocheted stars in no time so I'll see how that goes. 

I really need more decorations because I'm just having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit for some reason this year. More decorations should help.

PS--I finally finished that colorful yarn eater afghan (you can see it thrown in the middle of the sofa in the last photo).  I'll take good photos to show later. 

Ailing Citrus

My poor trio of citrus trees were not doing well. I had taken them off the back deck because the wind blows a lot right there and they do not like the wind at all. So I moved them to the garage side. Once there it was a fairly simple matter to move them in and out of the garage as the night time temperatures started dipping down.

But then it stayed cold and if not at freezing temps then pretty close. That meant they had to stay inside the garage. They didn't like that very much either.

I remembered last year we had them in the upstairs room at one of the only south facing windows in the house and they seemed to like that very well. They even started getting new leaves. So I decided to put them back up there.

Only this time I wanted them to have a dedicated shelf that would keep them a little higher off the ground to have more "sun time".

I came up with a simple design and went to work.

I started out with a frame of four 2" x 4"s cut and put together in a rectangle. Then I got some 1" x 4"s and notched the edge pieces to fit the bottom of the frames. The two center boards were then spaced and attached to the bottom.

On the top I simply spaced the 1" x 4"s on top with a slight overhang on the side edges. I attached casters on the bottom to make it easier to move about.

The trees got planted in new, bigger pots, with fresh soil and even a bit of special "citrus" soil. I'm hoping they weren't too stressed to recover.

 So now I know how to make a simple bench/shelf.

Just In Time For Thanksgiving

First off is a recipe for lovers of coconut and almond. A girl at work made it and I asked for the recipe. I don't know where it came from but here is the copy she sent me:

It's very easy to make and even easier to eat! We didn't add the garnish. But I'm betting it would be really good with a light drizzle of melted chocolate over the top too. Next time...

And also just in time for Thanksgiving...  Our oven door broke.  This is the third time since we've lived here that the door broke. It starts off with the spring breaking and the door not closing properly. We have to put a wedge in the door to keep it shut while we bake something. Last night however, Hubby was trying to shut the door, the front glass came loose and was dangling. While trying to reattach that the entire door came out on the one side and we couldn't get it back in. 

To make matters worse, this is a microwave/wall oven combination. The microwave still works fine but if we were to replace the oven that means we'd have to put another combo in. We can't take the oven out without taking the microwave out.

I'm kind of at a loss here as to what to do.  We had wanted to remodel the kitchen eventually but can't afford to do it right now. I really don't want to buy another door that I know will just break again in a few months. But I'm not really wanting to buy a new oven if we are going to eventually remodel because I don't know if we'll be reconfiguring any of the spaces (I really want a 36" gas stove top which will definitely mean moving things around). 

Any suggestions?

UPDATE  We managed to get the door back on and though the spring is still sprung we have an idea on how to keep the door closed. I'll post pics on that later. Meanwhile off to the store for Command Hooks.

UPDATE 2:  Went to ACE and got a new bungee cord and Command Hooks.

You can see here that our simple solution works like a charm!

Thanksgiving is saved!  

Wide Load

One of Ollie's favorite spots:  spread out over the arm of the sofa under the lamp.

2013 Wood Pile

Just under 10 hours of wood splitting and a few hours of stacking and our wood pile for the year is done.

We definitely have more than last year. Last year we didn't have enough to last the winter.

I hope it's enough this year! 

Giant Mistake

Last night I was happily going around and around on my latest afghan project. At one point I thought I'd lay it out to see how big it was getting, plus it seemed to be taking just a little too long to get to the next corner. Hmmm.

I laid it across the back of the sofa and... Uh oh!  How in the world did that happen???? I totally missed a corner. Way back. Way, way, WAAAAY back!!

Well there was no ignoring the mistake and no getting around it. It meant one thing. I was going to have to rip it all back. 

I think I counted at least 18 rounds that had to be undone. Not just rows, but since this is crocheted around and around it meant 18 rounds. Ugh. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to take it back because of the fuzziness of the yarn made it snag up every so often. I had to carefully unsnarl the mini tangles in order to not have to break the yarn and retie and make extra knots.

This is what the corner is supposed to look like.

This is what it looked like. I can't believe I didn't notice this sooner!

All ripped back and ready to start over. Only one break in the yarn. ;-) 

Well, I guess this will keep me busy a little longer than I thought, though not in the way I had hoped!

Cheers!

Painting Again

I decided it was time to get started on the painting again. Here I am up in the corner doing the edging.

Originally I was just going to free-hand the edging but to my surprise Hubby offered to tape everything. That sure made things easier for me! I don't mind the painting so much as the prepping/taping off.

One wall done. It's a beigey sort of color and we didn't use primer. We had wanted a paler shade of gray than what's currently on the wall and it turned out how just how we had hoped.

You can kind of see the difference in the corner and in the second picture.

The next sections should be fairly easy because they are mostly windows. But that will have to wait a few days. I'm back at work for the day and Hubby and son will be splitting wood this weekend. I'm off Sunday and Monday and will probably be stacking the newly split wood on Sunday, so maybe I'll be back to painting on Monday.