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.