Gadget

We discovered a new gadget this weekend:

No, it is not a whisk. It is a head massager/scratcher. If you don't believe me, you can read more about it (and buy it) here.

It kept us entertained for a bit. We scratched our own heads:

We scratched each other's heads:

And plain had fun with it:

Even Pellet got a head scratch:

Call us goofy and weird, but the truth of the fact is that this product actually exists and it not only beats eggs, it is actually marketed as a head massager. It's definitely worth the $5 (in average) investment!

Advent is Here

So I made a wreath! 

Doggie Door

When we first got Pellet, we had a thought, for a split second, about getting a doggie door for him. Then we thought "he would NEVER fit through a doggie door". 

Well, we've been proved wrong. The rental house has a doggie door and the dogs love it! Well... Cali loves it. Pellet is still skeptical about it.

And yes, I do get taken out at the end of one of these videos... camera hit the floor and everything! It was funny.

Hello World

This happens every once in a while... the first time it happened I felt really bad that I had gone a few weeks - if not longer - without blogging. I felt horrible that I had let my handful of readers down. I could picture them visiting the blog every couple of days with hopes of reading about the dogs or reading about whatever in our lives only to be hit with the same post they probably had already memorized the title of.

Now I'm realizing that this is normal. Sometimes, my brain overflows with ideas and I can't blog fast enough. Sometimes I find myself blogging twice in one day! Then, there are other times when I get ideas and for whatever reason just can't get around to blogging, so the ideas leave. Other times, I get no ideas.

I guess somewhere between work, Pinterest (how can one spend so many hours online looking at pretty things?), FarmVille (yes, yes, yes, go ahead and shake your head, I love FarmVille. There.), two awesome friends getting married in 2012, Jeopardy, going back to the lake to pick up even more things from the other house and everything else that comes along with life, blogging has taken the back seat.

Hopefully blogging is ready to ride shotgun now!

A Shady Project

I think I might have mentioned at some point that the rental house has no backyard privacy. This is what the backdoor opens up to:

Having been a country girl for the past eight years, I could not handle the lack of privacy. So after a long and unsuccessful search for the perfect shades that I had in my head, I decided to make shades myself, my way (which does not involve sewing)

Fabric:

Adhesives (I ended up using LOTS more of the Heat n Bond):

Tension rods to hang up the shades - we can't drill on the porch structure, so we had to get creative:

I measured and cut the fabric and then glued the side seams with the invisible stitch:

Then folded it one more time and ironed it on using the seam tape:

Then did the same for the top and the bottom and glued it using the seam tape:

Leaving enough space for the tension rods to fit through:

The ends of the top and bottom hems were coming undone before the shades were even up. So I sewed it by hand to secure the edge of the seam:

Here are the before and after!

Originally all the sides were going to be covered - but it might be a little overkill... Did I do this all on my own, you might ask? Well, no! I had helpers!

And there you have it! My first official "crafty" project!

To Bark or Not To Bark

Before writing away about "To Bark or Not To Bark", I do have to clarify a couple of points:
1. Our dogs bark. We have been teaching our dogs not to bark outside now that we live in a neighborhood. When our dogs are outside and they start barking at someone they see, they sound like they are going to eat the person, we tell them to "hush" and for the most part, they hush. If they don't hush, we bring them in the house.
2. I am very defensive of our dogs. I know they aren't perfect, but one thing I don't handle very well is criticism of Pellet and/or Cali.

Okay, now we can start.

Today as I was leaving work, I was talking to Norm and he told me that one of our next door neighbors told him this morning that "the dogs barking is a big problem" and that "they bark too early in the morning" [they aren't out before 7am] and her bedroom is right on the corner where they bark. So Norm apologized.

Norm tells me this and I get all worked up, and in a very Fernanda-manner start spitting out: "7am is not early" and "we tell them to hush!" and "they are dogs for crying out loud" and "other dogs in the neighborhood bark". Norm tells me to just be conscious of the dogs barking for no reason [which I always do] and to not let it get to me.

The whole drive home my blood is boiling with thoughts like "what if the neighbor calls the police and we get fined and what if they end up calling the landlord and we get kicked out, then we won't have anywhere to live and we will still be responsible for this rent and our house at the lake hasn't rented, so it will be two rents plus rent wherever else we end up and we only have 10 more months in this house and after that we need to find a place with more yard and privacy, maybe I need to start looking now..." YOU GET THE POINT.

I pull in my driveway and the other neighbor (older lady from Miami - shout out to Natasha and all the lovely Miami peeps!) tells me "honey, when I'm outside and the dogs start barking at me, you don't have to bring them in the house" [the other day she was in her backyard watering flowers and Pellet and Cali saw her and barked crazy at her, so I naturally brought them in the house]. THEN, she continues "I actually prefer that they bark, because that lets me know that there is someone around and they bark loud, so they'll scare anybody away" yeah... I'm so confused right now as she continues "even when they bark in the house when they hear people outside, that's great! Let's people know not to mess with them".

So I thanked our lovely neighbor from Miami, expressed my concerns about disturbing the peace, which she told me to not worry about, and walked in my house to tend to my lovely beasts that were about to come through the window.

Pretty

Pretty cotton fields by our house (might want to click on the picture to make them big):