Paws on Top!

I feel like today was one day where I just went go-go-go. Tomorrow is looking the same. Ugh.

Today I woke up, emailed a friend, and then took Mike the dog to the vet. His Glaucoma is not under control right now, so we're going to take a very aggressive method of treating it and hopefully this will start to come down. I feel very bad for him, it's not like he can tell us that he's in pain, so I feel like I really need to advocate for him. I really want to do everything that I can to avoid having to enunculate the eye. Poor guy. One of the things that I did do that I know he likes is I found these cool dog treats where you can put a pill into the center of them, and then you pinch it closed and the dog willingly eats the pill! There's no spitting out of the pill! It's like a miracle. I am glad that he gets something that's tasty,and the pill goes into the dog.

Molly is Molly. How can a yellow lab named Molly not be the most effervescent creature on this planet? She makes me laugh at least once a day. It's pretty nifty. She's allergic to bug bites and whenever she goes outside she sits down in one spot on the lawn, and I recently looked at the spot and saw ants all over it. So we bought some anti-itch spray a couple weeks ago, and it seems to be working well. Again, I hate it when the dogs are hurting or are uncomfortable.

I'll leave you with a little game we like to play.

It's called Paws on Top.

First I put my hand on Molly's paw, then she pulls her paw out from underneath, and puts it on my hand. The game is on. It involves lots of long gazes away from the field of play for stealth paw placing. It always makes me laugh.

So, without further ado. I leave you with a little Paws On Top action.

Tuesday fun

I've decided to tackle today and plow through my chores. So, why am I watching Heroes? I love me some heroes! But I'm watching Heroes because I'm FAHREEZING. The promised temperature drop hasn't happened yet, but it's supposed to, and then this afternoon we're supposed to get some of that dreaded snow. I'm in a little state of shock, it's not that I didn't know I was moving to a snow area in April, heck, I moved from Boston, so that's not the shock. It's that...well, it's cold, and this summer was gloriously hot. It really was just idyllic. I wish that I could explain to you how marvelous it was. Anyway, I'm taking the time to wrap myself in a blanket and warm up.

I'm working on the deck today. I have taken the tiki torches and tossed them, removed the zip ties from the posts that were holding them up - - I need to find a little more of a classy way of holding up the tiki torches over the winter! I've also pulled in the plant holders and during the day I'm going to take the chairs down into the basement. I have no desire to drag the table around though. I'll leave that to the man.

In other goals I really want to get the trash in the basement into the garage. Trash in basement? I've been going through boxes like crazy. There's a ton of things that I want to just shed myself of from my life with Gary. I'm so glad to be able to do this on my own schedule. I'm ready to do this now.

When I finish with that stuff I'm going to take my scrapbook paper out of the horizontal storage and put it into cropper hopper holders. I really dislike the way my cardstock is being stored, and just need to start tackling that and getting it into a use able setup.

I will post my recipe for cheesy garlic bread later today. It's so yummy.

Cheescake is now full circle

The cheesecake that I so diligently made on Sunday was taken out of the refrigerator tonight after a meal of lasagne and a salad with a slab of delicious, incredible cheese bread. I will post the recipe tomorrow. It's really THAT good.

Today I didn't get a lot done, I hate it when I feel like I've spent the day washing dishes from one thing to the other. I even lost patience with the dishwasher and pulled out various dishes so that I could just get them put away.

Tomorrow I hope to get lots of stuff done. It's really rewarding to see things get finished, but it's even better to finish things so that I can play without guilt!

NaBloPoMo

I'm doing National Blog Posting Month. Mostly because I'm waaaay to lame to do NaNoWriMo.

So I'm going to challenge myself to do this everyday. Some days are going to be pretty lame though!

Today was a heck of a day. The oldest kid worked very late, so she stayed at a friends apartment near the club. Today she was very tired, and slept through a chunk of church. It was annoying, but I was honestly glad that she was there. It's nice to have them around, even if they aren't always cheerful.

Then we went off to the store and dropped a huge chunk of change on groceries.

After we finished putting things away I made a pumpkin chocolate chip cheesecake! I used this recipe.
I haven't tried it yet, but I will tomorrow for dinner. I tossed in a few mini morsels ( roughly a cup full) into the batter before pouring it into the pan. I've never made a cheesecake before, but you can be sure that I'm going to do it again. It wasn't super easy, but it wasn't as difficult as other things I've made.

We then made grilled steaks for us, and grilled a couple chicken breasts for the eldest and her buddy. I made a couple quick side dishes... green beans with bacon and garlic, and potato gnocci and an alfredo sauce. It was wonderful. The whole meal was just a pleasure, and I'm looking forward to heating up the steak and gnocci for lunch tomorrow. I've discovered that grilled meats actually heat up quite nicely on the grill. I just set them on a piece of aluminum and then heat it up that way. So if you hear a lot of happy, yummy sounds in this area of the country around noon, it'll be me eating up the leftovers!

Tomorrow night for dinner I'm going to make Lasagne, and we'll follow that up with the pumpkin cheesecake from the cooking part of our show today.

I am feeling REALLY good lately. My workouts are paying off. I feel stronger, and my clothes are getting bigger. It's quite nice!

Don't forget to "Fall Back!"

Well, today I taught the class at the store. It was not exactly a hard class, it was basically one where you use the scraps that you already have. I tried to teach them to pull out scraps that they liked, blur their eyes to make sure the papers all work together. Then to choose a background piece of cardstock to help all the colors blend.

Pretty simple, but still a lot of work! We used a ton of punches and I taught them all about visual triangles and ways to use simple shapes. It was fun, and one of the class students was very fun, her layouts came together very fast. The other student was a little slower, but had some great ideas for her page.

In the end I think that I learned a ton of things, I need to make sure the class knows that time is a ticking. I think that I'm also going to work on handouts so that they can have something to go home with. Although they each put together two layouts, so that worked out really well!

In other news, during the Round Up, I managed to finish every one of the challenges! I'm liking that too! I like it when I get a ton of things done, and I'm glad to be able to scrap those dreaded graduation pictures that I've been avoiding.

OK. Now, off to bed. I need to remember to "Fall Back" with the clock in the AM. An extra hour of sleep! NIRVANA!

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I teach my scrapping class at the local store. I really am looking forward to it, and hope that the ladies in the class really enjoy themselves and learn lots.

Not much else to say!

Loving my stuff!

I just went downstairs to grab a few of my crafting supplies, and I started to laugh at all of the Fiskars tools that I have sitting on my craft table. It makes me laugh when I see how much of their products that I have and use.

My favorite is the old standby paper trimmer. I also have the rotary trimmer with all the cool shape blades, but my favorite, and the one that I reach for time and time again is their simple trimmer. I like that I can see where the blade hits the paper so that I can slice out just what I need for my project.

My second favorite tool is the Titanium Nitride Mighty Snip. I use it to snip one of the spokes on the roll of adhesive as I pop it into my ATG gun. It really has made loading the gun a simple process ( if I could just remember each time which direction the take up reel needs to go! Ugh!).

My third, or perhaps Very first tool would be the 12 x 18 self healing mat. It's always right there, beneath my project, protecting my table top. I don't use it to cut on, I usually throw a glass mat on top of it when I'm using an exacto, but I do use it for gluing and painting and everything else that gets dirty. I've found that it comes as clean as I need it to when I'm finished, and it does a fantastic job protecting my table top.