Vignettes

In the kitchen...

 

 

 

In the living room...

 

In the hallway...

 

In the bedroom...

 

 I hope you enjoyed a few peeks around our little house. It is slowly turning more and more into our cozy little home. A few special touches here and there, and we'll be all set. I love this process, and I love remembering the little in-between stages. ♥

Little.

Little boat.

Little Bagheera.

Little flame.

Little nook.

Little face.

Little seahorse.

Little dish.

Its a little, cozy kind of day.

Last night...

...we celebrated my baby sister Krista's 18th birthday with (vegan) pineapple upside-down cake!

And I found this guy hanging out on the front porch, right under the light beside the door. He looked like he was waiting to come inside!

Here are a few other night visitors on my front porch:

Its a beautiful day....

We just got back from Walk #2, and I actually thought to take my camera with me this time, so I could show you our little neighborhood.

The house on the corner is registered with the Historical Buildings council or whatever for the town... I'm not sure what it's exact significance is (I should probably read the plaque on the front of the house), but it is beautiful. This is the woman's backyard... around the side of the house, she has a Japanese garden. Oh, and in the front of her house, she has like a Samurai museum or something.... you can see all sorts of actual Samurai outfits and statues and stuff.... No, I wasn't peeking in her windows, you can see them from the street!

Our house is right across the street from a graveyard. Its really very pretty.

And.... we have basil!

Good morning

Its morning #2 with Duffy here, and still no accidents - yay! I was a little worried that I would find a 'surprise' waiting to be cleaned up this morning because he wasn't in the bed this morning when I woke up, but I looked through every room and didn't find anything. He seems to be doing just fine, as you can see from the pictures above... I took that this morning after our morning walk. This is seriously good. I think he's used to our 'routine' already - he knows which door to go to when he needs to go outside; he went for quite a few hours yesterday without begging to go outside (after the initial 42,000 times we went out first thing in the a.m.). So that's good.

The real test is going to be how he is when he's all alone. I was home with him all day yesterday, and Teddy's off work today (plus I'll be home since my Oceanography exam is at 8:30 tonight), but he'll be alone for a few hours tomorrow morning while I take my Hydro and Chem finals...I bought him a Busy Bone last night at the store, but I'm wondering if having a buddy would keep him better occupied...? There are tons of free dogs in the local newspaper.... (if my parents are reading this - you should check out the paper if you need a 'replacement'!!)

Brrrrr!

Well, its another cold day here on my mountain. The high is going to be about 46 today (with the wind chill)...that's pretty chilly, considering it was in the 80s just about 10 days ago.

Monday I finished bringing in my 'cold weather clothes', which includes a huge assortment of hats, scarves, and mittens. I actually gave them their own drawer this year!

Sorry for such a terrible picture - this side of my room doesn't get much light, so the flash was a little wonky. But you can clearly see that I have too many winter accessories.

Duffy got in on the action too.

I've been studying and writing since 6:00 this morning. I have a Lit. exam today, and an exam PLUS a paper due tomorrow in Psych. tomorrow. Super fun. Needless to say, I won't get much sleep tonight. At least I have next week to look forward to: Halloween and the Straylight Run show!!

Frosty Mountain Morning

It is COLD this morning. The temperature right now is 34 degrees F, so I can only speculate how chilly it was overnight. Just look at the frost! This is the view of my garden out my kitchen window.

I am not a cold-weather kind of girl; so I camped out on the floor in front of the space heater with a lap tray to eat my breakfast... all I need now is a cozy little blanket tent!

I still have a yucky cold, but luckily (?) today I've had much better luck at actually, uh, expectorating all the yuckiness.... sorry, there's just no eloquent way to say that! But at least that hopefully means that I'm on the road to getting better!

I'm not looking forward to this week at school; I have 3 exams (one today) and a paper due, all before Thursday. Bleh. I think this morning I'm going to go out to the 'bungalow' (the moniker fondly given to our little shed) to dig-out my giant box of scarves and mittens, my (and Duffy's) favorite winter blanket, and probably the little space heater for my bedroom.

I guess it really is Autumn now!

The "Filth Factory"

So, I told you my dad and I spent the weekend cleaning out the basement (aka the Filth Factory; thanks Chris for that nice name). We finished up ONE CORNER of the basement last night around 9:30, and this is what I have to take to the dump today:

See, my dad has this little *problem* with keeping boxes.... as in, he'll keep empty boxes for 10 years. Yeah. Empty packages. I'd say 99% of the boxes I'm taking to the dump today (recycling!) are empty computer boxes. My dad has been building/upgrading our computers since 1992, and probably hasn't thrown out a single box since then. He just keeps them...in a corner of the basement. It was hilarious because as we were going through all of the piles of junk, it became more and more clear that it was all HIS junk! So ha!

And, as I said, this is only from ONE CORNER of the basement. There are actually other ROOMS to go through down there. I think this is a summer-long project. But at least we've gotten the ball rolling.

*******

In other news, I just listed an awesome vintage dress in the shop. My mom bought it for me a few weeks ago, and sadly its too small in the *chest area*. Sigh.

Refresh

That's my goal for this week: Refresh! I have been in a "spring-cleaning" mode for the past week. I just felt like it was time to go through everything, get organized, and cleanse my surroundings. I feel so refreshed when I spruce up my place. I'm not really getting rid of too much... mostly I'm packing away my 'things' (read: decorative junk that takes up space) from my room. I love them, I just don't need them in my tiny room. Someday when I move out again, I will have enough stuff to fill an entire house. But for now, I have one tiny room.

And its already filled.

So far, everything's going well. Its just very overwhelming. We're pulling everything out of the shed, going through it, putting it in piles: "keep", "donate", "trash"; then tomorrow we're going to organize the "keeps", donate the "donates", and...well, you get the idea.

In the midst of my cleaning, I came across some bins full of clothes I didn't want anymore. I picked out a handful of things that will be just perfect for.....a secret project for the shop! I won't say too much, but I will hint that this little guy may be involved in some way.... Hmmm.....

I also found some of my vintage heels that I've collected in the past few years.

How freakin' great are these?

Now, I'm definitely not saying this is a good thing (please, don't think I'm into furs + leather. Ew. No.); but these are really alligator skin. I didn't even realize it when I bought them. I just liked the shape and the pattern. It wasn't until I got them home that I read the inside of the shoe and saw that they were real alligator leather. But anyway, they're vintage. I got them at the Goodwill for $3. I did a search one time on Ebay for the brand (they're called Shenanigans), but I can't find any info about the brand now. If anyone knows anything, I'd be interested in the history so i could figure out how old these shoes are.

I also found these, and because they're about a half-size too small for me, they are now available in le shop. They're super cute and pretty comfortable, and cheap!!

These are NOT real reptile skin...they are 100% Vegan-friendly!

Tote bags, snow boots, and macaroni and cheese!

Tote bags are back in the shop! These are even better than the last ones... they're embroidered! Right now I only have 2, but the listings in the shop are for customized ones - I hand-draw, and then hand-embroider each design, so every bag is completely unique and one-of-a-kind.

I just really liked how these looked, lined up beside our generator outside.

I saw a recipe somewhere recently for vegetable macaroni and cheese. Of course, I couldn't for the life of me remember in which magazine (or if it was indeed in a magazine!) the recipe was in, so I made up my own. It turned out quite delicious, indeed!

Mmm... fresh broccoli, red peppers, and portabella caps, with ricotta and cheddar...

.....leftover noodles from dinner the other night, and....

.....a box of Kraft Spiderman macaronis. :D