A craft giveaway

It is my duty to tell you about a give-a-way for the one year blogaversary of Sibling Craftery - you could win lots of crafty goodness, and they're giving you ten (yes, 10) ways to enter!

Go here and tell them I send you.

And if you win, don't forget who told you about it*, 'kay?

*that would be me

A Place for Everything

Well not exactly everything but a few little items anyway.

Here's the story:

Recently my mom sent me some boxes of childhood books and games and stuff and in it was an unfinished project from when my dad taught high-school woodwork. Some kid abondoned it and he intended on finishing it, unfortunately that never happened.

So when my mom sent it to me, I was delighted and worked on it this past weekend, sanding it and painting it and getting it ready to hang on the wall and fill with little things. So here is is folks, ta da:

Gutters - yuck!

Sometimes, even though we think we're the ones in control - we realize we're not.

For example today's forecast for "RAINFALL WARNING - AT TIMES HEAVY" meant that I could no longer delay the cleaning of the gutters - so that's what I did before work today.

Yup. I did. I wasn't up to me.

Cars are the same way - they are more in control of us than we like to think. Just ask a driver who has one that likes to breakdown! But I'm not saying anything, don't want to jinx anything, my little Heidi* has been good to me.


*Do you have a name for your car, or am I just weird?

Daylight savings - dogs don't know it

The newscasters keep saying 'turn your clocks back, you'll all get an extra hour of sleep'. I see it in the newspapers too. "one hour extra sleep" "more sleep for you" "you get to sleep in"

Okay, I don't know where they live - I sleep 8 hours, no matter what time it is. Nothing extra.

And these people obviously don't have dogs!

My last dog, Jazz, had the best internal clock ever! She knew precisely when it was time to eat (11 hours after her last meal), precisely when it was 6:00am - time for me to get up. When it was 10:30-time for me to give her a chewie bone. When it was 3:30 - time for her walk. When it was 7:30p- time to go inside for the night (when it was summer, I'd stay out in the garden and she'd be with me until that time, then she'd be hanging around the door - I'd let her in, she'd go to her bed and I could return to the garden).

Now Eco doesn't have a clue when it's time to eat (always!) or when it's time for a walk (always!), when it's time for a chewey bone (always!) or when it's time to come in or out (always!) but she can only sleep about 8 hours too. And so, at 5:00am she was up. Dang, I guess I'll sleep on the floor for an hour - except once my brain started to wake up, I realized it used to be 6:00am and she and I are right on schedule.

No extra sleep for us. Daylight savings - dogs don't know it.

Halloween was good

Well Halloween night was pretty good. It's a bit disappointing for the kids when about 60% of the homes weren't giving out candy, that's a lot of walking they've got to do just to get something. And many houses don't make it too clear that they are giving out candy. Basically if a light is on, and there was some sort of Halloween decoration, we'd give it a try. One house had a pumpkin - that's it, and it wasn't even carved, but they were giving out the candies!

And thank you to all the people who did such awesome decoration jobs! There were many homes that included light and sound and I can tell you from being on the street last night that the kids loved it and talked about it. Many people had been buying, building and planning their decorations for weeks. All your efforts were worth it.

And another great thing about last night? The full moon - and at times the clouds rolled across it just perfectly to look like all the scary images we're used to for Halloween. Very fun.

What wasn't great this weekend, was the party our neighbours threw the night before. Man, I think I was having an anxiety attack because of all the firecrackers in our yard, right outside our bedroom window, late at night. If it hadn't have been raining so hard, I'm sure something would have caught on fire! In the morning I went around my yard and collected a baggie full of the firecrackers casings - don't want my puppy to chew on that! I was very unhappy with them - I only had 5 hours sleep. However when I returned from dog walking Saturday afternoon, my neighbour came out and asked if I was mad at them, and I told her I was. She apologized, said it was her husband's 30th birthday and some people they didn't even invite had the firecrackers and they had to kick those people out. Well shucks, why didn't you say so? Situation all better now.

And finally, I must say - after years and years of dreading Halloween because of Jazz's severe noise phobia, it was so nice to have a happy dog who just wanted to say 'hi' to everyone who knocked on the door, and couldn't care less about all the house rattling bangs! From now on, I'll always own a gun dog (well probably not, but anyway).

I hope you all had a safe and wonderful Halloween.
A special shout-out to Cynthia and Norm as it was their 12th Anniversary yesterday- Congratulations!

Trick or Treat?

Besides all the lovely cards and presents I've received for Halloween -thank you - very much appreciated, I received one rather interesting card: This is an edible card for Eco! Isn't that a thoughtful idea?

Tonight we're going to a Halloween Party at our Puppy Class - and I hope I'll be able to get some photos to show you our costume. (sneek peak, above)

Shopping Adventure

Saturday, I went with some friends to Richmond. First we drove to a mall where we all met, then we took a train, transferred to another train, and then transferred to another train. The last one was the new Canada Line which took us into Richmond and there we shopped at Aberdeen Mall and Yaohan Centre. At Aberdeen we had lunch and shopped at Daiso, at Yaohan we looked at books and introduced Mike and Cynthia's mom to bubble tea.

I picked up this adorable embroidery book. There were so many other amazing 3-d beading and embroidering books there but the prices were a bit steep for my budget. So I could only get one.

It took longer than it would to drive and it was much more work (walking and standing on trains and all that) and I know that the trains are better for the environment and only cost $2.50 and it was fun to see all the interesting people... but I think I prefer driving. Does that make me a bad person?

It was, however, definitely a fun time - besides being with good people, there was lots of laughter and we lucked out weather wise - it was a beautiful sunny day and it was a pretty decent temperature too.

Sunday was much less eventful - it was laundry, dog walking and some cooking - a yummy crabby egg drop soup!

There was more shopping but it was for Jp's dress shirts and ties. Picking ties scares the life out of me, especially when the shirt is coloured and has a pattern! Then what do you do? Luckily Jp has a great eye for style so we can both pick them out.

Now it's back to work and pouring rain. Some weekends sure go by fast.

Bite Sized Puppies

Since I'm hanging around the kitchen to keep an eye on licky-puppy(have to keeping her from licking where she was spayed) so I thought I'd make her some cookies!

I couldn't find my (read:too lazy to look for it) dog bone shaped cookie cutter but I decided that bite sized puppies would be perfectly fine too. Taste test confirmed they are good!

Eco Cone? Ec-one? Econe? E-cone? What do YOU call it?

My sweet little puppy was spayed last Friday - poor little girl, I just hate putting her through this misery but if it helps her lead a long and healthy life, then I guess I have to deal with it. In case you didn't know, spaying your dog can drop her chances of getting mammary cancer to a zero if you spay before their first heat. I already went through that in my early 20's with my Old English Sheepdog - we fought her breast cancer for 3 years, poor girl.

But Eco's having a hard time with the cone/buster collar/e-collar (whatever you'd like to call it). With my last 2 dogs, I think Maxx's poor little brain was small enough that he went along with it and Jazz was so eager to please me, she didn't have too much of an issue with it either. But Eco? I think she doesn't understand the 'why'. As she looks at me miserably without moving, I keep asking myself if this is a dog that's spoiled or a dog that's confused and I just don't think she's being a brat about it. She looks stressed, and a stressed dog isn't going to heal as fast...... which is why I slept on the floor with her last night. (go ahead say it/think it - you can tell me, I can deal with it)