The Gus and the Cone...

I interrupt this ridiculously long blog silence to bring you a video of The Gus and his cone. Please ignore my extremely annoying babbling.

He's not nearly as funny with it on as he was last night...but that's probably due to the lack of drugs in his system and his having nearly 24 hours to figure out how to navigate with the thing on.

Oh, and yes...I know...I am supposed to show you our costumes from Halloween and then I have to show you some adorable birdies I made for Traci's baby shower...I think I'll be back tomorrow to do that. I'm in the middle of spray painting and need to get back to it. Also, in case you were wondering....nail polish remover is not ideal for removing spray paint from skin.

Halloween, Part 1

A couple of weeks ago I had the idea to have our friends over to watch some "scary-ish" movies (psycho and some other ones like that). And then I thought it would be fun theme foods. So we cooked up some "bat wings", ie chicken wings, chocolate covered spider legs (pretzel sticks)... etc.

While I was thinking about food, it occurred to me that some creepy decorations might be fun. And then it all kind of spiraled out of control from there.

My cute front room wall went from this.....



...to this (those are old creepy photos with skeletons posing randomly and one creepy looking girl).


My fun art wall went from this.....(please note that the frames are normally not so crooked but I'd been messing with them).



...to this (they also glowed in the dark because I painted the bones with glow in the dark gel).

Anything cute in my house that I wasn't planning on replacing with something creepy got covered in spiderwebs.



But my favorite part of the decorations was my mantle!


It looked WAY cool all lit up. We left the candles burning all night and I thought it added a little something to the movie watching.

But we didn't just decorate the inside of the house...we did the outside too!


We even did some dry ice fog. We had a bucket on each side of the porch and it looked really cool.


I can't forget to show you the creepy table...

I did little "specimen jars" with things I found at the dollar store...

On display were spleens from large blood sucking toads, hairy parasitic forest anemones, imported hill goblin teeth, baby vampire water bats, tiny carnivorous fanged geckos and Amazonian lice maggots.


Tomorrow...the costumes!

Nothing says fun like a little bit of pumpkin carving and some flaming marshmallows!

Last night our little group of friends got together to hang out...dogs included.

We ate some pizza and had some s'mores on Lisa's cool s'more maker.

And we carved pumpkins!

Here is Kevin's...he free-handed his.

All lined up in a row, waiting to be judged!

And the winners are....Kara and Steve!

This one was mine...I had big plans for an elaborate pumpkin but thought my pumpkin was bigger than it was so the template didn't fit. So I had to improvise.

A Good Way to Spend a Saturday Afternoon

Saturday afternoon, Lisa texted me to see if I wanted to go to the Harbor with her and Charlie. As it was an absolutely GORGEOUS day and I love the Harbor (it's a cool area on the lake here with restaurants and shops and docks.... a very pretty place to walk around), I love Lisa and I love Charlie. So I said yes! pick me up when you are on your way.

Now, you might be thinking that Charlie is her husband. Nope, that would be Matthew. Charlie is the OTHER love of her life. Her 14 week old English Bulldog puppy. Who will only sit still for a photo when he is forced to sit on my lap whilst we are driving.




When he is out and about, he is much much trickier to get a photo of.

Unless, of course, he is being held.



Lisa is doing amazing things with that little bulldog. He already knows how to sit, shake hands (with BOTH paws having a different command), he is mostly potty trained and she is working on stay and teaching him how to ride a skateboard.

Did I mention he is 14 weeks old?

I think by the time he is full grown she will have him doing the laundry and picking up his own droppings.

Anyhoo...if you are in the mood to meet A LOT of people, I highly recommend taking an adorable baby bulldog out in public. I think every 3rd person stopped us to say "hi" and pet Sir Charles. It was definitely a fun way to spend an hour this Saturday!

While I was away...my cats did play!

Tonight when I got home, I let the pug in from outside, like I always do. He ran around snorting, grunting, yipping and otherwise spazzing out from joy that I came home, like he always does. And then I turned around to feed him and the cats when out of the corner of my eye I saw something strange....it looked like there was dirt all over the kitchen floor. But we don't have any houseplants (because I would kill them as they don't alert me to their need for sustenance as do other members of the family) so I couldn't figure out why I had dirt on my floor.


Upon further inspection I saw 2 empty baggies on the floor. Baggies that used to be filled with cat nip. I had apparently forgotten to put the catnip back in the drawer. The drawer that I use to prevent my cats from getting at their nip. Little stinkers.

While I was photographing the crime scene Diesel came back to inspect his handiwork and take another hit while his supply was still around.

"Who...me?"

After 2 bags of catnip at their disposal for who knows how long, I am assuming that they had a much more entertaining day than they normally do. Ah....to have been a fly on my wall today.

What is the strangest thing you've noticed your animals to have done while you've been gone?

One foot in front of the other

A while ago I mentioned that I had started a running program and that I would post my progress and, well, then I stopped blogging.

But I didn't stop running.

Well, kind of. I got sick so I stopped for about 2 weeks and had to start over from the beginning which was a minor set back but doable. The bigger set back was at about 4 weeks into the program in my calves would get so tight after about 10 minutes that I could barely walk. It hurt soooo bad. I tried to just power through it for about a week but that wasn't working so then I started stretching my calves 3-4 times during my workout and that seems to do the trick. My calves still get REALLY tight but I am able to keep going.

That leaves me chugging along at week 5ish. And things are going GREAT.

This week the first day was to warm up for 5 minutes, jog for 5 walk for 3, jog for 5, walk for 3 and then jog for 5.

I was kind of nervous about this because the last week had called for a 5 minute run and it was HARD. I didn't know if I could do 3 sets of 5 minutes. But I decided to give it my best and as it turns out .....I can do it!

AND even better it wasn't hard at all. I wasn't out of breath. My legs weren't very tired and I didn't want to stop.

YAY!!

This program is so great that I am actually looking forward to going to the gym and as daunting as it seems right now, I am fully confident I will get to the point where I will be able to run for a full 1/2 hour and then who knows?! Maybe I'll do the 10k running program. But I'm not going to think that far ahead at this point.

One day at a time!

What goals are you working on right now?

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"

Several weeks ago my friend Lisa said she had a surprise lined up for me and another friend to say "thank you" for helping her out recently. I figured that would be fun...something like dinner and a movie or maybe massages or something like that. All of which sounded delightful. But that most of all it would just be fun to get out of the house and have some girl time.

As the night we were all to go approached, Kevin started teasing me that we were going to the Miley Cyrus concert that was in town or that Lisa was taking us clubbing downtown which is so not our scene at all. I told Lisa and she laughed.

I started to get excited about the day before because I just loooove surprises and I really had no idea what we were going to do.

That night as I was waiting for them to come and get me, I started to get nervous. I felt like I was going on a first date or something... just like it used to when a boy was coming to get me and I didn't know what he had planned.

It was so fun!

So then she got there and she was looking way too cute for us to be getting massages and then we drove past the place we normally go for dinner and a movie and kept on heading to downtown Dallas.

What in the world? Where was she taking us? Were we really going to see Miley? that would be fun...but weird.

Eventually I figured out that we were headed to the Fair but why would the 3 of us be dressed so cute to go to the Fair...I was not wearing good shoes for walking around much!

And then all of a sudden I saw a sign.....AH HA!! We were going to see Mary Poppins at Fair Park.

SQUEEL!!

I had heard about it and was wanting to go but didn't think it was going to happen. It is the touring Broadway show with the original actors and everything.

It was practically perfect in every way.

The singing! The dancing! The set!

I have not clapped that much or that hard in a very long time. Possibly never.

At one point during "Step In Time" Bert walked up one wall and then upside down along the ceiling, stopped in the middle, tap danced, walked to the other wall and down to the floor. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Thank you Lisa for a truly wonderful night. Love you, girl!

*this clip is from the Broadway show and is pretty much what I saw. Freaking awesome.

Lovin' It Monday

About halfway into my commute this morning I encountered the most curious sight. Tied to trees, sign posts, bushes etc were shiny silver & maroon foil streamers. I started looking around to see what they were advertising for but they didn't seem to lead to anything and they were on both sides of the road and in the medians.

They were glittery and pretty and seemed to serve no other purpose but to make me smile.

After about a quarter mile they ended and I forgot all about them until my drive home today when I saw them again. It just so happens that I was thinking about what to write about for "lovin' it monday" and then I knew that those silly little streamers were what I was lovin' today. So I grabbed my camera when I had to stop for a light and tried to capture their loveliness. I failed miserably but you can kind of see them in the photo above. There are 2 or 3 in the photo but I think only 2 are very visible...a silver one on the tree and a maroon one on the lamppost.

I hope I forget all about them tonight so that tomorrow morning I can be surprised all over again.

What are little things that make you smile as you drive around?

Lovin' It Monday

I don't know about you but candles seem more Fall and Winterish to me. And this fall I have discovered Febreeze Candle in some truly spectacular fall flavors. I love the pumpkin one, but the autumn spice and apple cinnamon ones are pretty yummy too.

They are really great because they last a long time and the smell is strong enough to make my kitchen and living room smell wonderful but at the same time not overpowering. And best of all, they are only $5!

I am not in any way associated with Febreee....just lovin' on their candles!

Squeaka Squeaka

I am trying out our new camera (just a cheapy point and shoot while I save up for my nice camera) and took some cute video of Gus. I didn't have a lot of lights on so it's dark...but he's soooo cute that it makes up for it.

* hmmmm....I just played it and for some reason it's waaaay darker here than it was when I uploaded it from my camera :(