Cards and snow

Since Kelly left I've been faced with a dilemma. This conundrum surrounds my creativity levels regarding card making. It seems like I'm not very . . . innovative in the realm of card making.

Though I suppose that might take time and a talent which Kelly obviously possesses. At any rate I've tried my hand and seem to have ground my imaginative skills to painful halt at a mere six cards. And they're not even all Christmas cards. At any rate I think I'll share them with you.


I will continue to attempt my hand and creating more...

On another note, the snow is here to stay! The dogs and I enjoyed a nice long walk yesterday and I got a few nice photos out of it. Instead of uploading them here, though, they're at flickr, so check them out HERE! (there's also a couple of older photos of Presley from last winter.)



COUNTING DOWN 15 days until we leave for the holidays!

Been a while

Well, since it's been quite a long time since we posted and I see our last update included photos of Kiefer as a tiny baby, here's one of him all grown up.

Him and his sister, of course! We couldn't leave Presley out, she wouldn't let us! And she cooperated so well in our Christmassy photo shoot which we used to update the layout of our blog for the month of December! Way to go Presley! ;) Kiefer wouldn't have any of it and all we got out of him were two blurry, wreath-adorned photos which were quite unusable. Presley, however, wore her wreath with pride. What a silly girl.

On another note, the kitchen renos are coming along quite nicely. The doors are all up and the room feels so warm and enjoyable. Compare before and after:



Quite the improvement if I do say so!!
We still need to put up trim (as you'll see, the window seems quite naked!) and hardware on all of the doors yet. We're thinking of putting one more coat of white on the doors before we add the handles, however. The set of doors over the dishwasher DO have handles, though, so you can see how they will look there. We are really quite in love with the color of the room it feels very cozy and comfortable and warm. I'm really looking forward to having it entirely done.

We also put up the Christmas tree. It seems scrawnier and smaller than I remember from last year but it also doesn't have any ornaments on it and it has been smushed down in a box for a year so I suppose that makes sense. I was really looking forward to putting our green, leafy garland stuff up (with white lights strung through it and red ribbons tied to it) along the top of our cupboards. However, I realized as I was taking the garland out of the Christmas bin that our cupboards go right to the ceiling!! Ii am thinking of maybe getting some 3M hooks to hang it up but then... that's a lot of work since we're not going to actually be here for the actual holidays.

Speaking of holidays, we're really looking forward to visiting the relatives! Can't wait to see our new niece, Gabriella. It feels quite weird to be an aunt; I've had many younger cousins (the youngest is just over a year now) but they were still cousins. Now I'm an aunt, for real. It's kind of surreal to realize how much I've grown up in such a short time! Two years ago I was a teenager living in dorms. Now I'm married, have a mortgage and I'm an aunt (or auntie depending on how T&K want to play it)!!

At any rate, life is good, even with the snow outside. :)

COUNTING DOWN 16 days until we leave for the holidays!

Updates...

So a couple of puppy pictures to start it off...

Week 1:


Week 2:











That pretty much reflects the energy level around here these days.




Also we decided that we should probably start cleaning up and organizing stuff around here as we've been living here for quite a while so in that them my project for the Monday and Tuesday was building a couple shelves in the kitchen to help get a little bit of clutter off of the counter.

This one was probably the most annoying one to build, I've come to realize that the studs in this house make no sense and are not anywhere they should be. But in the end it turned out well enough. It also makes the cook books much more accessible.




This one was one that Sara planned out and built, with a little help from me. She wanted something to keep the dog mess under control. (We need a variety of treats to keep Presley interested at Agility)









Finally we built this one which has been quite a bit of help. You can also see the nifty magnetic spice containers we got from superstore. Superstore sells cheap spices but they all come in little ziplock bags, and with limited cupboard space it can be a paint to have to pull out 9 different bags to just find the spice you need so these are nice for saving us some space. Also the shelf is wood instead of our ugly medicine cabinet style cupboards so we are hoping the glasses won't shatter as much if they're on a softer material.




Finally we got this nifty little magnetic knife rack at a kitchen gadget store in Regina. I'd seen one on a TLCish show about saving space and I was super interested. It's actually what got us on about trying to get more stuff off of our counters. So now the knife block is gone, the spaggetti is gone, the toaster is gone and we have a ton more counter space.

Our next big project is that we've drawn up plans to build a bed frame which the kennels can be stored under as well as give us some extra dresser space.

My coworker brought us some fresh lettuce from his garden, which was delicious but makes me envious of his garden. So Sara made me a sweet chef's salad for lunch.

So thats what we've been up to.

The newest addition

A funny thing happened today. John mentioned to Brady that Krystal (Presley's dam) had a new litter of puppies that were ready to go to new homes and thought Brady might spread the word around for him. Brady did spread the word around; to me. And I, of course being the excitable, dog-crazy person I am, asked if we could go see them. Just for fun. Of course that turned into a long winded discussion about getting a second dog. We've been talking about this for a while; ever since we've seen Presley interact with other dogs and noticed how much she enjoyed playing with them. I have my heart set on one day breeding and showing Field Spaniels however, that is a distant future goal. Once we've moved to our farm and have stability and money, etc.
So we decided that it might not be a bad idea to get another dog to keep Presley (and me) company until that day comes. Hence, we went out to see John's puppies. They were all absolutely precious. There were three surviving puppies in Presley's litter and they were all incredibly timid and scared. This litter of five, however, was happy and wriggly.
I sat down amongst them for a while; the one girl of the litter who was blue in color, had been spoken for. Which meant I was left with the four boys to choose from; two mostly black with some white and two mostly white with some black. Presley is mostly black, so I kind of wanted white one. So I cuddled and played with each puppy and finally decided on the whitest of them all; Kiefer.
He's adorable and we've only had him for a few hours so I'm not sure about his personality yet but he sure is a cutie pie!
See more pictures here

(his birthday is approx 04.28.09)

Blueprints!

I was investigating the possibility of building our own barn when Brady and I move to our acreage- our dream home at some point in the hopefully-not-too-far-future- instead of having contractors do the honors or requiring a pre-existing structure to be on the property. So I did some research and ended up finding this really amazing site which provides blueprints for some pretty wicked looking barn and a list of required materials for a small fee. It was pretty exciting to envision building one of these things; I am not sure on how realistic it is to think that Braids and I could build one from top to bottom on our own. Especially since some of them are rather large structures, but it's still an exciting thought.
Anyway the site is Apple Valley Barns and I thought it was pretty neat. My favorite is probably either the Laredo Four-Stall Barn or the Wichita 4-Stall Barn.

A true Saskatchewan boy...

A few days ago I was able to pilfer some rhubarb off of an empty lot. Jon, one of my coworkers, saw it with me and was excited enough to go and grab about 30 stalks and split them with me. I brought it home and showed it Sara and she was mildly interested not understanding the versatility of rhubarb, a vegetable (maybe?) surpassed only by zucchini. Well now its been a few days and the appeal of fresh rhubarb is lost when it sits in the refrigerator for several days. So tonight I made a cake with it. By all accounts now I suppose that I can claim to be a true Saskatchewanian. According to the recipe it's Fabulous Rhubarb Cake, but we'll just have to see about that. All I know is that it has enough brown sugar in it to appeal to Sara no matter what she thinks of rhubarb.

A Novel

I have decided that I am going to write a novel. Brady suggested it in the car today on our way home from being in town. We watched the movie 'The Proposal' with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. It was very cute and quite funny. Anyway,on the way home we were just chatting and talking about how it would be a very interesting and fun job to be an editor (the profession of Bullock in the film) because you'd get to read some pretty neat books in all likelihood. We agreed on that fact and Brady added that he thought I should write a novel. Now, I have been an avid writer pretty much my whole life. Nothing major but I've written somewhere between 20 or 30 short stories, stories and half-hacked attempts at novels. All of this just for the pure enjoyment of losing myself in a world of my own imagination. I am also fond of games which revolve around creating a character and writing in a fictional world from their perspective and interacting with other characters authored by other people; call me a nerd, but it is a really enjoyable pass time for me as a hobbyist-writer.



At any rate, our talk got me thinking and I've been doing a lot of research online on 'how to write a novel.' I think I've decided to do it. Now I just have to come up with something creative and intelligent to write about. That should be fun!