Tag Archives: Life With Dog

Dog Days of Summer: Wiped Out

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You ever feel like you need to be 40 different places at once, but there’s only one of you and you can only be at one place at once? Yeah, that’s how things have been around here lately. Between workie things and housie things, there just hasn’t been enough April to go around. So, when the work is done and I’ve chased all the other rats in this rat race, you’ll find me on the couch with my feet up getting acquainted with my most recent Netflix obsession, vintage Doctor Who. ( I can’t get enough of the 4th Doctor)

 

sleepingWiped Out

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Dog Days of Summer: Sunset

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In the southwest we get some pretty dramatic sunsets. Maybe it’s the wide open spaces that make them so spectacular, or maybe I’m just a little biased being a southwesterner for most of my life, I tend to think we have the best of everything. Except water, we don’t really have the best of water, because there isn’t much of that here. But we’ve got some great sand, so if you want some ocean front property in Arizona I could hook ya up (name that George Strait tune). But I’ve grown to appreciate the different-ness (yes, it’s a word because I’m using it!) of each sunset every evening. A new evening brings with it a new painting in the sky to gaze upon. And I’m not the only one to enjoy a good setting of the sun.

sunsetSunset

Annie-dog seems to have inherited my sense of wonder when it comes to the end of the day sun. Can dogs inherit behaviors from their owners? Maybe, let’s just hope it doesn’t work the other way around. If you see me driving down the road with my head out the window you’ll know why.

The Day After

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Today I’m recovering from cooking delicious food with my sweet mom, eating way too much corn bread dressing, and cleaning up from a lovely feast. So, no indepth post today, and no black Friday shopping, I’m not one for a crowd. Instead, I’m staying home and enjoying some delicious left overs.

And doing lots of this, granted I typically take my naps on the couch.

Once the leftovers are eaten and all naps have been taken I’ll be back with stories of thrifted treasures and

dog tales (tails!!)

Weekend Happenings: A Weekend Long Ago

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A weekend long long ago, actually a month ago, we had a little visitor.

My sweet and beautiful mom came over. It’s always exciting when she comes around, her granddogs especially love these little visits.

That’s Annie when she spotted Mom’s car pull in front of the house. Notice the happy tail.

This time she brought along a few fall inspired gifts from her recent trip to Ohio. My favorite and apparently the only gift that got photographed:

Authentic outdoor-cooked apple butter. This stuff is like crack in a jar! Maybe its the melted red hots or maybe they use some type of special addictive apples, who knows. All I know, is that the contents of this jar have long been eaten, and I didn’t share.

So, today, I’m thankful for apple butter imported from Ohio. But mostly, I’m thankful for my sweet mom that cares enough to have my sweet uncle wrap up and Fedex my coveted crack in a jar.

There’s nothing like that apple butter/red hot high.

Clearance Plants

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Here we are on day 2 of 31 Days of Getting it Done, and it appears that this 31 day challenge will really be a challenge considering it’s 11:30pm on day 2. Maybe I over estimated the hours I have in my day, between 8 hours of work, nearly 2 hours of dog time, and an 1 hour for dinner and dishes (I won’t lie, most days I let the dishes build up during the work week.) there doesn’t seem to be a lot of time left over to blog and do a project. But it’s only day 2, so I can’t throw the towel in yet!

Anywho, on this second day of Getting it Done, I had planned on talking about this great organizational project I had completed, but then the clearance carts in the Lowes garden center happened.

Yup, I managed to fit 4 large shrubs and three smaller ones in my trunk. Bubba (my husband) thought I’d never fit them all in there, but I showed him!

I ended up with:

Two of these, for 7.50 each. They will live in the backyard, and they’ll be pretty big guys once they grow up.

Two more of these, for 5.50 each. These flowery gals will live in the front yard.

Two of these, for 2.50 each. For the front yard.

And one of these, I didn’t read the label and thought this guy was another boxwood. Since, these get pretty big he will live in the backyard.

After unloading everyone it was time to get my dig on. Everything went well, until a few minutes into it, I hit a small road block.

Actually, it was a water line 3 inches below the surface. Why they put a waterline right smack in the middle of a flower bed and at such a shallow depth is beyond me. All I knew was that this posed a slight problem, and I had to change my layout slightly. And when I say change my layout, I mean digging all of my holes three inches closer to the outside edge of the flower bed.  Hopefully, the roots of the my new sticks won’t cause problems with this water line down the road. I guess only time will tell. But in the mean time, this is what the front yard is looking like now.

It’s still looking a little sad, I need to put in new mulch and would like to lay a little sod out there to green things up a bit. Living in the desert has given me a greater appreciation for green things, well maybe not the scary fuzzy green things that seem to lurk in the fridge. I see a fridge cleaning post in the near future.

Once I got the four shrubs planted, I was too pooped to start digging holes in the back for the Privets and the Holly. Plus, it was time for the season premiere of Once Upon a Time, is anyone else hooked on this show? Honestly, I can’t get enough of it.

Anywho, the last three shrubs have been sitting on my front porch for nearly 3 days now. Which has given me a little bit of time to do some research, I found that both Privets and Holly shrubs are toxic to dogs (!). Yeah, toxic.to.dogs. I have two dogs that consume just about everything that enters their yard. So, sadly, my beautiful ,new and cheap plants will not be going in the backyard. In fact, I’m considering returning them, if they are that toxic to my doggies, I’m not sure I want them in any of my yards. Although, after researching the Boxwoods a little more, (after they have been planted) I found they were also toxic to dogs. Actually, it turns out a lot of shrubs aren’t good for little dummy dogs who insist on taste testing everything.

So, I learned a valuable lesson, always research plants before buying them or in my case planting them. You never know what could be harmful to the little dummies you love.

Green Eyebrows

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Alright, I don’t really know where this post is going to take us, I just know I have a random assortment of photos I took and then edited. So, I would hate to waste them by letting them just sit on my hard drive, waiting for that perfect blog post when it may never come. Besides that, who said a blog post really has to be about anything. Can’t it just be a post about nothing, like Seinfeld was a show about nothing. Maybe I’ll just yammer on about the injustice of a hair in my marble rye or that woman in the ladies room that couldn’t spare a square.

Anywho, as always, grab a nice tall glass of sweet tea or your preferred beverage of choice, sit back and enjoy the randomness.

This is Annie, she’s always so sweet and so kind, when there’s something edible involved. Otherwise, she takes her stringy tail and butt flaps to her nasty bed where she can ignore us all from a distance. For some reason, I feel she is silently judging me.

This is what she was eye balling when I snapped this image of cute sweet normal dog Annie.

My breakfast, well my Saturday mid-morning breakfast. On a normal day my breakfast consists of a banana eaten hastily while entering the on ramp of I-40, generally 10 to 15 minutes behind schedule. Tardiness is my constant companion.

So, back to Annie, she’s definitely the most unusual dog I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a home with. She communicates by yawns. No, I don’t mean normal silent doggy yawns, I mean low guttural Dorthy from Golden Girls yawns.

This is the most close I could come to capturing one of her yetti yawns, usually the mouth is opened much wider.

Aside from yawning and begging, she enjoys photobombing, and like everything else Annie does, she does not simply make an appearance in the background of the picture. Any Annie appearance is always front and center, toothy grin and all.

She does enjoy posing though, particularly with her newest conquest.

This time it happened to be a bowl I used to hold that nasty dry crap, otherwise known as Iams, when her regular bowl was infested with ants during the Great Ant War of 2012. By the way, after numerous attempts at putting an end to the battle of the ants, I still have survivors, cornstarch and Raid don’t seem to phase them much. Anyone have any ideas?

Although, Annie can be a very sweet dog, she can also be quite ruthless, especially when it comes to time outside. Poor Goldie tends to get the brunt of this ruthless-ness, as evidenced by the green eyebrow. That’s a grass stain, caused by Annie slamming Goldie’s head into the lawn. All summer long Goldie has had odd green eyebrows, it took us a couple weeks of monitoring to figure out how it was happening. Poor Goldie lets Annie-Devil take out her many frustrations on the Golden One during their outside time. I should probably mention though, Goldie and Annie are the same size, Goldie could easily take up for herself, but her passivity tends to keep her from doing so.

(Not that I would know anything about being passive.)

I always end up having to break up the head slamming fest. Sometimes, I wish there was someone to break up the head slamming fest that I tend to allow myself into at times. I suppose I do have someone that intervenes when the head slamming and grass stained eyebrows become too much.

My Savior, Christ Jesus, He’s always there to pound on the window when the head slamming becomes too much.

“121 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

Psalm 121 KJV

So, He does help me even when my head is being slammed against the perverbial lawn, and He doesn’t even take a break from watching over me. How could I possibly be worried over a few green eyebrows when I know He will be there when it’s too much?

And look at that, this post really did have a point!

Also, Happy Autumn a week late!!

Note: Although I mention name brands within this post such as, Iams and Raid, I am not being compensated for such mentions. They are just brands that make a frequent appearance within my household, much like dust bunnies make frequent and ever present appearances under my sofa.

Thrifting Thursday: Shopping

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Happy Friday Eve everyone!!!! And you all know what the eve of Friday brings us right? Yep, it’s time for our weekly installment of Thrifting Thursday!! I’ve been trying to cut back on the hoarding thrifting, but that doesn’t mean I’ve cut back on window shopping.

So, this week you’ll see some interesting finds I’ve found meandering around a few local thrift stores.

First up, is our local Humane Society Store Re:Tail (don’t you just love the little pun there?)

Who doesn’t love a Super Mom cup? Though, it’s not the most stylish piece it’s still pretty cute, especially if you have or are a super mom!

Speaking of mom’s, everytime I see a little chicken I think of my mother’s poultry riddled kitchen. This creamer caught my eye and I immediately thought of mom. Although, I don’t know that she would use a chicken creamer, besides, wouldn’t it be weird having milk come out of bird?

This amber colored glassware was cute, it would be really cute on a fall themed table.

Don’t ya just love these iridescent amber colored stemware? It would really fancy up a fall table, or any table for that matter.

They had four of these lights, they were huuuge. The lights hung down from the ceiling a good 6 ft, and were about 12 in in diameter. Much too big for my little casa. But they would look awesome in a larger home, perhaps in a kitchen with a vaulted ceiling?

I loved the legs on this coffee table, as well as, the two toned treatment. You wouldn’t have to use it as a coffee table, just reinforce this guy and he could be used in a mud room or a foyer as a bench.

Then we headed over to Savers, which sadly is located where the neighborhood grocery store used to be. Honestly, I would rather have the grocery store, what can I say my stomach speaks louder than my love of old stuff.

Alright, so I’m not doing so well at not buying those sweet little treasures I’ve been spying. I couldn’t leave this guy, he was too cute, and he was local! If you can’t read what’s inscribed on his chest, it’s “Sandia Crest Altitude 10, 668 Feet”  and “Albuquerque NM”. His perch reads:

Kitchen Prayer

Bless my little kitchen Lord

And those who enter in

May they find naught

But joy and peace

And happiness there in

Amen

My House

My house is small

No mansion for a millionare

But there is room for love

And there is room for friends

That’s all I care

He was 4.99, a little steep, but the hoarder in me couldn’t leave him behind.

Well, I better get this up before we get too far away from Thrifting Thursday as my clock reads 10 after midnight!! EEK!

Have you seen anything interesting in a thrift store recently? Bought anything really awesome?

Or did you have to wait outside while everyone else had all the fun?

Don’t worry, they weren’t out there for very long, and got to go to the park afterwards. I love that the weather is cooling down, we can bring the girls with us now. They enjoy looking pathetic while waiting.

Scenes from the weekend

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At the end of this Monday, I thought I’d unwind a bit by re-living some scenes from the weekend.

All of my weekends include thrifting, apparently it’s become a big part of my life. What once was something I indulged in once a month has become a once week occurance, sometimes more. I should never have introduced my Bubba to this addictive past time, he’s become much more into it that I ever was. Although, you’d think I was the thrifting nut judging by my newest hoard. I’ll tell you more about some of those finds in a later post. Or when the crew of Hoarders comes to pay me a visit.

Aside from indulging in some thrifting we also indulged in some fried goods, without a political agenda. Mmmmm….msg.

The dogs savored the fat and grease laden leftovers…also without a political agenda.

Then I ended the weekend with a quiet Sunday afternoon….

While Annie-dog creepily watched…

What did you do this weekend?

Stages of Rawhide Enjoyment

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So, an unannounced two week blogging hiatus is not cool, I know and I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to keep you all up to date on useless news and the happenings of the dogs (which I’m sure you all sorely missed) from here on out. It occurred to me the other day that when I started this blog over two years ago, I didn’t start this blog to jabber on about useless (yet highly entertaining) pet stories or to share my latest junkin’ find (of which I recently have much to share) I started this blog to talk about the updates and improvements made to my little house. Recently, there haven’t been many of those updates, mainly because I’ve been too busy sitting on my bum watching the Olympics (it counts as exercise if I’m watching someone else push their body to the limit right?). But while pondering the reason why I started this blog, I came to appreciate what she has turned into. It’s a blog that I enjoy writing, yeah the jokes may only make sense to me and at times my mom might be the only one who reads my jabbering, but this blog is my happy place and if I want to share pictures of my dogs enjoying their most happy things in their happy place (that sounded dirty sorry) then that’s what I’ll blog about. So speaking of dogs, here is a series of my brats enjoying one of their most happy things in world, a rawhide. I know, it’s not exciting, but darn it, it’s my blog and if I want to share copious amounts of photos of my dogs eating a rawhide then that’s what I’m gonna do. Sit back and enjoy…

THE STAGES OF RAWHIDE ENJOYMENT

First Stage, choose the rawhide that is juuuussst right.

Second stage, find the perfect place for optimal rawhide enjoyment.

Ignore the unfinished floors, I do.

Stage three, make funny faces while chewing rawhide.

Stage four, all done, more please?

Yeah, more?

What have you been finding enjoyment out of lately? Silly pictures of a beloved pet? Finding treasures at your local thrift store?

A rawhide perhaps?

Poke me with a stick, it’s Monday!

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Shall we start the week off with a weekend recap? I hope you said yes, because that’s what you’re getting!

This weekend was marvelous! It started out with dinner at our favorite pizza joint, JJ’s, I’ll be doing a post about that soon. (JJ has the best pizza in all of the Duke City, if you ask me!) Then on Saturday, my sweet mom and I went to see a live performance of Anne of Green Gables, performed at the Albuquerque Little Theater. Honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had at a live performance. Then we had another yummy meal, this time it was at a chain, Taco Cabana. But still yummy. Sunday flew by, since we lost that hour. But that didn’t some me from trying a little project, I got ambitous and thought I’d clean out a spare room. The room where Bubba keeps his “gaming” equipment. This included 12 gaming systems, countless games, an excuriating amount of cables, and so many dust bunnies I’m still coughing them up.

It was a great weekend, and if I’d had half a brain there would be pictures to share with you. But alas, my half brain wasn’t working this weekend, so I have no pictures. Only the sweet memories of a great weekend.

I do however, have pictures from past weekends that pretty much sum up an average Saturday and Sunday in my life right now.

I usually try to cram in a chore or two, nothing too involved. That’s something I have to build up to. (Like cleaning out Bubba’s toys. Not that I don’t have any of my own.) A couple of weekends ago, I finally pulled out a new shop vaccuum that sweet mom bought us. It was time to vaccuum all the Goldie needles and Annie fuzz out of the car anyway. This would be a great test of how much this thing sucked.

I must say, I’m mighty pleased, and it even rolls now that I’ve installed the wheels! I’ll spare you the hairy before and afters though.

After cleaning the car out, it was time to take the girls somewhere so they could re-needle and re-fuzz up the car.

They only tolerate the camera when they know there is a car ride and eventual walk in it for them.

On this particular day, we went on a picnic to a quiet and empty elementary school. (Where dogs are allowed I might add.)

(Yummy red enchiladas! No wonder my jeans are in a constant state of panic.)

The girls wanted some, can you tell?

After lunch and begging it was time to run, and then eventually get poked with the ball thrower for not coming when called. Annie is the only shepherd dog I know that must be shepherded herself. She would never last on a ranch.

While Annie was getting herded I took a random shot of this school bell. There is something about the texture of the brick and the color of the bell. I love these old school buildings. It’s a shame they don’t build them like this anymore.

What did you do this weekend? Have a picnic? Poke your dog with a stick?