Category Archives: Cats & Dogs

15 months later ….

I actually get a fair amount of traffic on this website, mostly because of a few • select • posts.

And, I know, the worst type of blog is a neglected blog.

We moved into our house in January of 2009, and I could probably write an essay on the last two years. Not to bore you with details, here it is in a nutshell: bought a house, planted a garden, made some food, grew my business, incorporated a new business, got a new nephew, lost my dog, joined a BNI group, realized that my business was quickly becoming more than a full time job, quit making soap and candles, painted two bedrooms and our family room, had two truckloads of compost delivered to our garden, replaced a section of floor, made quite a few things including a compost bin, threw a couple of parties, made myself a new website, and now I am in the process of having my kitchen remodeled.

I’ll post pictures of the kitchen later. For those who really like pictures, here are a couple pictures of eggplant that I grew this year:

Eggplant

Pink, Black, and White Eggplant

Melon!

The cats lucked out today when Chris decided to share his honeydew with them.

In other good news, Ratchet has landed in the US, and is very healthy! Hopefully I’ll get to meet the celebrity dog at Gwen’s homecoming party. She mentioned arranging a play date with Nigel and Puck, too. Fun, fun.

My candles just about sold out at the Eveland Family Farm, so I took a trip down last weekend with a fresh stock. I’m hoping they sell out, and I have to return next weekend with more! One lady came just to buy candles, and she raved about them for a long time. Pretty neat.

After buying countless sample wick packs, I finally found a series of wicks that work well in the feather palm pillars. I don’t know if I want to try and sell them (if anyone would even buy them), but I’m making them for Jenny’s wedding next summer, so at least now I know they will burn for 8 hours without making a mess.

Ready, Set, Go!

niko.jpg

I like the way this picture came out – especially the eyes. Niko is a good photography subject, and she’s always willing when I get in the mood to see what I can make my digital camera do. My favorite setting as of recent is profile, zoomed into 4x (maximum before digital), in Macro mode, forced flash. They don’t *all* turn out like this photo – but the backlighting caused the washout. I like.

Chris’s mom and stepdad came up today to measure. They are going to help us with painting the house – which we have scheduled for Memorial Day weekend (Helpers wanted! Free food and beer!). I am going to the cities next weekend for my niece’s baptism, and I’ll come back with their pressure washer. Chris’s stepdad seems to think that the pressure washer will take care of the outside – a quick once-over if needed with a power sander to smooth out the edges where the paint doesn’t come off. (Most of the paint will come off. It’s in bad shape.)

Apparently, we should be able to get done painting over the three-day weekend. And *maybe* even get to the outside window trim. Wow, that would be lovely.

So, before that – we have the bedroom to paint (tomorrow’s project). Living room and kitchen to paint; kitchen cupboards to clean. Trim around the base in the kitchen. Electricity upgrade. Cheap-o window treatments (I found blinds for $5 each at the dollar store, and $3 for the cheap rolling blinds – perfect!). Pack up/store stuff we don’t need. Have the Home Stager come through and give her opinions. Plant some shrubs in the front yard, fix up grass, plant pretty flowers. Call Realtor, have appraised, sell house.

Sell house.

Anyone wanna buy a house?

What a boring day.

Puck

There’s just something odd about this day. It’s the first really nice spring day we’ve had: it’s 60º and very calm. Puck even camped out in the back yard for a half an hour – something he never does (he much prefers the couch inside).

I have a lot of work to do. Lots of miscellaneous website work… some stuff for the food co-op (including writing my job description -???- for the next manager)… and countless home repairs. But nothing is urgent – in fact, I could probably put off everything for a week or two, and nobody would notice.

I’m unbelievably bored. I just made a long “to do” list because I was so bored. But I don’t want to *do* anything on the list – because I can just do it tomorrow, or this weekend. Or next week, even.

I decided that this is my body’s way of making me relax before “spring fever” settles in and I start running in overdrive, trying to get everything done.

Sigh. Back to staring at my to do list and the stack of papers on my desk, thinking about tomorrow when I’ll eventually get to them.

Cat Houses

More Cat Beds

So, this is what kept me quite busy in the weeks before the holidays. It all started with the cat house I randomly decided to make one Friday afternoon:

Cat House

… that moved on to a cat bed:

Cat Bed

… and eventually progresed into quite a project. Turns out, everyone in my family has cats. (Surprise). All in all… I made the cat house for Kallie, the bed for Niko… and another practice cat house. Then four cat beds (plus one that didn’t turn out quite as planned) and two more cat houses for my family. Oh yeah, and a life-sized stuffed cat for my mom. The two houses for my brother’s cats and mom’s cats turned out the best, by far:

Cat House

Cat Bed

(Kallie tested all of them, and approved). And there was a bit of time in there to put together new labels for my other handmade stuffs.

Jessi’s Handmade Stuff

Yeah, tons of photos. But it was hard work.

I took a week off over Christmas, and I’m having a really hard time catching back up. I’ve been falling behind with projects for the food co-op, and it seems like EVERYBODY needs a website redesign before the middle of January. On the bright side, my February web design bills are going to look pretty nice!

A lady who shops at the food co-op keeps bringing my handmade soap back to Italy with her. She requested that I have a website so that her friends in Italy can place orders before she goes there. So, another thing to add to the bottom of my pile of “things to do”.

Crafty Weeks

limas.jpg

I’m not sure exactly who reads this weblog, so instead of posting pictures of what’s been keeping me busy over the past couple of weeks, I decided to post a picture of Kallie eating lima beans. Mmmm… lima beans!

I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to buy Christmas presents for my family, or make them all. I have a pretty good list started, but traditionally the family Christmas Present time goes on and on, with everyone spending way too much money on everyone else.

The sad thing is, all said and done, my handmade gifts are racking up more on my credit card than a quick shop-and-go trip to a big mall would cost me. But… I’ve been learning to sew this year, and I’ve been playing around with Potassium Hydroxide and some (cosmetic) emulsifiers/detergents/etc… and some really nice new soy pillar wax… it’s mostly the guys in the family that I’m worried about, I guess.

The sewing projects have been turning out far better than I ever thought they would. I’ll post pictures after the holidays.

TONIGHT… because I wore holes in my slippers last year and have been tripping over Chris’s slippers as I try to wear them this year, I am attempting to sew a new pair of slippers for myself. My “projects” have left me with some extra material that is perfect for slipper-making, so I hope they turn out. I will post pictures of those if they do!