Heat Wave!!!

It may only be 76 degrees outside but there's a heat wave in the house.

One of my female dogs (I just can't throw around the "B" word) is in heat and my boys are out of their minds. In the picture above you can see the top of Max's head. He was jumping up and down outside the window, trying to see inside. That same day, Buddy jumped through an open window and pushed out the screen! From that moment on the dogs have been taking one hour turns in the crate. See the little timer on the side of the crate?
When Hallie is in the crate the boys sit next to it and just pine away! When it's time for the boys to do their time she goes on her merry way. Max already knows that Hallie is his mate. He's only 6 months old, but he will not let Buddy get near her. He'll bark and growl and nip at Buddy if he gets too close to the crate. In these pictures, Hallie is inside and Max is outside of the crate, trying to get inside.

This is Hallie's first heat cycle and being the responsible breeders that we are, we will wait until she is older and has all of her health testing done. We want to make sure that she is sound and healthy before any breeding occurs. We are doing this with our other dogs too.

A Lonely Sight

Here I sit broken hearted, came to sew, but never started.

Okay, so that's not a very creative poem, but that's how my sewing machine and I feel! I haven't been out to my "secret hiding place" (my version of a man-cave) for sometime now. Last week, when I took my freecycle chair out there, I walked through a spider web! That is not okay.

I long to visit my sewing machine, really I do. But I'm a working girl now. This working girl doesn't have time to sit around eating Bon-Bons, or do much crafting, or sewing, or gardening, or housework for that fact. I really like my new job, and I love the extra money, and so do the kids. Money does bring some extra freedoms, but I don't want to pay someone to do my "playing" for me.

It doesn't help that I read craft blogs, my favorite of which is Angry Chicken (and if you don't know about her you should check it out). I wish I could be like the angry chicken, she gets paid to write books about crafting and sewing and I bet she makes money from her blog too. She also has 3 small children and I'm glad I'm past all that. (I take joy in imagining that her house is a mess. I know, shame on me, but I've got to make myself feel better about my own mess don't I?)

Here is another great website. RecipeZaar, I found this recipe for spaghetti sauce that is easy, delicious and contains NO high fructose corn syrup (check your labels at home). I didn't do meatballs, just ground meat. You can register at the website and make up your own favorite recipe file and it's all organized and neat. But my favorite thing about this site is that you can change the number of serving with the click of a button, see mom, I don't need to know fractions! Cool beans, I give this website 9 beans out of 10.

Can't Have Just One...

Well, we now have 5 Havanese! When we started this whole Havanese thing, a breeder said to us, "Havanese are like potato chips, you can't have just one!" I didn't believe her at the time. Now I do. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get 5 dogs to sit still for a picture? I knew better than to try to get all of them to look at me at the same time. They are, from left to right, Resi, Buddy, Max, Hallie, and Belle. I took Resi to a dog show in Grass Valley on Saturday. She got a second place ribbon. Not too bad for our first time in the ring together!



Here is my first freecycle find. I'd been lurking the pages of freecycle for a long time, and trying to be very picky about postings so that I don't end up with a lot of stuff that just clutters up the house. But I am a sucker when it comes to chairs. To me they are art, they are useful, hopefully comfortable, can be used as a focal point, and I can put pretty fabric on them. I have no idea from where my love of chairs came. Maybe one day I will be hypnotized and find out for myself. For those of you that don't know what freecycle is here is a link
Basically you get free items from other people who don't want to have a garage sale, or deal with the grumpy workers at the local Goodwill. So hopefully one day soon, you will see this chair with a new suit.