Luna and the Black Widow (shudder)

Luna and Stinky Hedgehog

Those of you who read my blog know that I love and adore my two dogs Luna and Angel. Those of you who know me really well, know that my world revolves around Luna and Angel. And, much to my family's chagrin, most of the time I like my dogs more than I like people, the sun pretty much rises and sets around them, I treat them better than anyone else, and I love them with all my heart. Tough life, I know.

Luna, particularly, is the love of my life. She is my first dog - an American Eskimo, whom I adopted from the Doberman shelter of all places. I don't think there's one thing I don't adore about her. She has brought so much love and happiness into our home... I can't even begin to express it. There just aren't enough words. She's also brought chaos, fur, noise, energy, a pretty big dose of naughtiness (I love her naughtiness), laughter, and an endless supply of personality. Luna has a huge personality.

I love her funny ways - that's probably her most endearing quality. She will nap next to the wall with her little chicken legs sticking straight up. She greets everyone that enters our house with one of her "babies". She loves to have her tummy scratched and will sit up like an Easter Bunny until someone notices and scratches her. She will make a cozy nest out of pillows and blankets or, her favorite, clean laundry. She'll run around with her bone hanging out of her mouth so it looks like she's smoking a stoagie. She runs like a bullet, always has a smile on her face, exudes joy, and her paws smell like buttered popcorn. She is definitely my comic relief. And she loves unconditionally. Not a day goes by when I don't give thanks for her presence in my life.
So on Saturday, when we were on the front porch, and I turned around just in time to see Luna nipping at a HUGE black widow that was crawling up the wall... I think I nearly had a heart attack. The black widow was going nuts because something was bothering it, and it so easily could have bit Luna right then and there. I wasn't quite sure if it had or hadn't. I quickly pushed Luna away and kicked the living daylights out of the black widow.
Now, normally I am a spider lover. In fact, I'm quite a spider advocate. If I find one in the house I will carefully scoop it up in my hands and put it back outside in the bushes. But not black widows - NO. I know how dangerous they are, and the damage they can inflict. Unfortunately, our garage and the perimeter of our house has scores of them. We are always on black widow patrol.
I inspected Luna's mouth to make sure nothing was starting to swell or if she had any signs of being bitten, but she was just fine. Her usual happy self, jumping around looking for her next adventure, none the wiser. As for me, my heart didn't return to normal for about 20 minutes. She's just a smallish dog - only about 20 pounds. That would have been a lot of venom for her little body. I could have lost my very best little friend in the blink of an eye. The thought of losing Luna like that nearly did me in.
I'm not even sure why I'm writing this post. I know all of us have to deal with near hits and misses all the time. I know that loss is part of life too. And that someday it will be time to say goodbye to my precious Luna. But I guess I'm just so relieved and so thankful that Luna is all right. I know that probably sounds so dramatic. And if you're not a dog lover it probably sounds ridiculous. That's okay. Luna, I love you with all my heart. I'm so grateful you are okay.

❤ ❤ ❤

1 sneak peek and what I've learned

Happy Friday and here's one more sneak peek from my new photographs. This amazing old doorknob is from my "crusty" notecard set :) You will notice it hasn't been touched up... I'm not a fan of doctoring photos, so I will rarely touch one up unless I feel it's necessary. For this one I will probably highlight the lovely doorknob detail and enhance the faded color on the armoire just a little. But I keep things as simple as possible in a Photoshop crazy world.
I was thinking back over my week about what I had learned. Well, I was reminded that it's always important to have an equal opportunity household. Everyone gets a chance. There's room for everyone. Everyone is appreciated for exactly who they are. Just don't get near my diet Coke. Especially if it has vanilla syrup in it. I'll knock you clear into next Tuesday.
I was reminded that peace is still worth working towards, and praying for, and keeping close to our hearts. And from several experiences this week I was reminded this regarding our dearest of friends as well. Remember what you learned at camp? Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold. I love you my friends ❤And I learned once more - thank heaven above and Lord have mercy! - that cleanliness truly is next to Godliness. I can't even go into this one... I can't even put it into words! I just have to revel in my clean house. My oh-so-very-clean house. I'm reveling. I'm SO reveling.

Oh - and I really miss Sandpoint, Idaho.

P.S. I discovered I was a big fat liar in my last post. Apparently a few of those sneak peek photos have been posted on my blog recently. Whatev ;)

little sneak peek

I'm completely redoing my Etsy store. It's giving me the FITS. I've been working on it for over a month now. I decided I needed a little boost, so I'm giving you one too, in the form of a sneak peek. These are photos I've never posted before, all of which you will find in my store upon reopening.
As you will note, my store has been completely removed from my right hand side bar. Buh-bye! Nope, I'm not letting you back in until the grand reopening. I may even change it's name - that's how cheeky I'm feeling. HAH!
And I'm going to be offering all kinds of new things - yup! So far I've painstakingly put together 14 new notecard sets of all kinds. Something for everyone - flowers, nature, textiles, quirky stuff, colorful things, and close-ups of my original art. Plus past favorites like my thank you cards will be back.

Something else I'm excited about offering, are individual prints you can purchase, ready to frame! I'll have lots of examples ready to go in popular sizes like 5x7, but really, you can order any photo in any size. And if you need help choosing a set or grouping, I am more than happy to be of assistance.
And if I ever get 3 seconds to myself again, I'm going to start pulling my blank canvases out and start painting. I've been missing it a lot. So you'll be seeing some actual original paintings in my store occasionally as well.
One more thing. I've had a lot of requests for my quirky calendars. Now don't go getting your hopes up or anything, because I hate to dash anyone's hopes... but you never know - you may just see some calendars too :)

SO STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES AND SNEAK PEEKS!!!

Quiet House

Daniel goofing on the Mouse's dirtbike

Things happen so fast. Between 7:00 and 7:30 this morning, all 3 of my boys were gone. Daniel embarked on his journey through 4 states to get back to college, Matthew was picked up by his carpool to go to junior high, and Davy left for his very first day of college here locally. After the whirlwind, I kind of felt myself standing there hearing only the ticking of the clock. Poignant.

Daniel's entire life packed up and ready to go

taking off - we had an awesome visit, but we could tell it was time

Davy the musician - writing the greatest songs ever

Davy the fabulous head of hair (he's gonna kill me for that)

Davy leaving for his very first day of college :)

Engelblog

So many of us were devastated when the economy swept away many of our long-time favorite shelter magazines (Country Home, O at Home, Domino, Mary Engelbreit Home Companion, etc). I just found out that Mary Engelbreit is still in there swinging online, with an adorable blog - the Mary Engelblog - full of her usual charm and quaintness, as well as plans and information about future upcoming fun and frivolity in the world of All Things Mary, and beyond. Yay!

Walker Family Folk Art

By popular request, I am dedicating this post to a funky piece of artwork we did as a family a few Thanksgivings ago when we were all together. It happens to show up in various photos I take, and I always receive questions about it. One of my readers is planning to do something similar (go Kelly!), so I finally decided it might be fun to share the process with you. It turned out to be a very fun project.

I will say though, that at first my family was not at all enthused with the idea of painting their own self portraits. In fact, if I were completely honest, I would have to say they pitched a fit about it. Babies. I had never done one either - the point was to have *fun* with it and to see what everyone came up with. Perfection was not the goal - in fact, what fun would that have been? So after some cajoling, everyone picked a square and took turns painting over the weekend.

*I've had several requests both on and offline to share more details of what products I used. I used a 24x36 stretched art canvas - no staples in the sides - 3/4" thick. I wanted it thicker - I usually use 1 3/4" thick - but I was out of town and the store was limited. I like the thicker canvases because they look great unframed. I recently noticed even Michael's has started carrying thick canvases (finally!). As for the paints, the are all acrylic, which is by far the easiest medium! Easily cleans up w/ soap & water, and comes in every color possible. You can find acrylic paints almost anywhere, and it's totally up to you what direction you want to go - all brights, all primaries, all pastels, keep everything realistic... endless choices. We used an array of different sized brushes - larger ones to paint the squares, smaller ones for hair and clothes, tiny ones for detail work like eyes and mouthes. For the writing, I used a fine metallic paint pen - those can be really tricky (splat!) so make sure you have a smooth, reliable one before you start! Well... I think that's everything... if you have more questions, don't be shy!

Here is my darling niece Kaylee - one of the first brave souls to try her hand at painting her self portrait. She was awesome :) In fact, it was really fun to see everyone starting to have genuine fun with our project. And the more they painted, the more their personality came out.
Good 'ol Uncle Fred - Kaylee's dad and my husband John's brother. He was a great sport as well, and did a terrific job with his personal addition. One thing I noticed was that Fred's family chose squares all connected, while my family members were all over the place. Hmmm....... ;)
My college boy Danny. I needed to make sure he did his square before he took off again and we didn't see him until Christmas! Another thing I made sure everyone did was add just a little symbol or something special about them (for Danny is was the blue & white stripes from the Argentine flag, as he had spent 2 years in Argentina) - and I had everyone sign their name as well.
You can see that we got about half of it done during Thanksgiving before we left for home. I didn't get a pic of my sis-in-law Dianne painting, but she did an amazing job AND painted their adorable dogs too! She was surprised she could paint like that - we were all totally impressed! But I still had a lot of work yet to do after I returned home, and 2 more boys to beat into submission to get them to paint their portraits............
It came along little by little. I filled in a few squares with things we love, like my red Bug and my husband's guitar, and several squares with mini versions of my colorful spatula paintings. My only regret was that our family wasn't bigger so we could have had more people participate. I think it would have added even more personality to see all the different faces and pets. But our family already has quite a bit of both, so maybe I should just be grateful for what we have :)
It took me a while to decide on what to put in the 2 black squares, so they definitely came last. For the first, I decided on part of the dedicatory prayer for one of our Temples actually. But I took liberties with it, adding some of my own things I wanted our house to have in it. For the second black square, I decided to list the address of every home we have lived in during our married life. I was really happy with how both squares turned out.
Does anyone else think my husband John looks like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine???
Fred and his family in the lower right corner :) And my in-laws did the pumpkin. Long story.

and I didn't even say anything about diet Coke or Ruffles :)

So anyway........ that's the story folks :)

***

Now this piece of art, on the other hand (get it?)... is a whoooooole different story. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces of art on earth. But... I'll save it for another time, of course :)

Hot Cocoa

Since we have had a fluke of what I shall loosely term "cooler" weather lately - in the high 80's as opposed to the 100's - and since I have a personal goal this year of getting most of my Christmas plans organized by the end of August (I know, I know... I simply amaze myself, too)... I find I have been craving hot cocoa every single morning. Hot, lucius, velvety cocoa. Where you can feel it go all the way down your throat like a liquid chocolate bar, and pool into a warm, comforting pond of happiness in your belly. And all is right with the world. MMMMMMMM. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

I'm sure if I kept at it, I could think of many other ways to procrastinate facing this huge photo order I need to commit to so I can fill my Etsy shop with all kinds of wonderful new notecard sets and 5x7 prints. But that calls for pulling on my Big Girl Panties and being all grown up and I think I hid them on purpose for just such an occasion. Dang. I think I need to put on some Christmas music.

"Look!" mirror redo

Remember the "Look" mirror I made from candy wrappers way back when? It was a very fun project. But I'm always changing things around, and it was time to add some more fun to it.

I added several more of our favorite candy wrappers this time - as well as some actual candy :) Click on the photo to see it larger... and I'll also take you through my process so you can see it in detail.

I removed all the black rope from around the candy wrapper portion of the frame - but left it on the outside - then made sure the frame was generally clean and dust free. And of course I poured myself a diet Coke :)
Then I began gathering my supplies. Here's a close-up of a corner of the mirror. I still wish I had laid the "Look!" wrappers in more of a brick pattern to begin with... oh well, you live and learn!
All my supplies, including my Mod Podge, my punches, candy, etc! I ended up punching several wrappers at a time because they are so fragile they wouldn't rip as easily that way - whew!
Here's how everything turned out before securing the wrappers and Dots on the mirror frame with the Mod Podge. And unlike all the "Look!" bars, we had no problem whatsoever devouring the Reese's - LOL! :)
This is what the finished mirror looked like before making sure everything was dry and hanging it back up on the wall. At first the Mod Podge gave me fits because the wrappers were such different materials and thicknesses... but everything eventually smoothed out.
Here's a close-up of that same corner after being embellished with wrappers and candy - YUM! My biggest frustration were those doggone Dots! After using 2 glue sources to glue them (Mod Podge and E-6000), I finally had to whip out my glue gun and sear those suckers on! LOL!
The final result turned out cute and colorful. It's a very cheerful greeting in my entry way :) Click on the pic to see it in better detail.