Welcome to the family!

Spring fever is a strange thing in me. I used to regularly chop off all my hair around April. More recently, I've taken to going ga-ga over animals when spring rolls around. One year it was a freezing cold April trip to see baby animals at the zoo. Four years ago, it brought us to the Humane Society and we came home with our beloved cat, Levi. Well, this year...it got us our first-ever family bunny.

Let me introduce you to Padme (pad-may, for those of you who aren't Star Wars fans!) She is a dwarf lionhead rabbit, 14 weeks old. She is also very hard to get a good picture of! She's a busy girl. We love her already and it's a good thing since she poops all over the place and peed on our bed last night.

You can surely expect more stories and pictures in upcoming posts.

This one's for you, Eden!

For the rest of you, here's the story...
my younger, newlywed sister got a miniature daschund in October. Most everyone (including her new husband) thought she was loca since she already had a big ol' black lab. Well, her heart and her mind were set!


My kids were instantly smitten! Abby was just crazy about this little pooch. Katie was already an animal lover, so she was sold. Even Owen, who had hated dogs (especially little dogs) up to this point, really wanted to get to know this dog.


Heck, I even think she's pretty cute.

Voila!

NEED...MORE...TOOLS...

SO, here I am trying to sew these slipcovers and I realize that I am missing some basic sewing tools. (Never mind that I had to borrow the sewing machine from Diana, in the first place!) What a difference a tape measure and a pincushion make!
Then, I did it! I finished my slipcovers. I fought myself hard in order to do it, but they are FINISHED. And they don't really look like I intended, but I am moving on. Each cover ended up being 2 pieces and the skirt has both pattern and color. Mark thinks I'm nuts...I added ANOTHER PATTERN and ANOTHER COLOR. He doesn't realize that I'm working toward layers (like on my scrapbook pages!) It's just that we can't do it all at once for the sake of a budget and he can't see the "effect" that I see inside my crazy head. Oh, well. It's not like he's going to decorate the living room, so he pretty much has to trust me!

In order to pacify us both, though, I did need to move some color and pattern "up" because it has concentarted on the floor so far (with the rug, ottomans and chair skirts.) Hence the little pillows which were fun, instant gratification. And to dress things up a little, I got out the embroidery needle and floss and free-handed a little design on one of them. I'm so tickled with how it turned out.

An additional benefit has been to my ego. Neither Mark nor my good friend Helen knew that I had these basic skills and they seemed quite impressed. (I'm not used to impressing anyone at this stage in my life!) Anyway, it made me reflect a little on the fact that I'm not a superb specialist, but I really haved turned into a fantastic generalist. Honestly, it's useful to be a generalist in my current occupation =) Furthermore, it is a pretty natural outcome for someone with my short attention span. I'm learning to embrace that part of myself. Say it with me...I AM A QUITTER! I quit more pursuits than most people will ever start in a lifetime =) As a result, I know a little bit about a lot of things.

Duh!

It just occurred to me that I could have airbrushed myself thin in these pictures of my tatoo.

I'm quick

O.K. I'll try this header for a bit. At least it is uniquely "me."

New Template

Switchin' things up a bit...
come back soon and, hopefully, you'll find a new header, as well.

The Tatoo

It was 1995.

Broadway and Wilson, in the northern part of Chicago.

The Tatoo Factory.

I was 25 and completely sober and knew just what I wanted. $60 and 20 minutes later, I was sporting this mild and cute little tatoo on my waist. Plus, they gave me a cool t-shirt that said, "You Bet It Lasts Forever." (And yes, of course it hurt.)

I've never regretted it. A co-worker said to me when I first got it, "Those cherries are going to look like plums when you're pregnant!" Fortunately that was never the case since I never got very big during pregnancy. The cherries are a little faded and could use a touch-up on the colored portions, but I don't get over to the tatoo shops much anymore with my three kids!