Lexi Turns 2

Our dog Lexi turned 2 this weekend and I got some decent pictures of her while trying to eat her treats.  We took both of the dogs on a hike on Saturday, and on the way home we stopped at a local place that sells doggie cookies.  We got a couple and gave them to Lexi the next day for her birthday.  I just wanted to share some of the pictures because I think they are super cute!  We also got her and Paddington each a new bone.  But since Lexi thinks all toys are hers, she proceeded to bury hers somewhere in the yard, and then steal Paddy’s and bury his somewhere in the yard as well.  Hopefully she’ll dig them up soon!

Cookies!

Lickin' her lips already

Savoring each bite

High Five for Friday!

Well folks, it is Friday once again!  Time to link up to Lauren over at From My Grey Desk for her High Five for Friday link party.  It’s a great way to look back at your favorite things from the week.   Let’s get started:

1. My up-cycled bulletin board.  It adds so much color to my drab cube.

2.    2.   My fancy new nail polish that I originally got for New Years but haven’t worn till now.  It’s by Sally Hansen.

Sorry for the crappy phone picture

3.    3. These two…the cutest faces ever.  It’s so nice to have them to come home to especially when I’m home by myself and hubby is traveling for work.

 4.  My new phone cover!

 

5.  Getting to start the 3^rd Harry Potter book finally.

So addicted 

Hope everyone has a fabulous Friday!!

Winter Cleaning

I know it's supposed to be Spring cleaning, but I wanted a fresh start to the new year.  Hence the Winter cleaning that began this weekend.  Yes, that’s right, I said began.  The cleaning process is definitely not done.  I never really thought we had that much stuff, until we started cleaning everything out.  Holy smokes we have/had so much STUFF!  The major cleaning started with the bonus area upstairs.  We have sort of a “loft” type area upstairs that we use as our office area.  We have our desk/desktop computer, bookshelf, 2^nd tv, Wii, files, all that sort of stuff up there.  But lately (over the past month or so) that area has started accumulating all sorts of random things.  And it was really starting to bug both of us that it just looked like such a mess.  I admit that it was probably 90% my fault and my things (mostly craft supplies) that was creating the mess.  But my hubby is so wonderful and never said a word about it, just agreeing that it needed to be dealt with :) .  So this weekend was full of purging, and organizing and cleaning.  I finally got all of my Mary Kay products organized, and now I just need to label the bins and drawers.  And to give you a visual of how much stuff we actually had…my car now has 8 TRASH BAGS in the back for Goodwill, plus some other larger stuff for Goodwill that couldn’t fit in a trash bag!!!  My trunk (of an SUV) is now full of Goodwill items.  How in the world did that all fit in our house?!

Saturday morning I went for a nice long walk with Linda and the dogs.  I hadn’t seen her since before the holidays, and we had some catching up to do!  It was a really nice day out and felt good to get out and get some exercise.  Saturday afternoon was spent cleaning, and Saturday evening, my parents came over to finally do Christmas.  We got some great presents!  Thank you so much Mom and Dad!!  Also thank you to the Berger family and the King family! John also got to open some early Birthday presents.  I got him a new golf bag, and a new luggage set :)  My parents stayed for dinner, so we got to have some nice hangout time with them.

Luggage Set I got for Hubby

New Golf bag I got for Hubby :

Sunday was of course more cleaning (this is going to be an ongoing theme for a while), a trip to DSW for John to spend some gift cards (can you believe that I went to DSW and didn’t even try anything on?!  Maybe this living simply resolution is kicking in!) he ended up with two new pairs of dress shoes.  Then he went over so some friends of ours house to watch the Purdue basketball game.  Sunday night ended with a quiet night in with the puppies (one of which got a bath and a haircut this weekend), with some left over Fat’s (we went out for Hubby’s birthday on Friday night) and a movie.  We got Your Highness from Netflix.  It was……..interesting.  Not really my cup of tea.  We’ll just say that we were both glad we didn’t pay to see it in theaters.  Now, Mission Impossible 4 – which we saw in theaters on Friday night after dinner, was a great movie.  So much cool technology, and lots of intense chase scenes, which I personally like better than the shoot’em up type scenes.  We both recommend that one :)

 

I hope you all had a great weekend!  Anyone else starting the new year off with some house cleaning??

Weekend Recap

Happy Monday everyone!  Hope you all had a great weekend J  What did you do?  Finish Christmas shopping? Relax? Hang out with family?  We did a little of each.  Friday night was my company holiday party.  It was at a local hotel and it was a really nice gathering.  Food, friends, and door prizes.  Sadly we didn’t win any, but it was still fun.  Saturday I went and got a haircut.  This was the last one I’ll have from the amazing Erika L  She is packing up her shop and leaving the country for whatever amazing adventures she can find!  So brave.  So I got my last haircut in before she leaves and before the holidays.  Then I went and did some last minute Christmas shopping. 

Meanwhile, John was having  gravel delivered to our house for our back patio.  He really wanted to get that layer down in case it rains anytime soon.  Although according to the 10 day forecast…there is no such rain in our near future.  But, none the less, now if it does rain, the patio area won’t become a mud pit.  It proved to be quite the task to shovel and transport all of this gravel from the driveway to the back yard.  So about half way through, I pitched in and helped J  Have I mentioned how sore I am today?!  Wow I’m out of shape!

The pile of gravel

 

We also let the puppies have their Christmas presents a little early since we won’t be able to spend the actual Christmas day with them.  Lexi got a new bed, they both got fleece jackets, and new bones.

Lexi's new bed

Paddy's new camo jacket!

Dressing the baby girl

That night we went to dinner with my dad, and stayed at my parents house that night so that we could wake up and take my dad to the airport.  My mom already left for Palm Springs, and my dad flew down to meet her and some more of my family.  His flight was super early in the morning, so we thought it’d be easiest to just stay at their house, to save us some sleep.  Although we didn’t take into account the fact that Lexi snoring would keep us up half the night…oops!

So needless to say Sunday morning we dropped my dad off at the airport, and went back home and back to bed J  We ran some more errands on Sunday afternoon, and I was able to finish my casserole holder that I’ve been working on and off on for the past week.  You can find the tutorial here.  Although I did buttons instead of Velcro closures.  And I also did the handles more like hers.  It turned out pretty good for a first attempt at sewing something completely on my own!  It was a gift to my friend and coworker and his wife.  They love to cook J 

 Hope everyone else had a great weekend.  Let the countdown to Christmas begin!!

Friday High Fives

I thought I would take a moment to list out my top 5 favorite things from this week.  I got the idea from some blogs that I follow The Small Things Blog and From My Grey Desk (they are sisters and I love their blogs!)  And in the spirit of the trend I thought I would join in!

1. Walking my puppies at night after work and looking at all of the fun holiday light displays around the neighbor hood.  Some people are so creative!  It really gets me in the holiday mood.

2. Having Craft night with some awesome girlfriends and learning how to knit!

3. My beautiful new shoes for New Years that showed up on my doorstep this week

4. Holiday potlucks and holiday parties at work!  It's like holiday party time at school where people really only show up for the food and festivities, even though we're supposed to be working ;)

5. And last but CERTAINLY not least...my hubby finally coming home after being on travel for work!  I missed him so much!!

What have been your favorite things this week?

The Barker Grooming Salon

In an effort to save money, I decided that I would try my hand at grooming our littlest dog's hair.  He's the kind that doesn't shed, but requires a haircut every month or so.  Otherwise, he'll look like a mop on legs.  So while at Wally World a week or so ago, I picked up one of those dog grooming kits.  It comes with clippers, different length combs, scissors, and a mirror (because the dog really cares what he looks like afterward...)  Here is the kit that I bought

I think it was around $50 which seems like a lot, but when you stop to think that I was paying $35 each month for someone else to do it, it makes sense.  So, Wednesday night, I decided to go for it.  I sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and just kinda went to town on poor Paddy.  He was not a huge fan of the clippers.  Or the scissors for that matter.  But I think he turned out pretty good for a first try!  The hardest part was by far his face.  I had to use only scissors for that.  He was quite the trooper through the whole ordeal.  He stayed fairly patient with Mommy while I figured out what I was doing along the way :)

And without further ado...the before and after pictures.  And the piles of hair that was left on the floor/garbage can.  We washed and dried him after the hair cut.

The Before Picture

Shagtastic!

Half the hair...

The other half :)

And the final product!  Still a little wet from the bath :)

So that was my adventure with dog grooming.  Hopefully it gets easier/faster.  Leave comments below if you have any questions or suggestions for next time!