Guard Duty

I tried to take a picture of Duke out in the back yard last night but I didn't have much success. See for yourself.

Here's the original picture.

 

The light was bad, he wouldn't stand still and I didn't have the steadiest hand.

A picture of Duke though is hard to throw away no matter how bad it is. So I tried to save it.

  

Now he's my hero dog guarding against evil predators. We can all sleep soundly tonight, Duke is on duty.

Dryers can't fly

I had such a productive weekend for a change. It's been a long time since I've had one of those that I felt the need to blog about it.
Lets start off with my computer/craft room, a.k.a. Amanda's old bedroom. (hold on, I'll get to why dryers can't fly)
Welcome to my room

When I first took this room over I had some big plans for it. I never got very far with them other than painting the walls and new carpet. It's been a total pig sty lately because I haven't had anywhere to store stuff other than to stack it up on either the sewing machine or a card table or on the floor. Over there in the corner is the new shelves I bought to organize everything. By the way, I took this picture about 3/4 of the way through my cleaning.

Everything on the shelves and off the floor.

 

I even hung some pictures that I've had framed since last summer. I've been wanting to put these up but just haven't had the ambition. Now I just need to find a small shelf to put underneath the picture to the left.

OK, so about dryers and why they can't fly.

Saturday we went to Lowes and bought a new dryer. Wade has had enough of running the dryer three times just to get one load of clothes dry. The electric company probably loves the old dryer but we didn't. We picked one out and plopped down some money but couldn't pick it up until today since we don't have a truck. But, as luck would have it one of the guys Wade works with was willing to haul it for us today.

 

So here's the new dryer all set up. Pay no attention to the less than white old washer sitting next to the bright white appliance.

Anyway, they are on their way home with the dryer and it's standing up ever so nicely in the back of Bernie's truck. (see where this is going?) Yep, it decided to tip over. It landed on the tailgate and luckily it changed it's mind about taking flight. Can you imagine the poor guy driving behind them? It eventually made it's way to it's new home safe and sound and is now ever so quietly drying a load of clothes.

What's so special about today?

You could say that today is special because, as I learned over at "As the crackerhead crumbles", today is Puppy Bowl VI. Or, if you are a sports fan you could argue that it's because of the Super Bowl. While I realize that either one of those could be very important to you and cause for celebration, that's not what makes today so special.
Today is special because it's my sisters birthday. Yep, that's right. I won't tell you how old she is just in case she's sensitive about her age, but I will tell you that I turned thirteen 42 days after she was born. Hey, I just realized that in 42 days I'm going to be 48.
Anyway, my sister and I never really got to know each other all that well. My parents were divorced when I was around 10. My mother and Tanyia's dad were living in Florida when she was born, and I was living with my father. Yes we have spent time together over the years here and there but never to the extent that we should have. Even though we haven't shared the bond that most sisters do we have quite a bit in common both good and bad :) It's unfortunate that we live so far apart now. Phone calls, emails and blog comments just aren't enough sometimes.
So Tanyia, Happy Birthday to you. I hope that today is as special as you are.

 

Why not stop over and Wish Tanyia a happy birthday at surviving motherhood...barely

Friday night sniffles

Another Friday night and two whole days of no work. YEAH! Since I'm still not completely over my cold yet, I'm taking the evening to lounge on the couch with my laptop and do nothing. That means that I have no pictures to share with you tonight. I don't even have any exciting news to tell you. I do have something special planned for Sunday though so I hope you'll stop by and check it out. Duke says to tell you all hello and enjoy your weekend

Positively Duke

 

Mom has a cold and isn't feeling very peppy so that's why she didn't post last night. I figured I better take over because she's still pretty sneezy today. The only problem is I've been laying here trying to think of what to say and i have no idea.

 

I could tell you the story about the little accident I had by the basement door yesterday but that would be a pretty crappy post. The story line wouldn't get much better when it got to the part about mom coming home for lunch and not noticing and stepping right in my accident. She had to wear her good sneakers back to work. 

  

I won't tell you that story though. I'll just lay here and look cute. Will that work?

Negative dogs and talking trees

After a long day of work I come home hoping that my beloved best friend will do me the favor of taking over the posting duties for the evening. Apparently I was asking a bit too much. When I asked him his reply was very negative.

 

Alrighty then, I'll just go to plan B.

I've had this thought rolling around in my brain for a while and finally got it done. I took phrases like barking up the wrong tree, going out on a limb and branching out, and turned them into this.

I started with a basic tree shape. Then I typed out the phrases and rotated, resized and distorted them to follow the shapes of the branches. After that I threw away the tree shape and just started adding in color for the leaves.

Since I haven't had any type of freebie up in quite some time this was a good opportunity to do so. 

These are all PNG files so you can place them on anything without having to try and get rid of a background. You get one that I've already colored, one that is black and white that you can add a color layer over top of and one that is just the branches. Hope that someone can find some use for them. 

OOPS it would help if I added the link for the download wouldn't it? Good thing I decided to take one last look at the post after I hit the publish button.

You can dowload the zip file by clicking HERE

One flew over the cuckoos nest

The title of that movie pretty much sums up why I haven't been around in a few days. Without going into all the boring details I'll just say that the weekend did NOT go as I had intended. Hopefully though, things will start to get back to normal now. Even my internet connection went a little screwy over the weekend. I did visit all of you but had so much trouble leaving comments that I didn't try most of the time. I think that problem has also been taken care of.

I haven't picked up my camera in days, if you can believe that. No new pictures of Duke, which he is probably very grateful for the break.

Last Thursday I sat down with the intentions of doing nothing more than doodling. Somehow, it turned into this.

I called it "Follow the unknown"  I have a couple other things I did over the weekend too that I'll be sharing with you some time this week.