Happy Halloween

What do you call a fat Jack-o-lantern?

A Plumpkin

What's the first thing ghosts do when they get in a car?

 They boo-kle their seat belts.

Where do baby ghosts go during the day?

Day"scare" centers

Are we there yet?

Yesterday was spent taking a road trip. We drove to St. Mary's Pennsylvania to visit Wade's daughter. Our hours to hers is a three hour drive. Today, I don't even want to look at the car.
About 10 minutes after we left yesterday morning we started seeing rain mixed with snow. Yes, I said snow. The further we got the more snow we saw. In St. Mary's they actually had accumulation on the ground. Luckily the roads were still ok.
I took a picture at the rest area we stopped at to prove we saw snow.

I should have taken pictures at his daughters house so you could see how much they got. It was totally disgusting. I don't want this stuff.
On the way back home we started seeing a little bit of sunshine and there was a beautiful rainbow ahead of us. I would have gotten a picture but I was driving at the time. I did get a couple more pictures at another rest area though.

No snow, I like these better.

Shutterfly

I'm not one to rush the holidays. I'm a firm believer that you should never start celebrating a holiday before the preceding one has been duly recognized. That is why you will never see a single Christmas ornament come out in my house until after Thanksgiving dinner has been eaten. There is, however, one exception to this rule of mine. It is acceptable to purchase gifts for holidays any time of the year. After all, if you come across the perfect gift at the perfect price why pass it up. It's also never too early to make or buy your Christmas cards.
When I recently read a post on another blog about Shutterfly I decided to check them out.
First I looked at their gift selection and I found a nice selection at very reasonable prices.
I think this Personalized Desk Organizer would be great for Wade's desk with a picture of his granddaughter on it.

I think I should buy myself a gift too and I thought a new travel mug with Duke's picture on it would be a great idea

Who couldn't use a new wall calendar? Even better who wouldn't LOVE a calendar filled with pictures of Duke?

After checking out all the fabulous gift possibilities I went in search of my perfect Christmas card to send out this year. I have a hard time deciding when I only have a couple of choices so I found the huge selection of designs to be a little overwhelming. It took me a while to narrow it down to just a few choices.
I liked Twirling Ribbons and I'm sure Duke would look cute on this one

 

But then Duke would also look fabulous on Glad Tidings

This one was Duke's choice

Now if I can just make up my mind I'll be ordering my cards. I did receive 25 free cards for doing this post. Best of all if you are a blogger you too can get in on this offer.
If you are a blogger and interested in a chance to receive 25 free cards you can go HERE but hurry because you only have until November 11 to register.

Just decided

I'm taking the day off from blogging. I've turned off comments for this post. See you all tomorrow

Don't look now.

Hey Duke, don't look but I think someone is watching you.

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mommy, make him go away.

I told you not to look Duke.

Witchy Wednesday

With Halloween fast approaching I thought today would be a good day to pull out the witch.

OK, who's the wise guy in the back that asked where I was pulling myself out of?

Fraud

Today's picture has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of my post. It's here merely because Duke wanted it to be.

Today I want to talk about fraud. A few weeks ago, on a Saturday, I was making a purchase at the store I work at. My card was declined. Knowing that there was plenty in my account to cover my purchase I walked up the street to my bank and ran my card through the ATM. Sure enough, the balance was exactly what I expected and I made a withdrawal.  I assumed that the store was just having a problem with their machine, which happens on occasion. Thinking nothing more of it the following Monday I stopped to get gas, once again using my card and it was again declined. I drove right to the bank to find out what was going on. They told me that they had suspected visa fraud and so shut down the credit side of all their debit cards.
Fast forward to this past Saturday.The card was again working so I went to Walmart to pick up a few things. Once again, my card was declined. Knowing what happened before I asked her to run it as a debit. Same result, card declined. I drove to the nearest branch and attempted to do a balance inquiry on their mac machine. "transaction failed, please contact your financial institution" was the message I received.
PANIC
I went home and checked my bank statement on the computer and everything looked fine. I wasn't able to get to the bank until lunch time today to see what was going on. Apparently there were some fraudulent charges made on my card but they were flagged and dropped so nothing came out of my account. I consider myself lucky. The number of people who live in my town that have become the victim of this type of theft is unbelievable. The sad part is that no matter how safe you think you are being with your card and your numbers there is still the possibility that this can happen.
So what is a person to do? Do we stop enjoying the convenience of having the bank card? Do we go back to writing checks? Do we close our accounts and put our money in our mattress?
In conclusion to lighten things up a bit, I would like to say that if Duke ever gets his paws on the guy/girl who tried to take his treat money, he's going show them just how tough a Westie can be.

Bullseye

Wade recently joined a dart league. He'll be spending his Monday evenings in a pink shirt throwing little darts at a board. He wanted to practice during the week so I bought him the only dartboard I could find when I was out shopping the other day.

Thinking back to days long ago when I was a kid trying to win one of those cheapo prizes at carnivals by breaking balloons with a dart, I always assumed that I just couldn't throw the darn things. Wade hung his board and asked if I wanted to play.  Just look what I can do.

I admit this one was staged but I did actually hit the bullseye a couple of times and I even managed to beat Wade.

Random Rambling

Today you get random ramblings from me, Duke. Mom is being lazy and that's why she didn't do a post yesterday. It didn't look like she was going to get to it today either so I thought I would step in and take over.
My only problem is that I don't know what to randomly ramble about. Looks like I'm not doing much better than mom. Well, we're both just going to blame it on all the rain and cold weather we've had around here lately. Maybe we can do better tomorrow

You gotta have friends

So lets talk about friends today.
The two girls I work with the most are Kelly and Katrina. They had been talking about this shopping trip they had planned for Wednesday. Wednesday, when they both had off and I had to work. I listened to them talk about what stores they were going to and where they were going to have lunch and what they wanted to look for while they were out. I listened, and I whined. I tried to lay guilt trips on them about me having to work while they were going out to have fun, WITHOUT ME! It didn't work, they went any way.
So here is Katrina on the left and Kelly on the right

Yeah, I took their pictures while they weren't looking. I did tell them I took them though and that they were going to be the topic for my next blog post.

So this morning Kelly is telling me about where they went and what they did. They had a good time. A good time without me. (yes, I'm still whining about it)
I guess it's ok though because while they were having a good time they thought of me and I got this.

See that? It's even personalized. I am Annie, Bakery Chief and fearless leader.
And Duke is a happy puppy tonight because he got something too.

Then Kelly said that I had to take a picture of me wearing my bakery chief headdress. 

You think this picture is bad you should see a few of the other ones that I took before I got this one.

New Header

I'm sure you've all noticed the more seasonal look around here. It was time to take Duke's summer look down and give the old header an autumnal appearance.
I started out with a picture of a leaf and played around with it in myDazzling Reflections program. The original kaleidoscope that I made looked like this.

Then I opened it up in Photoshop elements and did some more playing. I ended up with a block that looked like this.

I pulled one of the colors from the block to use for the background of the header, added some texture and then placed the picture of Duke and the block. Then I erased the edges of both the block and Duke to make them blend in to the background of the header. I finished it up by slapping on the old snap edit scrap and I had a brand new header.

I've been wanting to do a little more with my blog in the way of cleaning it up but I just haven't had the time to sit down and play. I wonder if the boss would mind me taking the day off to play with my blog? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't go over too well.

The many faces of Duke

Duke is very good at getting his point across both vocally and through facial expressions. Let me show you what I mean.
This first one means
"I am a fierce and ferocious puppy, hand over the treats and no one gets hurt"

 This one means "I'm feeling weak and dizzy, quick give me a treat before I pass out"

 This one means "I'm a good dog, I'm a good dog, May I please have a treat?"

Here we have one that means "I'm so cute you can't possibly refuse my sweet request for a treat"

and last but not least we have

"What do you mean we're out of treats?"

Right here in black and white

I haven't been doing many craft projects lately. I may possibly have short circuited my creativity. The things that I have shown you recently were made a couple weeks ago and I have one more left.
I went for a different look on the quilled necklaces and decided to go with black and white.

The center doesn't show up real well but there are black loops there. I tried taking the picture several different ways and just could not get it to show up any better. This one also has a crocheted chain but rather than using the nylon I used a cotton thread.

Lazy rainy days

What a lazy, boring and wet weekend we had.
We spent a lot of time doing things like this

Well, actually, Duke was the only one who was laying on the back of the couch but you get the idea.

Gold Leafing

This may not actually be gold but it is a leaf and they are colorful.

Gold leaf is gold that has been hammered in to extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding

Bittersweet October.  The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.  ~Carol Bishop Hipps

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
~George Cooper, "October's Party"

Last weekend we had beautiful weather. The sun was shining the temperature was comfortable. This weekend has given us a very sharp contrast. All day yesterday it was cold, rainy and windy. I sure would appreciate a little bit of sunshine today.

One sheet wonder

Yesterday you saw the stationery box, today I show you some of the cards that I put in it. I found a template online somewhere (and I can't remember where) for the "one sheet wonder". You take one sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper and cut into different shapes to make 10 different cards.
Even though it gives you examples of layouts for your cards I've discovered that I have no sense of design at all. Yes I had the layout, I had the shapes but what do I add to them after that. I got through 5 of the cards and the other 5 are still waiting to be finished.
Here are the 5 I did.

Whenever I make cards I always feel like either they are lacking something or too overdone. There never seems to be a happy medium with me.

Stationery or Stationary

I recently made a stationery box after seeing a tutorial on Splitcoaststampers. Or maybe it's a stationary box, since it doesn't move on it's own.
Either way here it is.

And here's a look at the inside. There is a space for greeting cards, tags, note cards and a little pocket for stamps. There's also a little address book and one little detail that I neglected to add is the pen holder. Oops. 

Now all it needs is to be filled up. I have some cards in it I just need to make some note cards and tags.

Go fetch

Amanda (my daughter, for those of you who may be newer around here) and Duke were playing go fetch out in the yard on Sunday.
So where is it Duke?

It's where?

So 4 foot 11 inch Amanda was trying to get the toy out of the tree with a broom and couldn't reach it. Guess who ended up having to go fetch the ladder? I highlighted the area where the dog toy is so you could see just how high up it is.

Such a considerate daughter to take the picture of me so I had blog material.

Special Order

Last weekend I had to work on a special order. One of the sales reps that comes in to see us on a regular basis had bought a few of my things that I had sitting on my table at work. She asked if I could do something special for her granddaughter's birthday. But of course I can.
Anyway she said she wanted something with flowers and peace signs and the whole hippie, flower power kind of thing.

I sure hope she likes it.

Flowers for my friends

There's no time like the present to give my friends the gift of flowers.

I hope that it's a beautiful day in your neighborhood

Good Read

I used to like to read but eventually found that I would fall asleep after reading just a couple of pages so I haven't picked up a book in quite some time.
A couple weeks ago I ran across one in Walmart and it said "buy me"

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope - a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it.

I think it was the dog lover in me that made me buy the book. The words heart-wrenching, funny and uplifting are perfect descriptive words for this story. I laughed out loud, I even cried in some parts. The best thing I've read in a long time. After reading this book though, I wonder even more just what is going through Duke's mind.

Drive by shooting

Can you keep a secret? Well if you promise I'll tell you mine.
I'm guilty. This was a totally premeditated act. I am the shooter. I planned it, I carried it out. I did it. I knew that with the road closing it would be the perfect opportunity.

Instead of taking the designated detour I knew a shorter less traveled route to follow. It was perfection, I was alone on the road.

I aimed and I shot.

Further down the road, I spotted another target and I shot again.

Before making a hasty retreat back to my lair I had to make a pit stop for my accomplice. 

I actually tried to do this a couple different times but always ended up with cars behind me. This day was perfect for it though. No one behind me and no one coming in the other direction. I stopped right in the middle of the road several times. Probably could have gotten better shots if I would have actually gotten out of the car but I had Duke along for the ride.