Penelope's Home / A Little Decorating

Penelope's home from her surgery.  It turned out that the microchip was right next to the lump.  I had them remove the microchip just in case it was the cause.  I figure it's better to do that just in case.  That way, I won't have to subject her to another surgery later to try to remover it.  Besides, they said it can normally be pretty hard to find.  The test results will take three to five days.  I still have my fingers and toes crossed tightly that it's all good!

She has 15 staples in a line about two inches long.  I can tell it bothers her and it sure looks like it would.  Eeeek!  She's been in pain and, luckily, the pain meds do seem to help.  She can't reach it to lick it.  That's good!  But, she can reach it with her back foot to scratch it.  She hit it slightly when scratching this morning and screamed out in pain.  Poor girl!

Here she is last night curled up on some quilts while we waited for a new dose of pain meds to start working. 

Sh'e been hiding under the bed a lot.  But, I was able to lure her out this morning with some food.  She was SO happy she could finally eat again!

I stayed busy yesterday so I wouldn't worry so much.  I've been wanting to change things up a bit around the house and do a little decorating for summer.  I got even more inspired yesterday when I visited the blog, Art and Sand.  She's always having so much fun arranging, re-arranging, and decorating her adorable cottage by the sea.  She made some fun arrangements yesterday that inspired me.

I started off by clearing the old arrangement that was on the antique buffet in our entry area.  I gathered up some different items from cupboards and around the house and created a summery arrangement.  I went out and bought some little pots of ivy to put in this cute wood basket and give a little life to the whole thing.  That's the hat I wear when I go out somewhere that I'll be in the sun a while.  It'll be handy since it's right next to the door now.  That's my little collection of flower frogs.  The doily is one that I bought recently when we got some for making dream catchers.  And, the birds were moved from another spot in the house.

I got some sunflowers while I was out buying plants and stuff.  I put them in a pitcher on my kitchen table.  I took off the table cloth and pulled out this crochet doily/table topper for a splash of color.  The table looks so bright and cheery now!  :-)

That was fun and I love the results!  It's always interesting to me how rearranging a few little things can make everything seem new and fresh.  :-)

Weaving, Warm Fuzzies, and Flowers

I started weaving on a second dish towel yesterday.  I thought it would be fun to change it up a bit.  So, I'm weaving this one in a twill pattern.

While I was weaving yesterday afternoon, my sweet little Penelope was sleeping soundly.  She was so sound asleep that she didn't even notice when I walked in the room and took pictures of her.

I took a different route on my morning walk today and saw some beautiful flowers.  Of course, I couldn't resist taking pictures.  I love the colors in this one...

The centers are interesting and the color combination is so unexpected.

The trees along this street change SO much!  At different times of the year they have green pods, bright pink pods, fall color, a little bareness, and now, they're exploding with tiny yellow blossoms.

Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday!

Walking, Running, Riding, and Restoring

I always try to find the good in things.  So, in the midst of all the stress with the things going on in my life lately, I've found increased motivation to get out to walk, run, and ride my bike.  Lots of good ways to restore my sanity, relieve some stress, and get healthy as a result.  A win, win, win!  

I always carry my cell phone with me.  And, being the picture taking fool that I am, a lot of pictures get taken along the way.  Here are a few from the past few weeks.  They're all from Instagram....that's why they have black frames on them.

My walking partner, Salsa...

We love going to the Santa Plateau in our local hills.  It's a beautiful place!  And, it's a great place to ride a mountain bike...

It's also a great place to go for a walk or hike.  Gorgeous!

I think I could sit on one of these benches all day!

There are seasonal pools of water there.  They call them "vernal pools".  They're currently looking quite beautiful!  I love the walkway that goes over them.  Sometimes they're filled with fairy shrimp, tadpoles, tiny frogs, and little snakes.  I love it when the pools are there!

My husband and I were mountain biking there last week and came around the corner and saw a pig!  It was out for a hike with it's family.  It seemed very happy.  It would stop to nibble some grass and then look up to see they were ahead and start running to catch up while it grunted softly.  Funny and cute!  I have to say....I've never seen that before!

It was about 70 degrees and sunny that day.  Beautiful!

I love all the big, old, oak trees up there!

I was up early yesterday morning.  I opened the blinds in our living room and the sun was streaming in.  Penelope was soaking it up and looked like she was meditating.  Good job, Penelope!  A good reminder of something I need to do more of....stop, close my eyes, take some deep breaths, and meditate!

Sweet P

How about a sweet Penelope post for today?!

She's just so darn cute that I can't stop taking photos of her!

Here she is testing out the throw I'm (still) working on.  I think she likes it!

Peek-a-boo!  It's warm in under the comforter!

In spite of all the cattitude she has....she does loves us!

Cozy

I bought a new throw/blanket lately that we've all fallen in love with!  It's super soft, very warm, and oh so cozy!  Our little Penelope is enjoying it too!  She's so cute!

We like the striped one so much that I went to TJ Maxx and bought another one.

And, you guessed it, she likes that one too!  :-)

All of these photos were taken with my cell phone and I used PhotoGrid to size them for Instagram.  "PhotoGrid" recently started showing up on the corner and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.  My daughter uses PhotoGrid and is able to keep it off her photos by clicking it off at a certain point.  I do that every time but it doesn't work for me.  I even took it off my phone and re-installed it to see if that might work.  Nope.  Sigh.  Oh well.  Does anyone know of another editor/re-sizing app that works great but doesn't do that?  Recommendations would be greatly appreciated.  :-)

Kitty Cuteness

Penelope is just so darn cute that I just can't stop taking pictures of her!

Here's a few of the newest ones...

She's always anxious to go to bed and patiently waits until she knows we're about to go upstairs.  Then, she races up and waits for us on the bed.  Sometimes she stays on the bed as we remove the comforter and pillow shams.  Here she is last night...looking like she was thinking, "come on, mom, hurry up, you're late for bed!"

She's a very snuggly girl but only with me.  She won't snuggle with anyone else in the family, no matter how hard they try.  She sleeps right next to me every night and has her own pillow that I put next to me for her to lay on.  Since it's started getting chilly at night, she's started to snuggle under the blankets.  She sometimes even puts her head on my shoulder or my pillow.  It's really hard to get a picture of her doing this because I have to do it with one hand on my phone, it's kind of dark, and she gets annoyed when she notices that I'm taking pictures...again.  But, I got one this morning!...

Since the weather has cooled, I'm back to knitting on this never ending blanket.  It works great because it's long enough to keep me warm...and, Penelope too.  ;-)

Does anyone reading this use PhotoGrid to size your photos before posting in Instagram?  Just yesterday the photos started having "PhotoGrid" on the corner.  That's kind of annoying!  Do you know how to prevent that?  Or, do you know of any other editing/re-sizing apps that won't do that?

Weaving!

I have a great little LeClerc floor loom that sits patiently waiting...and waiting...and waiting for me to use it.  I bet it's in shock right now because I actually am using it again!  I measured out some warp last week for a dish towel and finished warping yesterday.

I have a weaving assistant!  She supervised last week from behind the loom.  Yesterday, as I finished up, Penelope jumped up on my lap and looked up at me as if to ask what I was doing...

Then, she did a close up inspection to make sure I did it right...

Then, I started weaving!  Wooot!  It's so fun!  Why don't I do this more often?!

I'm just doing a simple plain weave for this dish towel project.  I love seeing how multi-colored yarn works up.  And, so far, this is looking great!  I have a busy day ahead but I hope to find some time to work on it today.  There's only enough yarn for one towel.  So, it should work up pretty quickly.

Happy Tuesday!

Celebration Road Trip

My dear hubby and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this December.  I feel even luckier now than the day we got married.  I see now, even more than I did then, what a great match we are.  He's more wonderful than words can express, we work great together as a team in life, and we have a ton of fun exploring the world together!  It's been an awesome and amazing ride over these first 25 years and I'm excited to spend the next 50 or more with him!  

I'm sure we'll do something special to celebrate on our anniversary.  However, his job is going to be keeping him a little extra busy for the next few months.  So, we decided to celebrate a little early with a road trip.  We hit the road for a two week trip to explore some parts of the west that we haven't seen or seen much of.  We took our RV/trailer (aka our little home away from home or cabin on wheels).  That meant the pets could go with us.

Little Penelope gets a little unhappy/nervous about traveling.  We found some treats at the pet store that have herbs to help calm her.  Luckily, they seemed to work.  Here she is happy, relaxed and rolling around on my craft studio floor just before we left...

She traveled better than ever and actually even seemed to enjoy it.  Yay!

We're not a big fan of long driving days.  So, our first stop was going to be Las Vegas.  It's only about five hours away (with stops).  That made it so the next day would be shorter too.

We drove through desert that I've seen lots of times.  So, I took advantage of travel time that I wouldn't be watching the scenery and I did a little yarn ball winding for my next project...

We had reservations at the Las Vegas RV Resort.  It's very affordable for a place with full hook-ups...a must when it's so hot there...and it's very nice.  This was our second time staying there.  

We pulled in, set up, had dinner, popped open a bottle of wine to toast to our trip, and headed to the pool.  It almost felt too hot to go swimming and the water was warm but we had the pool to ourselves and had a ton of fun.  They had a volleyball net set up, a ball, fun-noodles, and a squirt gun/tube.  We hung out down there for quite a while.  I think it was about 95 that night.  Here's a pic of the moon that I posted on Instagram that night...

We took advantage of their nice shower facilities and went back to get some sleep for the next day.

Here's a picture of our adorable little Penelope "helping" me put sheets on the bed.  We had the AC going but I think she was hot and the cool sheets must have felt good on her belly.  It was cute and funny how she had her back legs stretched out behind her...

It was still pretty warm the next morning at sunrise.

Salsa was enjoying a little attention...as always.

She tried her cute little head tilting trick in hopes of scoring a morsel of our breakfast.

But, as usual, it didn't work.

We headed out early, topped off the gas tank (ahhh...lower prices than CA!) and hit the road.  Next stop?  North Rim, Grand Canyon.  A first for both of us and we were so excited!

I'm still sorting through photos but I hope to have the next stop posted soon.  Stay tuned!

Adorableness!

Is that even a word?  It has to be a word because it perfectly describes my

adorable little kitty girl.  Just check out her adorableness in action...

She loves to have her belly rubbed!

A Fairy Garden and a Week on Instagram

Wow!  Last week flew by and I didn't get anything posted on my blog.

It was kind of a weird week.  But, I did get a few things posted on Instagram.

Here they are...

My daughter came home from college for part of the weekend.  When she arrived on Friday 

night, she asked me to close my eyes.  She had a little Mother's Day surprise for me.  

What a sweetie!  She bought some adorable little plants and a little arbor

and gates to start my very own little fairy garden!  Aren't they cute?!

I've wanted to make a fairy garden for a while now.  In fact, my daughter and I went shopping last Spring to find containers and supplies.  Life got busy and I never got any further than that.  But, I finally got around to making one this weekend...thanks to her!  I used the old roasting pan that I found last year at a thrift shop.  It was the perfect size to hold everything she got for me.

Here's a close up photo.  I've since added a little bunny tucked in close to the bush on the right.

I'll be watching for a few more things to add a little more character and cuteness to my fairy garden.

We've been careful not to use insecticides around our house for the past few years.  I don't want to hurt the birds or other wildlife that my live here.  By doing that, we now have a great insect control system...lots of lizards. There are several different kinds and colors.  And, we sometimes have tiny babies running around.  Some of the lizards are getting big.  And, some are very colorful!  I found a couple of them on Saturday that were bright and colorful in the sun.  One of them had glistening green and blue on it's back.  This one had glistening blue.  It's even prettier in person.

Sometimes, I just NEED to crochet.  And, sometimes, it just NEEDS to be on a rock.

It might seem a little weird but it's so much fun!  I enjoy the creativity and problem solving

required to design something and make it fit nicely and snuggly on the rock.

I treated myself to a little ball of turquoise crochet thread on Friday.

I've been eyeing it for a long time but hadn't bought it because of my yarn diet.

Sometimes, a girl just needs a treat of new yarn!  I came home and quickly got started.

Here's what I came up with...

Here's the back...

Little Nellie (Penelope) is a big part of every week and everyday!

I love this little girl!  She was very snuggly last week.

She hopped up on my lap a lot and just wanted to be held and snuggled.

How can I resist taking more photos of that?!  She's so cute!

Wishing you all a wonderful week!

Penelope Post

Just have to share some photos of my precious Penelope.

She's the sweetest, cuddliest, silliest, most wonderful and unique kitty I've ever had!

I love this girl!

Her and I have bonded and she's my sweet lil girl.

Every morning she waits until she sees me open my eyes and then runs over for morning snuggles.

I love that!  She even looks into my eyes with a loving look and puts her paw on me.

It's become a morning ritual.  She's trying to make it a middle of the night routine too.

If I wake up in the night, she runs up and lays next to me for at least a few minutes of snuggling.

She's so sweet!  Just look at her adorable little face...

We started taking her on camping trips when she was itty bitty.  She meowed a LOT!

We went again last week and she did SO much better.  She did very little meowing.

 I think she even liked it.  She seemed to enjoy looking out the windows. 

She hung out in the back seat with my daughter for most of the trip.

She wore a harness and a leash to keep her safe.

In this photo she was checking on our dog Salsa who was laying in the back...

A little time in the front seat with me...

And, in the back seat again, sitting on my daughter's lap.

She used my daughter's arm as a paw rest...

She rested her chin on the window sill of the door for a while.

From the reflection in the glass, it looks like she fell asleep...

She seemed to enjoy her week of camping.  There was a lot to see, smell and listen to and that

kept her awake and busy watching out the windows and running around the RV all week.
She slept and snuggled at night and early in the mornings but took very few naps.

Now that we're home, she's all tuckered out.  She played with her toy a little this morning.

And, she did a little sun bathing.  But, most of the day has been spent cat napping...

She was very relaxed and stretched out on the love seat this afternoon...

Such a cutie!