big cats!

Today is rain, rain, rain. And it's supposed to last for the next few days. A bit ago there was a small patch of blue sky and I sat outside soaking it up until it was overtaken by grayness.  It's difficult going from nice, warm sunny days to cold, rain. Ah, but that's spring-time in the mountains! 

We had a custom order recently for a set of big cats, and I loved them so much that I decided to add them to our Outside Everywhere shop. There's a cheetah (my favorite!), leopard, panther, bobcat, and tiger. 

We're slowly working towards moving all the jewelry to its' own shop. It's all set up, but i have yet to open the shop. Soon, so soon! 

GEMMA

We have a new dog!!!

We've been thinking about getting a new dog for a while. (Daniel would want me to say that I've been wanting a new dog. He has said no more pets, but what's adding one more dog going to hurt?? One night I was looking up pictures of animals who needed forever homes.  I've been in love with Great Pyrenees and Australian Shepherds for a long time, and when I came across a picture online of a sweet dog who needed a home and just happened to be a Great Pyrenees/Australian Shepherd mix, I fell in love. And I fell hard. I showed Daniel and Eden her picture, but I thought I would wait to email about her for a week, and if she was still available, then it was meant to be. Well, a week passed, and she was still available. I emailed about her, heard back within a few hours that yes, she still needed a home. I emailed back, and didn't hear anything for two days. I was thinking she was most definitely gone. Or maybe the person didn't like me, or that I sounded too enthusiastic and she thought i was weird. So I emailed again, and the lady didn't get my other email, and yes, she was still available. So we made a date to drive down the mountain (she was in another state - an hour and a half from Asheville) to meet her. As soon as we saw her, she jumped all over us and that was all it took! She came from a really sweet, nice family who just couldn't keep her any longer, even though they loved her so much. I promised that we would love her forever and told her that we treat our pets like family (seriously, have you seen my other son, Mason?? ha!).

Gemma is awesome. She's huge! 80 pounds at 10 months old, and I love the bigness!! She's so fluffy and soft, I call her my cloud-dog.

Things we have learned about Gemma:
:: she loves to eat ice. she picks it up, drops it, chases it around the kitchen, then crunches it.
:: she will drink your coffee if you leave it unattended
:: she's an awesome food-sneaker. she loves eden's breakfast waffles
:: she's a barker. anything goes on outside, Gemma knows, and she's going to bark at it.
:: she's a super-quick runner. i found this out yesterday when she shoved me out the way, ran out the    front door and down the street. she wouldn't walk back up the hill to our house so i has to drag her 80 lb body
:: she loves strawberries
:: she loves zucchini
:: okay, she loves any people food
:: she loves eden. he's over-the-moon in love with her
:: already, she's very protective of our family. we are hers, and she lets everything know it
:: she chases snow
:: she loves her rope toy. she sleeps with her duck toy
:: she is intrigued by cats. she can't quite figure ours out
:: if i go outside without her, she jumps at the glass door and whines
:: she's incredibly smart
:: she's awesome. did i mention that??

she likes to put her paws in my lap while i'm working at my desk

Quit Slackin'

 

(this print can be found here)

 

This is my goal for the upcoming week. Not that I was slacking in any way last week. In fact, it was quite busy. We had a large custom order we were desperately trying to finish and get sent out, and other regular orders, and I had a few of Eden's homeschool friends over to play one day. But this is a new week, starting out with sunshine and unheard-of 57 degree weather today, and everything is looking up over here.

It has been our intent for the last two months to open a separate etsy shop for our jewelry, and i've been working on it here and there, but by the end of this week the shop will finally open. FOR REAL!!! It's just very, very time-consuming having to copy and paste and write new listings for quite a bit of jewelry. The only time I really have to sit down for an extended time at the computer is after Eden goes to bed, but that's when Daniel uses the computer too. Our solution would  be to have two computers. We really need two computers, and we also need the money to buy another computer.  We had planned to buy another computer so that we'd have two, but then there was the little incident where I, ahem, broke our other computer. Wishful thinking is nice, but i'm so grateful that we have one fully-functioning computer.

I haven't actually "announced" anywhere that I have this blog. I wanted to have a few posts up before I sent people to a blog with only one or two posts. So yeah, sometime this week I'll make the public aware of this little blog. I'll be happy for a few readers. One or two.

It sure is nice to have a working computer again. In a, we'll say "tense moment", i slammed our computer closed and it quit working. For future reference, i rarely get angry, but a sure way to get me all riled up is to be passive aggressive and know that being passive aggressive is the one way to make me mad. So we had to resort to using our old  computer where only about a third of the keyboard worked and we had to use the handy, but oh so annoying on-screen keyboard. Typing anything took forever. And of course the computer meltdown would happen just as we were getting ready to open our jewelry-only etsy shop. Now, things are back on track, i'm catching up on all of the computer work i wasn't able to do for a month, and it's all sunny skies over here. 

Right when the computer broke, i was all excited about starting a blog and keeping up with it. I've made attempts in the past, but failed. Miserably. This time though, I'm going to stick with it. I'm even planning to post daily until i get into the swing of things. I had always heard that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit, then i read online that there's no scientific backing to that statement. But it sounds good to me, and I thought, hey, if 21 days is good, 31 days will be even better. So, every day for a month i'm going to post at least something. 

And I realize this is kinda rambling and boring, so now here's a picture of Eden pretending to breast feed one of our cats, Beatrix. He called me into his room and said, "Look, I'm being a good mama to Beatrix. See, she's drinking my milk." That boy makes my heart melt. 

(credit)

today has been full of 

::re-opening our etsy shop after a much-needed post-holiday break

::preparing to split our shop into two shops, one for our toys, and another for jewelry and home goods

::cozy rainy-day cardigan-wearing

::little house on the prairie

::snuggles with eden and our various cats and dogs

::listening to good music over and over (i'm on play number 3 in a row of coexist by the xx. it is so good.)

::lots of coffee

if today is any indication of what's to come in 2013, then with a full heart i graciously welcome in the new year.