We might be getting a doggy!

I am so excited! We're going to meet a rescue dog on Saturday morning and I can't wait!!!

We've been talking about wanting a dog for years now but never did much about it. Finally I started doing some research on dog ownership (since Willy and I will both be first-time dog owners) and started looking online for a dog that would be a good fit for us. We always wanted a rescue dog, something small to medium sized (probably like 25 lbs. or less), something that didn't shed too much, something with hair instead of fur, and something that would get along with other people and kids. We pretty much knew after doing some research on breeds that we wanted a poodle mix. I did some hunting on PetFinder.com but hadn't found the right companion for us. That and a lot of the rescues on that site required some pretty high fees, which I couldn't stomach after being unemployed for so long.

Then I met someone who does rescue work in her free time and she told me about a poodle mix they just got. He's tiny--only 5 lbs. right now but the woman who's fostering him thinks he could be up to 15 lbs. once he gets to a normal weight. Here's the first picture I got of him, where his hair is totally overgrown:

His hair was really matted as it turns out so they ended up having to shave him. Look how tiny he is afterwards!
So he needs to be fed and given some TLC, but otherwise his foster mom told me he's a great little guy. Listens well, is smart, gets along with other dogs and people...basically sounds like a great dog for first-timers and the perfect fit for us. I hope he'll be coming home with us soon!

Pretty flowers from our yard

I love cut flowers but never buy them because I'm way too frugal. I love my orchids and other plants, but there's something about flowers in a vase that's just different. Luckily we have a few pretty perennials planted (say that 3x fast) around the yard and here's what I cut today:

The daisies are just too cute, and the other two are varieties of astilbes. I can't take credit for having planted any of these, they were already here when we bought the place. I did buy and plant more astilbe bulbs earlier this spring though since I love their delicate, pretty look and they're coming up slowly but surely.

Don't the astilbe's remind you of fireworks? Speaking of which, we saw the most amazing fireworks show for the 4th of July this year. We went to the Cambridge side of the Charles River with my sister and her boyfriend and the vendors for the show this year did an absolutely amazing job. I wish I'd taken my camera with me; the picture to the right is stolen from the Internet. Boston seriously has the best fireworks display anywhere, IMHO. We would have liked to be on the Esplanade for the show and be able to hear the Boston Pops play but it's not as easy to get on there as when I was a kid growing up here. There's barracades and National Guard and a bazillion people now so I think you have to go pretty early in the morning to secure a spot in front of the hatch shell.

Cartoons and dinner, oh my!

Willy and I decided to try a new-to-us Thai place last night that I found on Yelp. Tree Top Thai got some great reviews and is close by so I sent the hubs off to pick up some Crazy Noodles, Country Style Pad Thai, and Thai Fried Rice (we got enough to have lunch today too). The Thai friend rice was a little sub-par, but the other two dishes were pretty yummy and we'd go back. But what really put us over the must-return edge was something else that came with our dinner.


On the restaurant's web site they say that one of the employees is also an artist and his/her art hangs in the restaurant. Well look what that artist drew on our takeout bag:




How cute is that?! And our fried rice came labled as "Fly Rice" with a smiley face :) Dinner with a side of humor--I love it!

Wanna See a Tree Update?

Here's the Asian Pear tree as of a couple of days ago:

It's definitely thriving and there are lots of little pear fruits all over it. They're still small, maybe a 1/2" in diameter or a little less. But they're definitely little pears! Who knows if they'll get to be eating size, but it's still fun to see :)

Happy 4th Anniversary to Us!

I'm a little late in posting this since our anniversary was last Friday 5/29, but we were away in Bar Harbor, ME celebrating. This was on Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. We wanted to do more hiking and exploring of the park, but unfortunately it rained most of the time we were there. Can't complain too much though; we had good food (I ate lobster four days in a row), got upgraded to the honeymoon suite of the B&B we stayed at, and had a great time just being together. It's amazing how quickly four years have gone by (and eight years since we met). Time really does fly when you're having fun!

More amigurumi presents

We celebrated my sister's birthday yesterday and I had recently come across the most perfect amigurumi gifts for her. The first is a character from the Wii game Raving Rabbids. It's sooooo much fun and both of my sisters and I love playing it. Yes he's sort of demonic-looking, but in a good way :)


The second one is to commemorate the fact that she was born in the Year of the Snake. It's pretty hard to find cute snakes, as you can imagine, so when I came across this Hello Kitty with a snake hoodie outfit I had to make it for her. It wasn't working up too great at first so I was a little worried, but I tweaked it a bit and it turned out better than I expected. You can even take the little hoodie off--so cute!



I think I need a little break from the amigurumi projects now. I've started working on a top for myself, but we'll see how it turns out. I'm being ambitious and trying an intermediate pattern and the baby cardigan I tried a little while back wasn't so great so we'll see how this goes.

Got a Letter from Pantene Beautiful Lengths

I was starting to wonder whether the salon had actually sent out my hair donation since I hadn't gotten my letter of acknowledgement from Pantene yet. Well it finally arrived today and I'm happy to know that my donation will be going to someone who's having a hard time. I highly encourage anyone who qualifies to do this; it feels great!

Another kind of crafty project

A couple of months ago we cleaned out my grandpa's apartment when he moved into a nursing home. In his closet I found these old chairs that used to be a part of my aunt and uncle's restaurant yeeeears ago. I really like the lines of the chair and decided rather than selling or donating them that I'd try to give them a new life.

Originally I was envisioning a silver chair with a cool fabric covering the nasty, old, red plastic-y seat. But when I got the chairs home I realized that I didn't really have a good spot in the house for them. Someone (maybe Willy?) suggested I put them out on our back deck instead. We'd been looking for a couple of chairs and a small table for that area anyway, so that was the new plan for their home.

But silver chairs wouldn't really work for an outdoor patio style, so I decided to paint them brown instead and find a colorful, canvas-y fabric for outdoors. After removing the cushion (it was held from underneath with a few brackets that were easy to spin out of place and release the seat), I sanded everything down. That took a loooooong time, several hours for the first one and then I got lazy with the second one and only spent half as long on it :P. I really didn't need to sand it as much as I did since I wasn't planning on staining it but I just got tunnel vision I think. Certainly didn't hurt the chair, just my tired fingers and legs!

Given my current employment situation I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I got creative in acquiring the paint and fabric supplies I needed. On one of my local Freecycle boards someone had posted about a free paint shed at a nearby town's recycling center; anyone can pick up free paint there. Cool, huh? So I found a small can of brown enamel paint there and even got a great tinted primer. The color turned out much more matte than I had originally envisioned, but did I mention it was FREE? So, yeah, I'm cool with it.

I also suck at painting. I started out trying to use a mini roller on the flattest parts and a brush on all the other sections but the roller wasn't very useful and I always seem to load it with too much paint. So after the first coat dried I had a bunch of drippy paint sections that I had to sand down again before putting on the second coat. I also missed a few spots during the first coat so, yeah, I suck at painting. Somehow I managed to work it out for the most part.

As for the seat, I hit the remnant bin at Joann's Fabrics and scored with a yard of summery-colored, striped, canvas-type fabric. Not only was it in the remnant bin, it was 50% off that day and one yard was more than enough for the two chairs I was working on. Total cost, about $4. Score!

I borrowed a staple gun from my family and started recovering the cushions. Can you see how the old red plastic was held down by individual little nails? They were tiny, like 1/8" long and some of them started to pop out as the staple gun fired. You can also see some of the nasty black, kinda greasy crap that was on the underside, probably from having been in a Chinese restaurant for all those years. My mom helped me with the first cushion and then I did the second one on my own.

I got the two chairs done just in time for Willy's BBQ birthday party so we put them out for a trial run. No one fell through the chair, got paint on them, or had any other disasters so I guess the job got done :) Here's the final product and a side-by-side before and after (or after and before?) comparison:

It was a fun project, and besides some elbow grease the only cost was the $4 for fabric. Can't really beat that!

We have at least semi-green thumbs

I can finally put some weight on my ankle today and took a quick walk around part of our yard to check on the plants. Everything is at least peeking out of the ground and we've got a lot of flowering and budding on the plants. Take a look at all the new leaves on the Asian Pear tree! Yes, I am ridiculously excited about this. I always half expect to kill any plants that come home with me, so if they thrive I'm often really surprised and happy.

The relocated dogwood tree seems to be doing well too, with a bunch of new leaves/buds of its own. Let's hope this keeps up. It'd be nice to show Willy's mom (the lady with the Master's degree in horticulture!) that we can grow some stuff!

And here are some shots of random other things growing around our house, indoors and outdoors. Note that the white orchid grows like it's on steroids. It was a housewarming gift from my cousin a couple of years ago and started out with just one flowering branch and is now up to three flowering branches with a total of about 15-16 open flowers right now. I swear it's not anything special I'm doing but, hey, I'll show it off happily (though I'm not a very good photographer so the pics don't really do it justice). And the seedlings in the terra cotta pot are the start of three little Thai pepper plants. Guess who those are for?

Progress! aka maybe I can stop hopping around like a rabbit now

This morning I can finally put a little weight on my injured ankle. The last couple of days have been pretty pathetic; either I've been crawling on all fours, scooching across the carpeted areas on my bum, having Willy piggyback me, or hopping on my good leg. I know I'm a rabbit per the Chinese zodiac, but come on! Pretty pathetic.

Gotta try to remember not to push it too much today, but it'll be nice to get some mobility back.