What happens when .......

What happens when you come down the stairs with a glass full of Ruby Red Grapefruit Crystal Light in your hand, you try to step over the gate instead of moving it and your beagle decides to step right in front of you?????????

A red spotted beagle

It doesn't wash off.........well, perhaps it will come off in the lake this weekend. Beau isn't much for baths, but he is going to get a bath in the lake.

Stop by DogsOnThursday to say Hi to our canine friends.

Beauty Amid the Mess

With the interior of our house trashed, it's nice to be able to walk into the refuge of our flower garden. The hot humid Southern summers provide a perfect environment for a variety of species.

This Dahlia that's the color of a Sandhill's Peach

the gorgeous hydrangea bed full of billowy blue blossoms.

Our blood red dahlias (with the yellow dumpster in the background)

The wonderfully fragrant gardenias

the Tiger Lillies

and my all time favorite, the Star Gazer Lilly and it's delightful fragrance in the hot summer breeze.

Stick Your Tongue Out

Our friends over at the Portuguese Water Blog told us about the Stick Your Tongue Out Contest that Rocky Creek Scottie Adventures is having to celebrate their 100th post. Here are our photos for the contest entry.

This is Sunny after chasing tennis balls.

and Jackson simply being the handsome devil he is....Wish I could capture a better tongue picture of him. He has a really neat butterfly shaped dark pigment on the back of his tongue.

and just the cutest thing!!!

Beau sticking out his tongue when I was trying to take Christmas card photos.

You have NO idea how hard it is to find pics of my dogs with their tongues out. Now Sunny, well she's not that difficult because she loves to chase tennis balls. But Jackson and Beau seldom stick their tongues out period. I have over 9000 pictures (literally, not a figment of speech) on my hard drive and this was the best I could do for pictures of tongues hanging out.:-)

On the remodel front......
my husband and I stripped the wall paper off this two story stairwell on Sunday. We added this stairwell to our project. The painters agreed to strip the ceiling and to paint the stairwell as part of the original contract so we thought we should contribute some of the labor. We actually had a pretty good time doing it..because it came down so easily. It was a bit scary though to see the primary bread winner of this household 16 feet in the air on an articulating ladder. Eeeeek!!!!!

Our painters are really nice, polite guys. They were actually going to clean up the mess before they went home yesterday if I wanted them to. Had I done that, it would have cost an hour at the end of the day and the beginning today, so I told them just to leave it. We aren't sleeping up there anyway.

Our plumber is really nice and conscientious, too. Unfortunately, the company he works for wanted to put a 100% mark up on the fixtures....yes, you heard me right. They wanted to charge us over $2000 more than we could get them for ourselves. They are not happy that we didn't want to share that much of our hard earned money with them so they are passive aggressively delaying things as much as they can.

The last of the selections have been made. I handed our contractor a list of the paint colors and that's it!

We have officially moved out of the main floor of our house completely now. We are sleeping on an air mattress in the family room and I have a cooler in the garage with ice and drinks (need to be of the adult variety but they're not). Today will be a sheetrock sanding day so the AC is off (and it's suppose to hit 94* today...UGH!

Here's a tour of the work in progress.

The living/dining rooms

the hallway

the master bedroom

the new walk-in master shower

and the kitchen...at least the frig is still plugged in.

With little else I can do, I have been getting some knitting done. Viveca is kicking my butt. The back went quickly but the front cables require quite a bit of attention. My mind has been so blown from everything else going on around here, sometimes I find concentration a bit tough. As long as I take my time, it's fine.

The dogs are hanging in there. Jackson doesn't like the sound of the paint sprayer. Sunny, well she's Sunny, the velcro dog; and Beau is oblivious to it all and is spending a good bit of time on the patio in his chair.

Boredom Solution ~ Dogs On Thursday

The remodeling is cutting into our dogs' walks in a serious way. Not only am I going stir crazy, I have 2 golden retrievers with lots of energy stored up. Of course, Beau couldn't care less. Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a yard full of squirrels so I grabbed the camera and opened the door.The squirrels scattered up the trees and onto our deck. They didn't go very high; just far enough that Sunny can't reach them. They chatter at her, which drives her crazy!

Jackson went on the hunt.

then, for some reason, decided to start flying thru the yard.

It wasn't long until he was back to the patio.

But Sunny was still on a tear, flying thru the yard, jumping over bushes and limbs like a deer. She still had plenty of energy so a game of tennis ball ensued.

Sunny will retrieve forever!

She runs like the wind!

Beau, on the other hand, wants nothing but to go back into the house to eat.

"If I stare at this door long enough, I know it will open."

"Enough of this nonsense."

"Can we please go eat now?????"

Stop by Dogs On Thursday and say Hi to our friends.

What were we thinking?????

We are living in this house while we remodel it.

My piano is safely wrapped in the living room.

This used to be the kitchen.

For the most part, we are camped out in the family room. For the past few days, we have had electricians cutting holes into walls and ceilings. Today, we have added a plumber.

He is moving drains and water lines so that one day we will have a big shower with a rain head and a kitchen with the appliances rearranged. The main water cutoff and the electrical breaker box are near the family room; so I haven't been able to totally isolate myself from it. There's no isolation from the noise of the jigsaws, drills, etc.

My husband leaves every day to go to work. When he gets home, the contractors are nearly finished cleaning up for the day. I have to be here all day as the contractors come across things that need to be addressed, like placement of switches, fixtures and plumbing. The electricity is off and on....the water is off! Fortunately, the plumber warned me that would happen so I did get to take a quick shower and wash my hair.

The breaker box is right outside the only bathroom we are not remodeling (for now). Yesterday, the electricians had their ladders in the doorway of the bathroom, pulling

lines from the kitchen to the breaker box. . . . for a very long time. I drank coffee,

soda, water, tea......Nature was calling and the bathroom was not accessible. I was about to decide that I was going to be the one t

o use the port-a-john. Whew! they moved the ladder just in time.

Today has been rather hectic. This is the condition of the kitchen...

the refrigerator still worksThis is the master bathroom.....one day it will have a big shower

and this is my bathroom......or what's left of it.

The dogs are taking it in stride for the most part. Sunny is OK because she is by my feet....

no matter where my feet go; even under the desk.

Jackson isn't too happy with the noise. He keeps moving around trying to find a quiet place.

"please let me out of here!"

Beau. Well, he's Beau. He can't see or hear worth a flip anymore anyway, so as long as we don't disturb his bed, he's happy. See him behind Jackson in the picture..

So this is the condition of things right now. I think I'll plug into the iPod and knit a while. I think we will be going out to dinner tonight.

Always Something to Learn

One of the things I love about knitting is that there is always something to learn; something to keep my aging brain active. As I have told you, I am knitting Viveca, a sweater by Elsebeth Lavold. I am loving the pattern, in that it has enough pattern to it to look elegant but with some strategically placed stitch markers, I can watch TV or carry on a conversation while I knit. I reached the shoulder shaping on the back, only to discover I couldn't understand the pattern instructions. It calls for short rows to shape the shoulders, but I have never done short rows. I knew this was part of the construction of this sweater. I had searched Ravelry, YouTube, etc. and found a few tutorials; enough to understand the stitch, but I couldn't for the life of me, understand the placement in the pattern. I just couldn't make the math come out right.

I decided to contact Artlady. She is one of Ravelry friends. A prolific sweater knitter always willing to share her knowledge; she has Viveca in her repertoire. Bless her heart! She answered my cry for help while on vacation in the mountains where she only had internet access via her Blackberry. She helped me a lot; but being a math challenged knitter, I still didn't quite get it. I put out a cry for help on the Ravelry forums. This time, I knew more and was able to make my question more specific. Suzeeq helped me complete the math problem and I was able to finish the back last night.

I am so far, quite happy with my choice of pattern and yarn. The Malabrigo is so yummy to the touch. I will wind more of the yarn today and cast on the fronts. It will be a good distraction while the electricians hold me hostage at home today.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!

I may be 50 something, but I'm not too old to be 'Daddy's Girl'. No matter how old I get, I'll always be Daddy's Girl.