Buddy

Meet Buddy, my mom's new dog!

He is the bigger (weighing in at 85 pounds - 20 pounds more than Indy), calmer Indy. He's 3.5 years old and came from a great home where the family was sad to see him go, but they just discovered that one of the kids is allergic to dogs. So my mom, Indy and I drove up to Forest Lake to meet him, and we took him home with us. I think Indy's energy kinda freaked him out a bit, but they got along pretty well. He is going to make a great companion for my mom. And hopefully he and Indy develop a good friendship. :)

Welcome to the family, Buddy!

Before & After: Desk

Remember that desk I got on Freecycle? Well, I am proud to say that it is has a whole new look. After some sanding, wood filler, one coat of oil primer, two coats of Antique White latex paint and some new brushed bronze hardware, the desk looks great! And I paid way less than I would have on a brand new desk - about $35 total! Love it.

Without further ado...

BEFORE

AFTER

 

I still have a few touch-ups to do, and I'm thinking of getting some glass or plexi-glass to go on top, but overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. What do you think?

Up next: paint a little shelf I got at Valu Thrift (for about $1) to match and hang it on the wall. Sadly, I must do some school work first. This project might have to wait a bit...

*Thanks to the bloggers at Young House Love for the great tutorials and examples about painting furniture!

Give your pets a squeeze

Here's Indy supervising us as we hung the Christmas lights last weekend. This was last Saturday.

A week ago today, last Sunday, Indy had a seizure. It was so sad to see her so vulnerable and scared as she lost control of her body for about 5 minutes. Fortunately, I recognized the signs of the seizure pretty quickly (since Taffy, my childhood dog, had seizures when she was alive). So we just tried to make sure she was safe as she was going through it and we tried to calm her down by petting her and talking to her.

She made it through it and then slept for pretty much the rest of the night. The next day, I took her in to the vet, where she had blood drawn to check to see if she had any liver, kidney or other infections. Thankfully, she doesn't have any crazy infections. But the vet did say that Indy probably has Epilepsy. She may or may not have more seizures during her lifetime - we will just wait and see (and keep our fingers crossed that she will not have anymore!). They don't recommend meds right now. They say that the side effects of the meds are really not worth it unless she is really having a lot of seizures (like multiple seizures per month). So we will just wait and see what happens and hope for the best.

We love this dog. She is pretty much the greatest ever. We let her sleep in our bed for a couple nights in a row after this incident. And just about every day Eric or I tell her to not have anymore seizures.

Right now, she is curled up between us on the futon while the Vikings game is on. Life is good. And Indy is back to normal - earlier she stole half of my Twizzler, chewed off the end of a spool of thread, happily played with an empty 20-oz bottle of coke, intimidated a squirrel in the backyard and pranced around with a bone in her mouth.

So tonight give your pets a hug and an extra treat! What would we do without them?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Where have I been? Well, we had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving here at our house with my mom and brother. We brined a turkey and made stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake. Mmmm..... It all turned out pretty great, especially the cheesecake.

Then last weekend, we started decorating our house for Christmas a bit. We had a ton of icicle lights left over from our wedding reception, so we decided to get out the ladder and put them up on our house. Neither of us had ever hung lights before, but we were eager to make our house look good. Look at this guy - he's ready:

Action shot:

And the final product:

What do you think?