poor neglected blog.  i haven’t posted since the beginning of the month and when i do finally come to post it’s only to say that i’m taking a break!

i’ve been going nonstop since the beginning of november and i am tired. i need to relax, unwind, stop thinking, stop doing. just for a little while.  so i’m going to take this time between the christmas holiday and the new year to spend good quality time with chris and dexter and family and friends.

hope you all have a lovely holiday and a happy new year!

ps - this photo of me is not recent. despite living in the mountains we haven’t had snow in weeks!  it just seemed appropriate to the post so i thought i’d add it.

cupcake graveyard i made for halloween.

yesterday i baked some cupcakes for a friends birthday.  devils food cake with a cinnamon butter cream frosting.  you can get the recipe that i used for the cake here and the frosting here.

it’s been awhile!  my last dexter update was back in july.  the little man is 10 months old now, i can’t believe he’ll be a year in no time at all!  he’s gotten a bit bigger but not much.  he’s quite small considering the vet had told us he would probably weigh in at around 80 lbs!  he’s about 55 lbs now and he’s a quirky combination of small dog and large dog all smooshed together in the same body.  he’s not very tall but he has a large head and chest but then really narrow hips and a thin little tail.  oh how i love him to pieces!  ok, enough…

yesterday we went for a walk in the woods to buttermilk falls which is as picteresque as it sounds.  he played in the water and we threw sticks up and down the trail. the leaves were changing colors, there was a nice breeze and it was a pretty perfect day.

i’ve been missing painting recently.  i hadn’t done it in awhile and was really starting to feel like i spend entirely too much time in front of the computer.  so i whipped up some quick “hello” cards.  that way next time i need to send out a note or say happy birthday i have one handy.

how perfectly simple are these dog bowls?  clean lines, good solid shape and (thankfully) absent of any sort of bone icon or (god forbid) the words bow-wow on it.  i love them!  and yes, i know dexter doesn’t care what he eats and drinks out of.  as a matter of fact he routinely uses his food bowl as a chew toy.  but i’ll pretend that he’s impressed and happy to have such cool new bowls.

look at my little man grow!  this photo was taken in the adirondacks over the holiday weekend.  he looks so well behaved in this photo…  like a perfect young dog, not the mischievous little scamp that he is.

i saw this on how about orange and had to share.  the name my design company machine - it generates a business name for you using various colors/adjectives/animals in different combinations.

how funny because it’s true!  i mean honestly how many companies out there have used that formula!  this is what it came up with for me but i think i’ll stick with just using my own name…

some photos i took in my garden yesterday.

and it was good.  cupcakes from cake.  c had the carrot ginger cupcake and i had the coconut cupcake.  sadly we both ate them before i had the thought to photograph them so this lovely photo from the cake website will have to do.  my cupcake looked exactly like that, all white and fluffy and coconutty (is that even a word?).  it was delicious!