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!

does this have anything to do with art, design or crafting?  no, but i love my puppy so i’m posting more pics of him :)

dexter is doing wonderfully!  last time we took him to the vet he weighed 27 lbs!  i want him to stay this size forever but sadly i know he’s going to be a big boy eventually.  in the meantime i snuggle him in my lap as much as i can.

i’ve been meaning to post about this for awhile, over at the dover website you can sign up to receive weekly emails containing free samples of content from their books.

here’s an example of some of the samples that came in a recent email -

two things i promised myself i would get when we moved to the country - because i wasn’t able to have them in the city - were a puppy and a bike.  i’ve got the pup so now it’s time to start thinking about the bike.

my dream would be a vintage schwinn in mint condition with a basket and a horn.  i occasionally look on ebay but sadly it’s more just to window shop.

however, should i find myself with a few hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket (unlikely) i would also happily take this lovely new schwinn as well.

it’s been a long time since i’ve posted anything to my blog.  my hard drive died back in january which knocked me off my feet for a few days.  and then after i had the new hard drive installed and recovered all of my files i found that several things on my computer were still not working properly (this blog being one of them).

and then on a cold sunday at the end of january this little man came into my life and i’ve had my hands full ever since.

his name is dexter and c and i got him from a shelter called peaceable kingdom animal rescue. he was just 8 weeks old in this photo and weighed 11 lbs.

he is now going on 12 weeks and weighs 22 lbs.  my little man is growing so fast!

so now that i’m up and running again i’ll be posting on a regular basis  :)

c and i decorated the tree last night.  i was hoping to have it up earlier but better late than never…

most of our tree is decorated in vintage ornaments that were my grandparents.   i love them dearly and look forward to seeing them once a year.  each time i unwrap them from their boxes i get excited all over again.  i love the nontraditional colors (although in general i don’t like the color pink i find it very satisfying as an ornament color). and those shapes!

these are some of my favorite ornaments: