Here’s our Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, Tucker, before his first furcut. As you can see, he’s quite the leaf and dirt magnet in this picture, and he looks like a pretty plump pup. Really, he’s not, it’s an illusion created by massive amounts of long fur that is really as soft as a down pillow.

I know, he’s so cuuuuuuuuuuute! Yeah. He is. (grumble grumble… don’t even bring up the 3 disgusting gross happenings in his kennel on the ride to the groomer yesterday. ugh.)

After a few hours at the groomers, I had a nice time chilling out (and coded up a little bit of a project that I’ll be finalizing today so I can get back to my freshly reorganized studio) – and when I picked him up I was absolutely thrilled with his new “doggie do”. This is what Wheaties should look like! He’s quite handsome now, and the whole event seemed to chill him out, too.

Awwwwwwww…..

Yes, it’s true. Hanging out with my husband will make you fat.

(Sorry, Honey.)

Since my hubby was promoted, he works from home a little more often than he used to. This has its ups and downs.

My husband has a beautiful, wonderful soul and would lop of his right ear if I told him I really needed it in order to make dinner. He accepts me for who I am, who I’ve become over the 17 years we’ve been together, and that includes every little fat cell that’s expanded and contracted over the years. He’s quite the perfect husband, really. I couldn’t ask for more.

He’s a planner, and he always has been. When it comes to meals, that is.

For example. Let me set the scene. 10AM on a Saturday, I walk through the kitchen and notice there are two packages of chicken breasts thawing in the sink. It’s 10AM. Time to think about dinner already? (He’s getting late in his old age, this sort of thing used to occur at 8AM.)

Me, I try to avoid thinking about food. If I think about it for a half a second, my glands get all salivaty and I’m digging through the fridge. No, I don’t like that at all.

You can imagine then at Noon, when he started clanking around with dishes and marinade and smelling up the house with a restaurant worthy concoction, what my stomach was saying. Yep, you got it.

It’s like that around here – two of us were born with metabo-booster cells, two of us weren’t.

I’m all comfortable and in “who cares” mode, because really – he’ll love me anyway, so why count calories, right? Five mini-butterfingers from the kids halloween candy dishes? Got ’em. Walnut fudge brownies? Check. Want to go to the buffet? I’ll get my purse! Stop eating after one serving? Oh, no. What for?

But. This is the wierd part. The second he leaves for work – I’ll hop on the scale, realize the err of my ways, and grab my water bottle and turkey sandwich. I’ll pick up a tub of nonfat cottage cheese and a spoon for afternoon snacking. I’ll have a lowfat yogurt for breakfast. I’ll stop after one latte and drink my coffee black. I sit down, focus, and get a whole bunch of work done.

Seriously. Being around that man is like having a “free food” pass at Disney.

It’s alllll fun and games until I burst right out of my Levi’s. You know what I mean?

(please tell me you know what I mean.)

Aside from the pumpkin carving contest – there has been a bunch of stuff going on around here, I just haven’t had a chance to blog it. Let me recap the last week or so and get you all caught up!

1. New privacy fence installed. Installed? Built? Whatever the word is, our home is now wrapped up in big beautiful fencing and we love it.

2. New garage door installed. This is so cool. Press the button, the door opens. Press it again, it closes. WoOt! (I’m so easily amused.)

3. Teeth cleaned. OMG. Hygenists are totally out to prove a point. Their point? “I own your mouth while you’re in this chair. Hold still, and quit being a baby.” I don’t even feel remotely close to being qualified to audition as the new Orbit girl. This adventure was. not. memorable.

4. Photo shoot for a custom dog portrait. I’ll be painting a gorgeous yellow lab in a few weeks, and I got to spend a lot of time with Katie (the dog) photographing her. She’s an energetic gal, and she’s beautiful – and I’m excited to paint her portrait. Her eyes are gorgeous, her coat is rich and creamy, and the poses I captured are just perfect and will make for a stunning portrait painting.

5. I cleaned the studio roof and skylights. You should know I’m afraid of heights – but there’s a leak in my studio and no man (ahem) has been able to figure it out. Even after having the section re-roofed. So up I went, jittery knees and all, and I found the leak. I think. We’ll know for sure after the next downpour!

6. I’ve been working on a blog design (through EW), and hope to have that launched by the end of this week.

7. My Coon painting was selected by someone for something very cool. I’ll fill you in more on that later – but I do need to prepare some things for it, so I’ll be working on that and making a more formal announcement soon.

8. I’ll be working on a small cat portrait over the next several days, too. She’s beautiful!

9. I’ll also begin a medium sized portrait of a sweet black Scottie as soon as my supply order arrives, you’ll see a sketch on canvas over the next several days as well.

10. I just sent out another print of my Award Winning Peacock – a gentleman saw it hanging in the Museum and had to have a print. I do enjoy printing that one – it lights up my eyeballs every single time. I still need to get over there and get pics of it with its awards. It’ll be on display through November 19th. 🙂

I think that’s it for now – the kids are great, they’re still diggin’ their Sandwich Bag Doodles and Chickeymonkey is on some sort of learning fast track right now and will not tell us where her “slow down button” is. Her off button kicks on between 8:30 and 9:00 pm, but other than that she’s like a speed reader who can’t quite read yet and is also on crack. Good Lord. She wants to spell everything, count everything, make blends, sound things out, ask me questions, eat, drink and be merry all within 5 minutes of eachother. Tack on the 5 year old whiney pouty big brown eyed alligator tears every time things don’t go her way – and my head is going to essplode.

I spent the entire night lastnight being nine months pregnant with the baby’s head pressing against my pelvic bone ready to come out.

I spent the entire night going about my business as if I were on the verge of delivery, but not quite.

The entire night being a weebol-wobble, my left hand against my lower back, rolling my hips side to side because my belly was so big and the pressure of the baby’s head was making me crazy.

All night long, I was told by doctors and nurses that they’re advice to me was to get into the Labor & Delivery room as soon as possible, and all night I wanted to get more stuff done before I went to the hospital. I kept telling myself the baby would wait, it would not come until I was finished.

I totally woke up feeling pregnant, too. Good grief, let me never have a dream like that again.

Days are flying by lately, zipping before my eyes in a blur. We’ve got construction going on here at the homefront – a little bit of this, a lot of that, and in the end, we’re two steps closer to where we want to be with our household projects.

Did you know we’ve never had a working garage door that opened and closed – with actual space to drive a car into the garage and park? Nope, we haven’t.

We’ll have that by the weekend. I’m freakin’ out a little bit about that. We spent a good chunk of time this weekend clearing the stuff and things – and more stuff – out of the garage to get rid of years worth of collected – uhm, stuff (for lack of a better word), and then assembled the remains in an orderly fashion so there’s space for the contractors.

We did yardwork, which was pretty much negated by the rain and wind Saturday night, but we did get a lot of things taken care of (trimming a few branches off our tree, which was fun and really took a lot out of us – but cost much less than hiring someone to do a complete hack job of it), now by the end of the day tomorrow our property – well, all but two feet of it which has been lost in translation – will be surrounded by six foot privacy fencing.

The birds will be happy. My bulbs will be happy. Our house will be happy because it will have a barrier against the northern wind this winter. I will have a beautiful backdrop for photographs, and above all else, I will not be distracted visually while I’m painting.

I think tomorrow afternoon, I will have a naked party in my backyard. All by myself. Whose gonna know? (ssssh, it’s just between you and me, and my fenceposts.)

Then there was pumpkin picking, and carving. The girls wanted their pumpkins to have carvings of things that didn’t exist in stencils, so I drew them for them. That was a challenge! I did my best, and we carved our little pumpkins out, and these are the results:

This is Chickeymonkey’s pumpkin, George. Of course it’s George! She’s a monkey-aholic. He turned out cute for totally wingin’ it, I think.

Catybug’s was much more of a challenge. She has a thing for penquins, and likes Bruce. Yeah. Okay. Figuring out what to cut out and what to leave was no easy task, so it took a lot of planning, and stuff. It’s always nice to have dry erase markers handy for this kind of stuff. That battery operated carver was nice, too.

Mine – my pumpkin is still sitting on the table. Big fat guy, he is, nice flat front, a little green around the edges. He’s perfect. I drew up my own carving, too. I’m excited to get’er done, but I need time, and peace and quiet, and patience. Today doesn’t look like a good day for that – we’ll see what tomorrow is like.

Oh yes, and the blog design. I’ve been working on that, too. I’d like to finish it today, we’ll see how that goes with all the running around and tripping over nailguns and things!

So. You’re all caught up now with all the stuff and things and more stuff that’s going on here, pretty much.

What’s up with you? Where ya been, and how ’bout them snowflakes?

The Second Annual Intricateart.com Pumpkin Carving Contest is now open! If you’ve carved your pumpkin, go on and get a Wicked picture of it and enter the contest!

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Not long ago, I added myself to Simply Sassy’s list-o-joiners for a neat little Kitchen Towel Exchange. (Buy 6, get 36! I bent the rules a little, it says to send out one towel and 6 letters, but I’m sending towels along with my letters. Why not?!)

I’ve received my towel, and I’m looking for a few more folks who would like to join in, so I can send these out and keep things rolling! Paige, Clara and Tommi, I’ve got you already. I need three more willing towel exchangers.

Wanna play?

Catybug giggled as I doodled out her “sandwich bag art” this morning. We had 5 minutes. Then 3 minutes. Then one minute – then we were late to leave the house. When we’re about to be late, and I still have a headful of hair to comb – that would be me – the little stick figure with the “Oh No! Mr. Bill!” look on his face.

I dug the espresso machine out of the pantry lastnight, cleaned it up and stopped by the coffee shop for some ground beans and vanilla flavoring. That was a smart move, because I needed that latte to put me in overdrive and get the girls to school on time today.

Now if I could just figure out how to go back to “idle” mode…

(zip da dee doo dah, and all that is holy and caffinated.)

I had a vision this morning – and as a result had a bit of an identity crisis. I’m going to work on my new design a bit more and re-launch when it (ahem) looks more like this one.

pffft.