Goodbye

We had to say good bye suddenly to our cat Griffin earlier this week.



Elsie came downstairs in the morning and found him under a piece of furniture meowing constantly. His hind legs were not working. The vet said that he most likely had heart disease and a clot made it into his spinal region disrupting the flow of blood to his hind quarters. He had no pulse in his legs and was very cold. So I made the difficult decision to let him go. There are typically no symptoms that would indicate heart disease, and he had been to the vet for two check ups in the past year and was pronounced "very healthy".

Now our trio...



is down to one....



Unfortunately Miss Daphne has kidney disease and will not be with us much longer. It has been a rough year in the pet area.

"THE" Dress

The finished ensemble had many details.





And the wearer looked very pretty in the outfit...




Yes... she is wearing little earrings and a sparkly head band. The dance was a grand success. She and Daddy were out partying until 8:30pm... definitely past her bedtime.

Daddy-Daughter Dance

The Daddy-Daughter Dance is tomorrow evening at Elsie's school. They will have pictures taken, refreshments, a ball dancing lesson, and then get to dance for an hour. It is the first time Elsie and the spouse have attended and apparently some of the little ladies get quite elaborate with their dresses. We have been discussing The Dress for a couple of weeks, and two days ago we had to narrow things down a bit.
I was first presented with this illustration and STRICT instructions that the skirt "go straight down".



From the image, it appears that the wearer of the dress would not be able to walk. So I asked if the skirt needed to "go up" as she twirled. "The skirt needs to go STRAIGHT DOWN! NOT OUT!" was the reply. Then I was presented with this drawing...



So again, I wanted to make absolutely sure she indeed wanted a hobble or pencil skirt. At this point it was no longer a discussion but rather a fiery argument ending with the words "I drew you two pictures showing you what I want!!" I think I have a budding designer on my hands.

The straight skirt request meant that she didn't want a petticoat (because they itch), but she did indeed want the skirt to twirl away from her as Daddy spins her about. She had also requested that it be strapless... I nixed that request immediately. We selected a pattern online (to save some time looking through pattern books) and headed to the store. After steering her away from the hot pink/vivid aqua/pastel green & lavender plaid combination that was calling to her, we selected these raw materials...



which I am currently transforming into a dress. Daddy cannot see the dress prior to the grand unveiling tomorrow night. I did pin her into all the parts last night... she looks very, very pretty.

Baby Owl

I was at the farm a couple of weeks ago and this little guy (and his brother) were hanging out. The mother had been living in the backyard all fall and winter. She took over an old magpie nest and had two little (relatively speaking) ones this spring. This one had fewer flying skills and liked to nap in the sun... so I took the opportunity to take some up close and personal pics.



He is a Great Horned Owl (no "horns" or ear tufts yet) and he does have talons.

Oh... and I finally uploaded some new picture to Flickr so have updated my badge which has been showing the same images for almost a year now.

And even better news, I have new allergy medicines that work, so I am able to spend some time in my garden. Stay tuned for some rose pictures! The bad news is that I am allergic to everything on the allergy scratch/prick test. It is never good when the allergist comes in and looks at your results and says "Oh my!". Needless to say... they stopped the test about 5 minutes into it rather than making me wait the full 20 minutes. The new medications are working for now, and hopefully I will be starting allergy shots soon. I am just happy to be in my garden again.

I'm dancing this Friday and Saturday!

I've been taking ballet classes at the Laurelhurst Studio here in Portland for the past few years. I love the Creative Director of the studio and the teachers... and most of all the other adult ballet students. We are a happy bunch and get a kick out of trying things. It's a great workout and a lot of laughs with the usual gang. Every spring the studio puts on a spring dance performance... and this year I am in it.... after much prodding and encouragement from my fellow students, I might add....
It is this Friday, May 29, and Saturday, May 30 at 7pm at the DaVinci School here in Portland if you want to come and watch. Our piece is called Softy Etude.



The students from the Youth Ballet in Training program dance in the majority of the pieces.. and they are really, really good. And then there are all sorts of pieces from the other classes. Many of the students have choreographed dances too.

Mister Judy Press

My sister and I had a great bit of promo written about one of our Mister Judy products.
Check out the Evergreen Mom's blog article on our Little Hostess Tea Linen Sets!
How can you resist this little tea party setup anyway?

Closet Project

Our 1922 house has never had a coat closet. You enter into the front living room/dining room/LARGE room, and there is no place for coats... other than the chairs at the dining table which evolved into ON TOP of the dining table.
What we did have was a hall linen closet that was unusually deep... like 4 feet deep which me (my short little self) would have to get a step stool to reach anything that had been inadvertently shoved to the back. Usually those things remained forgotten.





Children are for scale...



You can see in this shot with the drawer out how deep it is. And that there is wasted space beyond the back of the drawer. You did not, under ANY circumstances, want to pull one of these extremely large drawers out all the way. You could not hold them and, as you let go, would hope to high heaven that you could get your toes out of the way in time.



So we ripped everything out. Used some of the unfinished fir to put in the floor... there was no flooring on the closet floor that matched the fir in the hall... Now there is. And primed and painted... and then added shelves up the back.




In front of the shelves is a coat rod, so the coats hang in front of the shelves. There is plenty of space for both things, and we cleaned out tons of stuff from the closet that we didn't need or could have been stored in a more appropriate place. Read as: stored somewhere that we would remember and be able to find the item at a later date.
There is always one box of stuff leftover...



I'm still trying to figure out where to put these things.