The weather outside is frightful...

but I think I'll put a fire on tonight. Seriously, it can't seem to make up its mind whether to rain, snow, or shine. Our swimming pool is "open," but unheated for now, and not likely to see any swimmers until it stays sunny for more than a few hours at a time. The hot tub is still getting plenty of use.

Paul and Kyle have their motorcycles out already. Paul's a die-hard biker, so that's hardly a surprise. Kyle only bikes on the nice days.

Nothing much has been happening in our corner of the world lately. Well, we did go to the Dominican Republic in January. That was pretty great. This is the decade-birthday year for Paul, Alia, Miranda and myself, so we hooked up with Pat and Joe (also turning over a new decade this year) and spent a week basking in the sunshine, going on excursions, and generally recharging our batteries and boosting our tans. Wait... did I already mention that in an earlier blog? Eh. Whatever. It was great fun and bears repeating.

We lost a furry member of the family in March. Nibbles, our sweet little old and frail kitty/ferret (depending on who you talked to) went to what some people euphemistically call "The Rainbow Bridge." Kyle misses her. :(  I think Sean's cat, Baby, also misses her. He's taken to grappling hard-core with Niki! He also chases after her when I'm trying to get her back upstairs, drags her down the stairs, then taunts and wrestles her to "his" room where he proceeds to give her a good tongue-lashing. Seriously. He spent about 10 minutes licking the dog while keeping her pinned down. He's the same size as the dog, so it's pretty funny.

I finally got around to painting the downstairs room which has been both studio and spare room. Yes. Sadly, I said farewell to the HIDEOUS teletubbies and farmyard scene that the previous owner had painted on the wall.  Ucky ucky ucky... It was also a hideous colour. Little Boy Blue blue with bright primary yellow trim. Gag me. It's a lovely orangey toffee colour now. Not quite pumpkin-coloured. Warm and cozy with bronze-toned drapes. Sean helped hang the drapes. :)

Hmmm.. I took up sewing for a while. Miranda and her classmates got into American Girl dolls, nearly half of them getting a doll for Christmas, and the clothes was pretty pricey. So... I made some nice outfits for Miranda and a few for her friends' birthdays. There's still more fabric, so I guess I'm not done yet.

I also started redecorating the living room last month. It's looking pretty good. We removed the decorator rugs, and I use that term loosely, as no decorator worth their salt should've installed those hideous (yes, there's that word again) green and pink and cream rugs in a living room! Canadian Tire came through with a matching pair of  multi-coloured area rugs with circles in squares ... which sounds weirder than it looks. Kent had a put-it-together-yourself shelf unit which is great for holding/displaying all my knitting supplies/yarns. Costco had these sweet wire mesh units that allow you to put together a combination of cube configurations. Games and puzzles and books, oh my... All easy to see! I'm still on the look-out for a large shelf-type unit for books and display. Nothing's crossed my path yet. The year's still young.

If you go over to my other blog post, (Click on "View Complete Profile" and it gives you a new page where you can see the link to my other blog site - Charmed by Christine) you'll see that I started drawing again. Yayyy... It's so much fun to get back into that, but it sure takes up a lot of time. The sketching and drawing stage of a commission is done, and I'm going to get into the painting stage tomorrow. I'm excited!! I hope he/she likes the finished product.

Sean and Miranda are cooking chili, so I'm off the hook for dinner! Since I can't think of anything else to add to a fairly boring blurb, I'll say good-bye for now. Good-bye!