Spring Break: Doris Day

Doris Day is naked right now! Naked at on the internet and she doesn't care! She makes such a good maternity leave friend and has been enjoying sharing the backyard with us on those beautiful sunny days.

Happy Friday! xoxo

Dog College

I just realised that last weekend's blog post No to Pink coincided with the start of Sew Weekly's Pink theme, and being HORRIFIED, I'd like to point out that my No to Pink is strictly for the garden! I have really enjoyed seeing some of the pink garments being made this week, I just have an unfortunate dislike for my pink flowers blooming all over my blooming garden - LOL!

(Did you know I've since found two cactus plants that have both sprouted flouro pink flowers!)

Anyways, after yet another busy week at my day job (I'm sitting and making cardigans as I blog though!) I'm astonished that it's MAY and my efforts of blogging to you have been so up and down... it happens sometimes though, right? Your day to day gets whirled away and sometimes your passions like sewing and blogging gets prioritised differently... I still have mammoth lists of things to blog about and things to make for my '100 Things' this year, so it'll slowly slowly slowly come together. I feel blogging is better if you don't put pressure on deadlines to post etc, for me anyways... I have too many deadlines at work anyways...

BUT, have you ever heard of Dog College? Our darling Doris Day has been enrolled (by Husbie) to attend Dog College and get some qualifications... you may *not* have heard of Dog College before because it's what we've made up to tell Doris Day she's going to training at a (caring) kennel place! We thought it sounded smarter than training or obedience school... it's college because she's practically a grown up dog, and we'd love her to have some grown up dog skillz. You know, like being polite and staying on the ground instead of eating all the fruit bowl and SUGAR bowl from the kitchen table. Yes, we've often walked into the kitchen and she's atop the table nom-ing on down.

Dog College will teach her all the grown up things, and we get a day with the teachers afterwards to follow up on all the learnings... If we weren't starting Husbie's new business and not volunteering to help out the comedy festival and working so much, I bet we can do it ourselves... but! Alas we have time to love her completely! (Did I tell you she goes with Husbie when he's freelancing around at other people's production houses? People are so kind, she's like his little assistant... but her only job is to make people happy!)

Anyways, she left this week, and we've got a weekend free to RELAX and have a mini holiday! More soon on our quickie getaway!

xoxo Hope you all have a great weekend!

Naughty but Special

I can't stop taking photos of Doris Day! Isn't she cute!?

She's naughty a LOT: digs my garden and scatters the succulents everywhere, runs like a maniac inside (and makes me worry about the new polished wood floors we just got last year) and isn't very good at going for walks yet! Staffy's just pull so much!

But she's special too: cuddly while we watch tv, the sweetest and watchful friend (sits on my foot while I'm on the computer) and very good around new friends (to her!) especially children. Awww.

What a darling heart.

Our house becoming our home

We've now been in the new house since November, so almost 5 months... so many things have happened here already, and there will probably be stacks more stuff this year too. We're loving Doris Day's company, and trying to stop her being naughty and behave like a domestic animal (any one else has found their dog standing up on the kitchen table?)... we'll see how she goes with training.

I've kept the garden my way, dying off lots of weird water hungry plants BY ACCIDENT, but hey I don't want to be watering my garden all the time... this is Australia and it's hot and cold all the time... so I'm picking out all the non natives, and changing the garden to suit us.

Inside the house, we've realised that the kitchen needs a better sink area, so we're investigating some quotes via our friend... and hopefully getting a dishwasher in soon. I'm the hopeless one when it comes to dishwashing in our family... Husbie is too darling. I'm trying to teach Doris Day but she's worse than me!

But overall... our new house is becoming a home! We're doing things a lot more naturally here now! You know, not running into the office thinking it's the bathroom, or feeling around in the dark for the lightswitches... it's becoming second nature, being here.

In sewing news, I just made a pair of UNDERPANTS. Let's see if I can photo them in a svelte and swanky way?!

We'll see!

A new bestie for Doris Day

Husbie and I are shooting a friend's wedding this weekend, and taking our new dog Doris Day to the country to hang with her best little buddy Dougal ... my parents' dog!

We're so pleased they get along... after spending the recent long weekend together, they only started to get a bit grumpy to each other towards the end. They're both very sweet dogs, and Dougal has been teaching Doris Day some good manners, which we liked!

Doris Day is really becoming the sweetest little friend, she's got her naughty moments, but overall, she's doing really well in our household!

Thanks for all your Sew Weekly love, I'll post some new photos of my Mad Men Betty dress tomorrow!

xoxo

Did you plant for St Pats?

My Mum got some Sweet Peas for our garden, especially to plant on St Patrick's Day. This, I didn't know, is a gardening tradition for these plants... and she texted me even to remind me!

Of course I planted them yesterday, but look what ELSE has been growing!!!

I've never grown mushrooms before, so just followed the box (from the hardware store) and its instructions! AMAZING!

Doris Day is a little stunned they can grow in her yard, and hasn't yet got used to us taking a zillion photos of her. She'll learn to smile soon enough!

New Life Everywhere

I'm starting a lot of things and noticing new life everywhere. Gotta love New Beginnings and the positiveness it shares. 

We visited the country to meet with Doris Day the Dog, before we got her, and the 2 and a half hour car trip looked completely daunting without crochet in my hands. I'm starting a smaller project than the bedspread/couch cover (which took a year!), just a baby blankie for all the newborns over summer (there's at least 2 spesh kids I'd like to make things for!). 

The garden also decided to have some New Beginnings and the beans just grew themselves! I merely provided them an occasionally water (I'm an official Lazy Gardener - had to dig out the azalias because they died - EEP) and they grew these! Yum!

But Doris Day... another new life in ours. She's not allowed in the bedroom or the office (expensive computer gear of Husbie's does not need to be chewed!) so is very polite and just waits at the door. Too cute.

Meet Doris Day!

We have a new friend in the Darling Household! She's Doris Day the Dog! So much alliteration!

Doris is a Staffy cross, was found wandering without a microchip, tags or collar in a country town and was probably in the pound and the shelter for close to two months, where no one claimed her, called for her and it just breaks my heart because she was obviously well loved at some point... she has a really sweet temperament!

The dog shelter peeps and their vet pinned her at around 2 years old, and she does have a puppy floppiness to her at times... however they reckon she's fully grown and she's a small dog now! She's not as stocky as most Staffies and I reckon she's got Jack Russell heritage as well.

So far she's settled into our new home ok, and we'll just have to see what funny things she gets up to! Let's hope the puppy 'chewing my shoes' stage has passed! I've set up some house rules, and the bedroom (and the shoe closet) is off limits... our last dog was tooooo cute and slept in our bed... but new dog, new rules and luckily she's taken to the Charlie Brown Dog Bed and loves it!

Oh! And her name? She was named Doris by the lovely dog shelter peeps (because they didn't know her first name), and we thought about it... and couldn't change it. She's probably got an identity crisis as it is, so we just made her Doris Day as what a lovely animal loving woman she is!

Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

P.S. I'm going to start replying to your comments in the blog thread - I noticed Blogger finally set this up, that's why I changed back to the old template... so I'll tweak my blog settings a bit... but do you know if I reply to you in the comments, if you get a notification about it? Or do you have to come back here to see if I've written back! Wish I had a bit more time to update to my own domain name, I've just been so busy!

xoxo