Felix! or Einstein?!

Today has been great, even though it is still raining. But the good news is the cold, gray, rainy weather is going to improve starting as early as tomorrow. And it looks like we are in for several days of beautiful weather.

I am one of those people who must have sunshine 99% of the time or my mood goes down rapidly and doing without sunshine for so long—I cannot wait to see the sun tomorrow.

Okay, I know I've told you about being busy these past few weeks and because I am feeling guilty for not blogging much I am going to show you one of the projects we did and the progress that we've made on my "she-shed" aka soon to be writing cabin/guest house.

A few weeks ago, we had two, consecutive, beautiful days with plenty of sunshine, so because of my need for sunshine I spent the majority of my time outside, with Tony, putting windows in my shed, painting it South Western colors, and then decorating the exterior.

But the sad news is we've not been able to finish out the inside, because we cannot move the storage boxes that are inside it, due to all of the rain. But the good news is starting tomorrow afternoon we should be able to start working on it again.

Anyway, here are before and after pictures of my upcoming writing cabin and I hope that you like it. The shed had no windows and I forgot to take a picture of it before we put in the windows.

After we painted the shed, I recycled some old, used wood and made the window flower box with Tony's help. I wasn't clever enough to come up with the flower box design, so I we copied this flower box from a picture that was in one of my tiny house books. And they look exactly alike except for the colors.

I really love this flower box, because it only has two legs and it was so easy to make. (Thanks to Tony)  

Then Tony and I put flat stones down to make sort of a patio and then we used two old, wash tubs, an old milk can that I spray painted yellow and several of my flower pots to decorate the exterior.

  

I was so thrilled with the way it all looked, I then decided to change the front of The Cabin, too. If you'll remember we first stained The Cabin's siding with cedar stain. Then several months later, after building the front porch I painted it white. (With Tony's help.)

On the second day of sunshine, we literally only had five hours to repaint the front of The Cabin, before the rain returned and the sunshine disappeared. So here are before and after pictures of it.

Please note that the tall pile of cut oak, to use in our wood burning stove, is hiding a lot of the color.

And after a few weeks, once we've gone through that wood pile, I promise to take another picture, because the wood pile sort of makes it look cruddy.

Four hours after repainting the front of The Cabin the rain returned, so I feel that we got very lucky to accomplish so much before the cold, damp, rainy weather.

Before the rain came that day I took this weird picture of the sun shining on our front door. When you look at it long enough I think it looks like two different silhouettes of a man. One is dark on the right and the other is light, in the middle of the door. 

The silhouettes don't look like anyone that I know. But I think that the one on the left corner might be Einstein? And the other one looks like he ran into a door. Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting.

I now feel better letting you know what we've been up to and just to prove we've really been busy here I want you to know that a week ago Tuesday, I drove myself up to Dripping Springs, and spent the evening with my sweet sister Cindy, Ronnie & Nita and so we could all visit with Felix, our dear, old family friend, who came to Austin, from Las Vegas, to play golf and to see us.

I had a wonderful time and I spent the night at Ronnie & Nita's Ronderosa Ranch and drove back the next morning. 

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!

I Blew It!

Today has been a great day. This morning while I was coughing-and-walking six miles inside the trailer with Leslie Sansone, Lisa and Matt were outside helping Tony with his chores while Josh, their new friend and vet-tech walked our dogs. Thank you, Lisa, Matt and Josh!

Around eleven-thirty a nice woman named Brenda called me. She told me that she wanted to come out to look at our dogs and that she might possibly adopt one of them. I told her to come on out and then I gave her the directions to the rescue ranch.

Thirty minutes later I was outside in my pink overalls visiting with our dogs when Brenda arrived. After I welcomed Brenda to the ranch she started talking up a storm about how much she and her family love dogs and  then she started telling me about all of her dogs in her life starting with  her very first dog to the one she has now and she is about my age so, that took a little while. As we walked from pen to pen I was glad that she wanted to do all of the talking because I was scared that if I talked too much I would go into another one of my not so pretty non-stop coughing jags.

After walking twice around the rescue ranch Brenda decided that she wanted to adopt Blue Bell. As we walked towards the barn to tell Tony the good news I suddenly out of nowhere coughed real hard and accidentally farted pretty loud. I was so embarrassed, but I didn't say anything and just kept walking like nothing happened.

When I told everyone that today was Blue Bell's day—they were as thrilled as me. After Brenda signed the adoption papers we said goodbye to Blue Bell and Brenda, as Blue Bell climbed into the front seat and then they drove away.

As Kermit took us to the trailer I told Tony about my thunder-in-the-pants mishap and he thought it was hilarious and he teased me non-stop. "Nance, I'm telling Kinky about this!" Tone said." I can't believe you..." When we came inside the trailer I started coughing non-stop and yes, it happened again but not as loud as the first one thank goodness and that is when Tone called me "Thunder Britches."

As I drank a glass of water to help stop the coughing there was a knock on our door. When I saw our friend Matt Biersmith standing outside I half-hollered, "Come on in, Matt!" While he shook hands with T. I quickly swallowed a couple of teaspoons of Robitussin then I hugged Matt. He told us that he was down in our neck of the woods because he and Candice were going to a friends ranch over in Bandera to cook up some crawfish. "Albert's out in the car and I just wanted to drop off a donation to y'all and..."

"OMG! Albert Einstein is here! You brought Albert!" I said. "I have got to go see him! I love Albert so much. He is one of our rescued dogs that really stole my heart..." Within seconds the three of us left the trailer, jumped into Kermit and took off to go see Albert and Candice who were parked outside the rescue ranch's gate.

As we hugged Candice, Matt let Albert and their other two big well-behaved dogs out of their SUV. The second that I saw Albert I almost teared up because I was so happy for him. He looked so handsome and was as happy as any dog could be. While we petted Albert and their two other sweet dogs we talked about Albert being famous because I wrote about him in my last book and his picture is it. "I am so glad that y'all came out!" I said. "Seeing Albert makes everything that we do worth it. Heck, I was telling Kinky just the other day that the dogs we've rescued and have adopted out live better lives than us and I love it! Right, Albert? I sure do love you..." Here is a picture that I took of the magnificent Albert with Matt.

When another vehicle showed up at the rescue ranch for a tour Matt and Candice loaded up their three lucky dogs into their fancy SUV and then they took off for Bandera to party with their friends.

Fortunately, while visiting with Matt and Candice I never coughed so there was the "sound of silence" if you get my drift, but unfortunately, while giving a tour of the rescue ranch to the new arrivals—I blew it!

Y'all have a great evening!