One

This cute little hairy creature turns one this week.  It is hard to believe Buddy has been in our life for almost 10 months now - I can't imagine life without him.  He spends his days following us around the house and is definitely very attached to both of us.  He has figured out what the gas fireplace is for now that we have it on occasionally since the weather has gotten colder.  These first two shots were taken after we took advantage of a sunny day last week (after days and days of miserable rain) and took him on a 1.5 km walk then hubby played ball with him in the back yard for another hour. Totally exhausted he climbed up on the sofa on top of a fuzzy blanket and made himself comfortable.

I caught him staring into the natural gas fireplace one day at the flames and a few minutes later he was curled up on the floor in front of it.  Now when we have it on we move one of his dog beds in front of it.  

At age 1 he is completely housebroken and hasn't had a single accident since June.  He doesn't eat or chew on any of our stuff (*as long as we keep him in toys and chews) and is just exactly the kind of dog we wanted and hoped for.  If it looks like he is crossing his front legs in the above picture it is because he is, that is one of his regular poses.  I had to lighten the picture or you would not have seen his eyes as they are so dark and no contrast to his black little face.

Today my house is in chaos, as finally our quartz counter tops are being installed.  We had to completely unload every lower cupboard and there are bins of stuff all around the house until the workmen are finished.  It took us a full hour to unload everything last night and I am sure it will take even longer to reload them tonight so we are doing Chinese take-out this evening.  We did manage to string up our exterior Christmas lights yesterday as had a lovely sunny day but today the wind is howling and the rains are back. Our plan is to wait until December to turn them on.  The workmen are madly trying to finish their counter top job before the power goes out as the lights keep flickering and there are reports of power out all over town - fingers crossed!

We are finally in the last phase of our reno, as all we have left to complete hopefully by Christmas is backsplash tiling in the kitchen and bathrooms and we are framing our rather plain bathroom mirrors with a black wood frame.

Our ceiling crack (either due to settling or a small earthquake) was fixed at the very end of October but as the ceilings are 7 years old there was no way to match the paint exactly so an entire ceiling repaint in the dining/kitchen/living room is required if we want it to look finished.  I want to do that ourselves in the Spring, but hubby is likely to veto that due to the 9 and 10 foot ceilings we have.  The idea of having more workmen in the house just makes me almost physically ill so maybe we will just live with a multicolored ceiling.  Maybe I shall just keep the house dark?  A bit hard since we have windows in every single room of the house.

I decided to try selling a couple items on my local 24 hour Facebook bidding site, the same one that I bought hubby that brand new car polisher on last week.  I listed 3 items and managed to sell two that didn't sell in our summer garage sale for $15.  That money will go straight into the "Fun" sealed pot which has been sadly neglected lately.  As we emptied the cupboards I found another item I would like to list so hopefully will be able to add even more to the fund.  I am thinking we likely will spend the money on a weekend away somewhere here on Vancouver Island within the next year.

I am reading a lot this week as refuse to watch footage of the terrorist attacks in Beirut and France over and over again on TV.  I have many cousins in France as my French grandfather came to the USA just before WWII leaving 16 brothers and sisters behind there (his father married his mother, had 8 kids, she died and then he married another woman and had 9 more).  Our thoughts are also with my Stepson who is graduating from his Infantry training in the Canadian Armed Forces in two weeks. It is very likely he will be sent off overseas to help fight these terrorists to help keep the rest of the world safe.  We cannot dwell on it, but it still weighs heavily on our minds.

That is what is shaking in my world - stay warm and cozy everyone.