Daily Craft - Up, Up & Away!

I mentioned that I'd be making a hot air balloon mobile, and wanted to share my progress as it's already just about the cutest thing ever and all I've done so far is cut out the pieces!  A shout out to Jess over at Craftiness is Not Optional (one of my favorite blog names) for this fantastic tutorial.

Deuce figured he'd be helping out if he tried to chew on the felt pieces while I put them out for a photo...

This is a proper preview. Adorable right?

I modified the baskets a little bit, and I'm not sure how I plan to hang it.  I don't really have the tools to fashion the top that the original tutorial uses, so considering other options once I have an idea of how much the clouds and balloons weigh.

I'm 98% done with my two knitting projects as well, so more info on those coming up soon!!  Hope your weekend is shaping up to be a great one.  :)

Daily Deuce - Cat burglar strikes again

It's that time of year again when I am thoroughly involved with my holiday adopt-a-family program at work.  I've been heading up this particular effort for the last 8 years and, while I was totally planning on doing the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day this round, I am suffering a bit of a time crunch.  You should go check it out though - a chance to find some great new blogs to read and possibly win some stuff too!

This weekend, I went shopping with the $570 worth of cash and check donations that I'd harrassed encouraged people to donate at work.  I found some awesome sales so managed to get a ton of gifts for about $450, which means money left over for gift cards. Yay!  [Pictures of the haul to come shortly]. 

Saturday afternoon, husband and I also popped out to get some cat food and a few kitty gifts for the holidays.  I was about to start organizing all the purchases when I hear rustling from under the dining table just to find that Deuce had extracted one of his gifts from among the melee of bags, and was attempting to remove it from the cardboard backing. 

Being the mean mom that I am, I took the toy away from him, stuffed it back in the bag and tucked the bag in among all the others.  Later that evening, the little smart-ass had found the bag with his toys in it again, dragged it across the room, and was once again trying to help himself to a toy.  Gifts and toys everywhere but he still figured out exactly what was his.  The toys are now hiding on the top shelf of the closet (shhh...don't tell him where it is). 

This is not the first time he's helped himself to things that he believes to be his...

- the pincushion he took right out of my hands [see picture]
- the treats he removed from on top of the fridge and ate before depositing the evidence empty bag behind the living room curtain
- the bag of toys he removed from the bathroom cabinet and threw all over the living room
- the hanks of yarn that he tried to sneak out of the room with...in front of me. 

Shameless!

Daily Deuce - Happy Birthday Deuce!

It wouldn't be right to forgo wishing Deuce a Happy Birthday today - after all, I named this blog after the little fuzzbutt!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Deuce Today you turn 2 and I want to wish you a wonderful birthday.  I love how you give me little sniffy kisses every morning when I leave for work, and it makes me smile that your furry face is the first thing I see when I come home.  You constantly amuse me with your antics - even when you have your butt in my face, or you're attacking me with your fists of furry. You're such a sweet little guy, always checking on us to see what we're doing, and wanting to join in with every activity.  You love to play and enjoy nothing more than being chased around the house until your tail puffs up, chasing your ratty old ball around, wrestling with your mouse, or sunbathing under the dining table.  I love it when you're being chatty and telling me about your day.  I have no idea what you're saying, but I'm sure it's all good stuff! We're so happy that you're part of our family and wishing you a wonderful year filled with treats and tuna. Love and ear scratches, She who feeds you

Daily Gripe - Craft fail

You talking about me?

I've been slacking on our guest bedroom reorganization.  Husband's back won't permit him to do a ton of moving furniture about, so when my brother was briefly visiting a couple weeks ago, I had him assist me with moving the bed, TV and entertainment stand.  That went relatively, um, smoothly.   [OK, in reality, we moved the TV onto the bed, didn't prop it up properly, resulting in it falling face first off the bed and making a dent in the door.  Good news is that the TV still seems to be working.]  I need to decide how to reorganize the bookshelves and set up my sewing machine, hang stuff on walls etc.  I swear I will eventually get around to that.  Deuce seems to like the new set up of the room - by that I mean he enjoys that he's allowed in there right now because he can't get into any trouble seeing as all my craft supplies are packed away.  It's amazing how much space a 13lb cat can take up on a queen sized bed. 

Anyway, last night I was itching to pull out my loom, which has been hiding in the closet where all my craft stuff was packed.  I set everything up and started to warp the yarn onto the loom with Deuce carefully watching.  Considering I was winding multiple strands of yarn 6 feet across the room, I was very impressed with his restraint....until the warping peg that I was using to hold the lengths of yarn came off the entertainment stand and dropped on the floor.  The yarn immediately fell off the peg and into a pile, and cat pounced straight off the table into the middle of the yarn and promptly started trying to eat it.  So there's me, 10pm, with a gigantic pile of knotted yarn and one very satisfied furball sitting proudly on top of it.  Needless to say, it's back to the drawing warping board for that project and I have learned my lesson when it comes to tightening the necessary pegs during this particular process.   

Happy Friday all!

Daily Deuce - Breakfast time!

Deuce is a funny cat.  He loves hanging about while we are eating and has a particular love for fast food.  We don't have it in the house often, but when we do he will appear out of nowhere and wants to sniff everything, or will try to stick his nose in my mouth.  Having said that, the two times I have offered him a french fry, he has sniffed it, then looked at me as if to say "you call that food?"  He doesn't really beg though - unless he knows there's raw chicken available, in which case it's not so much begging as purring, headbutting your legs, flopping upside down on the floor and giving us the "look how cute I am...I'm so cute you will immediately feed me the tasty morsels in your hand."

This morning, I settled down in front of the computer with a bowl of cereal when Deuce popped up onto the desk and wanted to give it a sniff.  After pushing him away several times, he resigned to just staring at it wistfully while I ate for a little bit, but then walked away as if he had lost interest....or so I thought.

The second I was done eating and put the bowl back down, he popped up again and, before I could stop him, decided to dive in face first, in the hopes of licking up any last remains of milk.

I'm usually telling people how well behaved he is...

Daily Craft - I-loom-inating!

I am a total slacker for not posting earlier. I'm going to blame it on preparations for Judgement Day, although as rapture's go, it was a total disappointment.

So, my new loom arrived last week and I was thrilled to start playing with it. Deuce gave it a good sniffing while I was building it, just to make sure he approves. This picture makes it seem as if he's being helpful, but it's a lie. On account of trying to make him stop, I wasn't able to get the shots of him chewing on the apron strings or trying to steal the screwdriver.

Despite the cat, I was able to get the loom warped and ready to go pretty quickly.  I decided to work on some basic dishcloths to get started, figuring I won't really care if they're crooked seeing as I'll be using them for cleaning dishes and counters.  I'm already seeing a huge difference between the first one and where I am now (which is about cloth #6).  I have a couple more to go before I can remove them from the loom and share the finished product, but here's a preview.  Once I'm done with this, I'll probably try a scarf.  The stash busting possibilities seem as if they may be endless...which is a good thing!

Daily Deuce - If only...

...I could be so comfortable!

It seems that I've been spending way too much time being sick this year. It's only March and I've been hit by the plague again! I'm considering buying a plastic bubble.

The one advantage to being at home mid-week and relegated to the couch is getting to see first hand that my furry baby spends his afternoons looking far too comfy on his favorite pillows. If only I had that luxury myself.

Daily Deuce - Because it's cute

While going through some pictures on the camera, I found this one that my husband had taken of Deuce that I just have to share because it's so damn cute. 

It makes me laugh to think that Deuce somehow managed to stretch his 6.5 lb (but incredibly long) body across three seats on the couch, and 2 cushions. 

There are times when he's undoubtedly taking up too much space for one so small, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal to disturb him when he looks so comfortable!

Daily Deuce - A birthday kitty

A message to Deuce...

We believe today is (approximately) your 1st birthday.  When we adopted you, as a tiny little fuzz-ball, I could only have hoped that you'd become such a wonderful addition to our lives.  You're such a sweet, charming, handsome boy and you've got us wrapped around your little paws!

You're as playful now as when we got you as a baby and, for as long as you want us to, we'll always be happy to chase you around the house, fetch your balls from under the couch, or keep getting the brown bags you like from the Chinese place up the street.

It's impossible not to laugh at your ridiculous antics and, even when you're not in the room, we find ourselves imitating your silly "bruuppp" noises, or that grunt you make that sounds suspiciously like "yes".

We're so glad that you like your birthday gifts - try not to chew all the feathers off the activity mat too quickly!  

Also, thanks for wearing the silly birthday hat for just one picture!  We'll try not to humiliate you again...at least until your next birthday!

Daily Deuce - What a week!

My week took a turn for the worse about half way through when I developed a nasty cough.  A trip to the doctor yesterday and I've been diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis.  Sounds like fun right?  Today, after the first round of meds (mixture between anti-biotics and steroids) I'm feeling a little bionic - which could also be a result of being slightly light-headed.  Yay me!  To make it worse, the weather has gone completely nuts in Southern Cali.  It was 90+ degrees the last couple of days, which makes being sick with chills the most obnoxious thing ever.  This morning, however, it was 80 degrees and raining at 8:30am.  Perhaps it's really not that surprising that I have bronchitis, most likely caused by allergies.

So, here's a completely silly video of Deuce because, no matter how crappy I feel, he always makes me feel better.

Daily Deuce - Dry clean only?

I absolutely love this photo of Deuce.  He commandeered his section of the couch where his favorite pillow was on top of his favorite blanket.  It wasn't until after that I noticed he seems to be exposing the tag with washing instructions.  Now, the question is whether he's a dry clean only kitty...

Daily Deuce - Tutorial: How to use a scratch post

Over the last few months, husband and I have taken lots of video of our little kitty Deuce and his antics.  Lots and lots of antics!  He's not camera shy, actually preferring to sniff the camera lens and try to chew the strap when possible.  Anyway, I'm finally getting around to putting them up online.

From the first couple of days we had him, we made sure he was familiar with his scratch post and he has since become quite the scratch post master.  The post here has been retired as he outgrew it - watch and you'll see why!

Daily Deuce - Scavenger kitty

Yesterday, one of my earrings dropped out and disappeared. It's just one of the hoops that I leave in on a daily basis when I'm being too lazy to pick out a pair of dangles in the morning. I figured it had washed down the drain while I was washing my hair - no big deal, I'd spend the $2 on a new pair.

A couple hours later, I see Deuce running around in the kitchen trying to pick something up in his mouth. This is not unusual as he will sniff/play with/try to eat pretty much anything. I've heard too many horror stories of kitties ending up at the vet having eaten something they shouldn't so I immediately went to retrieve his new "toy", just to find my missing earring under his paw. If we didn't have a scavenger kitty around the house, guaranteed I would never have found it. So, thanks Deuce. Your incessant kitten curiosity is very handy indeed.

Welcome

Hi! Welcome to my new blog - Daily Dose Of Deuce.

So, what can you expect from this blog? I plan on sharing a variety of random musings with you - from things I'm making to my thoughts on my favorite TV shows, to things I'm doing around town, around the house, what I'm eating, what I'm laughing about...and the list goes on. I just hope that you enjoy what I have to share and perhaps you'll be inspired to share some of the things going on in your life too!

To get you started, I might as well introduce you to Deuce seeing as the blog name was inspired by his! He's currently passed out on the couch with his nose buried in his favorite blanket. I'm convinced he knows I'm talking about him though.