Freeze frame.

I give myself periodic mental breaks at work throughout the day to calm my frazzled nerves and to keep me sane.  I may be working late and working through lunch, but I try to at least get a couple two minute breaks in here or there.  I'll read the news, blog surf, blog compose, peruse mental floss for an interesting fact, or type a quick e-mail to a friend.

Today during my quick mental break my computer froze.  It froze right when my boss walked in and asked me to look up something for her in a database.  And what better photo to freeze on than this:

Perfect.  The article, of course, was titled "Best Dressed Penguins"  (you can find it here if you're interested in a mental break of your own).  How is it that the something that's helping me become un-crazy is also something that make other people think I am crazy.  Coincidence?  Or irony?

Analytical

A couple of weeks ago I set up Google Analytics on my blog.  This allows me to see who (roughly) is visiting my blog, how much they're visiting, where they're visiting from and the search terms they're using to get here.  It's fascinating information.

As it turns out, the most frequently searched term that people are using when they come across my blog is...wait for it...."old lady feet."  Yep, that's right, this post garners a large portion of my current readership.  Who would have thought I'd become an internet expert in something so important. 

Now you may be asking yourself: how does the foremost internet feet guru spend her weekends?

Well, since you're asking, I'll refer you to the photos below. 

I spent my time babysitting the cutest, nicest (etc. with all good superlatives) dog, Lucy and taking photos of Lucy alone and with her various canine pals.  It just so happened that Logan and Janelle were also dog sitting, so we brought Foxy and Lucy together.  It was love at first sniff.  Sure, Lucy thought Foxy was a squirrel and spent all evening trying to figure out why the squirrel was feistily batting her in the face with its small paws, but it was still love. 

 

We spent several unsuccessful minutes posing the dogs until we finally got the shot on the left below.  Big Lucy next to three-pound Foxy.  Gives me the giggles every time I look at it.

At the week's end.

It's been a really long week. In fact, it's been a really long month. The good news is that I only have 2 weeks left of working 2 jobs.  Dominique brought her baby (Dominic) in to the office yesterday to show him off.  He is darling.  So darling, in fact, that it almost makes me want to tell Dominique that she should take more time to be at home with him.  I said almost.  I'm not a masochist.  So, I'm counting down the days and hours until she returns and I'm back to one boss and one list of things to do.

I posted the below photo on instagram earlier this week with the caption "My office - a great physical representation of my current mental state."  And it truly is.  I've never felt so jumbled.

Not even chocolate cake for breakfast, pizza for lunch and a diet coke all day in between are doing it for me anymore. I'm in sore need of a relaxing weekend away from this place.

Thank goodness we get to have a weekend play date with Lucy while Rob and Whitney are out of town.  We are looking forward to walks in the park and pretending that we have our very own doodle.  You can't tell me that her face doesn't make all your stress melt away:

(Photo from Whitney's lovely blog.)

Sock Monkey

On our way up to Giant the other night to buy the essentials (apple cider and ice cream, of course!) we stopped at a red light and Blake started laughing hysterically.  So hard he was almost crying. 

I had no idea why, until, through his giggles, Blake pointed out that we were stuck behind and next to two Kia Sorentos.  Ahhh, Sock Monkey, I see.  Even just the thought of the sock monkey riding the mechanical bull was enough to make Blake laugh uncontrollably.

Never a dull or unhappy moment.  That's why he (Blake, not Sock Monkey) is the best.

Cheery Chair

Blake and I had a restful, fun and productive long weekend.  I spent about 20 hours in the yard (for some of the results, hop on over to our house blog) doing fall cleaning, and also finally got around to photographing and uploading some of our latest projects. 

So, without further ado, I give you the throne:

I forgot to have Blake take a close-up of the nail-head detailing.  It looks really cool (pats-self-on-back).  The best part of it is that it came on a long spool and only requires that you nail in every fifth nail-head.  They're a pewter color and I think they show off the lines of the chair really well. 

The throne is going to permanently reside in the basement, but I haven't wanted to move it down there just yet.  I've kept it in our family room (where it doesn't match AT ALL) so that I can look at it just a little longer.

What do you think?

A Golden Throne

Our neighborhood listserv is a wealth of information and furniture cast-offs.  Want to find an honest plumber or a dog sitter?  E-mail the list serv.  Want to get rid of a cat-pee stained wingback chair?  E-mail the list serv.

As I've mentioned before, I like to troll the listserv and our neighborhood streets for free finds.  I'd wanted to learn how to re-uphoster a chair for a while, but didn't want to spend much money acquiring the chair (seeing as I'd have to fork it over for fabric and other supplies).

A couple of months ago I hit the jackpot.  A neighbor a couple of streets over posted that they'd left a free wingback chair in their front yard for any takers.  I took it.  

We got it home and looked it over.  It was slip covered in a frilly yellow with blue piping.  Ugly.  And underneath was a thick creamy fabric stained with cat pee and who-knows-what-else.  Uglier.  In fact, the cushion was so gross that I threw it out alltoghter rather than keeping it to use as a pattern.

I should have taken pictures, but for some reason I never got around to it, so you'll have to take my word for it. 

When my mom came to visit we tackled the beast, or as I like to call it, the Throne.

We stripped away all of the old, disgusting, cat-dander infested fabric and batting.

And got it down to the bare bones:

 Then we used the old fabric as a template to cut out fabric from the new yellow and grey suzani Blake picked (he has really great taste!).  My mom is an engineer and is absolutely meticulous about having things line up exactly right.  This is great for me because I'm more of a "we'll see how it goes" sort of crafter.  So we agonized over every centimeter of the fabric to make it line up correctly through all of the seems. 

With our pieces cut, we began stapling and nailing the fabric to the hardwood frame.  My parents got me a staple gun for Christmas last year.  It's been invaluable and I consider it to be my version of Blake's power drill.  Who says women can't love power tools as much as the next guy?

As we neared completion we were both exhausted (and Blake, too, who we'd enlisted to help with our particularly difficult stapling needs). I now know why people pay hundreds of dollars to have someone else recover their furniture. It's backbreaking and tedious work. But it is so worth it. I've never done a project where I was more suprised at the results. The before and after were shockingliy different.

I am so happy with the way it turned out.  But you'll have to wait to see the finished product until I can get Blake to take a photo of it with his fancy camera.  The iPhone photo I took doesn't do it justice.