just a little something...

love this

I found this artist on Etsy, and I think I'm in love.

Mincing Mockingbird is one of my new favorite sellers on Etsy. His blog is here.  His Etsy store is here.  Go visit.

it would be cheaper to replace the cats

I may have mentioned this before, but shortly after the first of October, we discovered that our cat Mitzi peed in Sam's favorite chair. The chair happens to be leather, and, in case you were wondering, Febreeze does NOT remove cat urine odor from leather. We have tried to ignore the issue, hoping that with time the odor will fade or that perhaps we'll wake up and realize it was all a dream. That strategy is not working out real well for us.

When we moved into this house, the living room furniture actually filled the space pretty nicely even though our current living room is much bigger than our old one (so, probably that means that we had too much furniture in the old house). Anyway, buying living room furniture was much lower on the list of priority expenses. It may have even been at the bottom of the list.

With the imminent loss of our leather chair, we have decided to bite the bullet and go for it. We're now on the hunt for some new furniture. I guess we could just buy a new leather chair, but since we're replacing the one chair, we may as well replace the sofa, especially since the cats have scratched the back of it and it's looking rather ratty. And since we're now considering a new sofa and chair, we decided we may as well do a complete overhaul of the living room. Sounds logical, right?

We looked at some local furniture stores today, and later in the month we'll be going to Orlando to check out the stores there. I have a feeling that this will be our Christmas gift to each other this year. And probably our anniversary gift, our birthday gifts for next year, and the gifts for the following three Christmases. 

Someone suggested that we simply get rid of our cats since they are the root cause, the ultimate reason we're having to replace the furniture.

Um. No. Not even an option. Instead we'll be spending mucho dinero on furniture. And hope they don't pee on the new stuff.

a shopping treasure

As my husband can attest (since he reviews our credit card statements), I am a big fan of online shopping. Huge fan, in fact. I think it's because I don't like crowds. Perhaps it's because I like to shop in my pajamas and slippers.

I managed to avoid Black Friday mall-shopping and felt very accomplished that I had done so. Cyber Monday was another story, however. I have managed to turn it into Cyber Week.

Anyway, in my internet browsings, I found a very neat site that has adorable handmade items for sale by average, ordinary people. Now, Etsy is no secret to a lot of internet savvy people, but I've just become acquainted with it. And I love it.

Take a look at some of the things I've found:

• miniature cardinals made of felt
• cute animal magnets
• mommy and baby elephant print
• apple tree print in beautiful colors
• pink and burgundy bracelet
• toy cupcake
• small red coin purse

I'm not quite sure what I would do with any of those things, but they sure would be pretty to look at. Also, it makes me feel good to buy something handmade by a person in Oregon or Idaho instead of something made by a machine in Taiwan.