Well, Gracie still thinks she's a mommy and she's very careful with all of her "babies". These pictures were taken this morning when I came back to my bedroom after breakfast. When I left for the kitchen the "puppies" were scattered around the bed, but I guess she thought it was time for their breakfast too! It's funny, but it's also sad to watch her care so tenderly for stuffed toys.

Momma Gracie

About two weeks ago I realized that Gracie was acting pregnant, but I knew there was no way she was pregnant. After a little searching online I figured out that she's having a false pregnancy. I thought she was just going to get a little fat, but I had no idea all the weird things to expect.....all of her recent weird behaviors are starting to make sense. A couple weeks ago Gracie started digging a hole in my backyard and now I've discovered that she's "nesting" for her puppies....she's also started digging in her bed before she lays down.

Last night was the saddest/cutest part of all. Gracie usually hangs out pretty close to me around the house, but she disappeared for a long time and then came and started begging to go out. I let her out the backdoor assuming she had to go to the bathroom, but she ran out, grabbed her toy stuffed pig, and ran back to her bed. I followed her and realized that she had gathered all of her stuffed animals as her "puppies" in her bed. It was so cute, but I kind of wonder if it will be sad when she figures out they're not real. She spends all of her time in bed with her "puppies" and the only way I can get her to go outside when I leave for work is to put all of the "puppies" on the back porch with a blanket. Poor girl.

When Casey's away, Gracie will play...

I went to San Antonio to visit Whit for Memorial Day weekend and Gracie stayed at Mom and Dad's house. I figured she would have a good time with them, but I was surprised to wake up and have emails of her adventures a couple of mornings that I was gone. First I received pictures of her playing with the water hose and the kiddie pool. Gracie loves water and I let her play in it often, but I can't take pictures because I usually end up soaked too. Here are a few pictures of Gracie interfering when Dad was trying to fill up the pool for the dogs.















On Saturday morning I received an email of Gracie's antics on Friday night. According to Mom's claims, she got up to brush her teeth Friday night and Gracie jumped in her spot and got right up on her pillow. I'm certain that my sweet puppy wouldn't have done that, but here are the pictures Mom sent as evidence. I'm pretty sure they're staged. She also claims the last picture was Gracie's sad face when Mom told her she had to get down. :)

Gracie knows CPR!

Well....sort of.

The other night I was sitting on the floor petting Gracie and my back was really tight. I rolled back on my back to stretch out and I closed my eyes. Seconds later I felt Gracie come sit next to me and then I felt her whiskers on my mouth and nose as she sniffed around and breathed on me. Then she put her paw in the middle of my chest and started doing compressions! Well, maybe she was really just poking me in the chest trying to get me continue petting her, but it seemed a lot like CPR to me! It's a good thing I have such a handy dog around.

Life with Gracie

Life with Gracie is going very well...aside from her dragging me around the neighborhood on walks (hopefully we'll get that under control). She's so good in the house and wants to be by my side at all times. Gracie has some funny quirks too...she hardly ever gets on the hardwood or tile because she freaks out when her paws slide...she gives a low bark at all uncertain sounds such as the washing machine, the dryer vent outside on the porch, the popcorn popper, water dripping after a shower, etc. She's a funny pup, but I love her!

Here are a few pics of Gracie, aka the guard dog, sitting watch at my bedroom window. She loves to sit there and watch the world go by. Sometimes she gets tired and falls asleep with her head on the window sill, but she's also scared away my neighbor who apparently was letting her dog go to the bathroom in my yard....heh heh heh.
Gracie has been great about sleeping in her bed and has happily stayed there at night since her first night at my house. She is afraid of storms though, and she ends up in the middle of my bed when there's thunder.














When Mom and Dad leave town, Gracie and I head over to their house since it's easier for me to take care of both dogs in one place. Gracie and Chewy had to check each other out at first, but they really seem to get along (or at least coexist) very well. Gracie and I spent the week before Easter over at Mom and Dad's and Gracie seemed depressed the first few days that we returned home. When I opened my back door that Monday morning to put her outside for the day, she sat down and looked at me like, "you call that a backyard?" Gracie gets plenty of exercise on our daily walks, but I think she really prefers all of the adventures that Mom and Dad's backyard holds.

Meet Gracie!

On Valentine's Day I adopted Gracie, a 2 year old black/chocolate lab. I love her already! More pictures to come...

Introducing Ava!

I gained another niece! Ava Holt Garrison was born to my brother, Matt and sister-in-law, Amy on Nov 1. She is a perfect blend of the two of them, and I can't wait to meet her and kiss that little round face!

Flowerbeds

After several weekends of hard work, Dad and I finally finished my flowerbeds this weekend.

First we ripped out all of the old plants and built a little retaining wall so we could build the beds up (they had a huge slope away from the house due to my lack of gutters). The wall actually took 2 weekends....it's quite a task!

Today we filled the beds with all sorts of bushes and plants. It's sort of hard to tell from these pictures, but there are actually several layers of plants with various monkey grasses and annuals towards the front. If you're really curious I can tell you the names of all of my plants.....I'm getting pretty good at landscape lingo! But I'm not that good....I can only tell you the common name.

Here are a few pics from tonight. If you're thinking that the two walls look different colors...you're right. I've stained the wall on the left because I prefer a more natural looking stone than the red clay. With recent rain and today's planting, I haven't been able to stain the wall on the right yet. Maybe that will be a project for tomorrow!

Gutter-less

Well, ever since I bought my home I knew that I'd need to add gutters as soon as possible. I'd also decided that I'd proabably need some sort of leaf guard since I have huge trees with tons of leaves. I had one quote from a guy that had been referred to Dad, but I figured I ought to at least get another quote just to check out my options.

Friday night, a guy I like to call Sweaty Gutter Man came to give me a quote. I should've just called off the meeting after I met him at my house and the first thing he said was, "Oh, I thought I was meeting a guy." Hmmmm...didn't they teach him etiquette when they gave him a job as a salesman? Rule #1...don't insult your customer by inferring that she has a man's name. My second huge warning was when he immediately started telling me about his financing options. Never a good sign.

The guy sent me inside to call some of his references while he worked up my quote. What do I do? I go inside and call Mom and Dad to rush over and help me fight off the sweaty salesman. The guy did have a good product, and he was very persistent, but it's never good when someone shows you a quote but holds his hand over the amounts and reveals them line by line. No peeking!

After telling me that I had a very simple house with few corners and only one level, Sweaty Gutter Man revealed how much his gutters would set me back.

(Drumroll, please.)

...a mere $7,200. Yes, folks....that's seven THOUSAND, two-hundred dollars! It was so hard not to laugh in his face. That's more money than I've spent on the remodel of my ENTIRE house!!!! Of course, Sweaty Gutter Man didn't even leave me the quote and I certainly wasn't going to ask for a copy since there's a 0% chance I'll be needing his services.

Of course, I could get a couple hundred dollars off if I were willing to be a reference and also stick a sign in my yard a couple times a year. Why would I want to do that....then everyone would know that I was the schmuck who forked over $7,200 for gutters.

No thanks, Sweaty Gutter Man....you'll have to try and sell your goods to some other sucker.

Trying to Catch Up

My house is almost completely remodeled, but my blog isn't keeping up with the pace. Sorry 'bout that.

The kitchen was a total remodel....here are a few pictures of the cabinets after we added the knobs and pulls. You can see the side of the old fridge in one of the pictures, but it's not there anymore. I replaced the fridge and the dishwasher, and I hope to replace the range soon too.

I love my kitchen! It looks fabulous, it's huge for my little house, it has tons of cabinets, and it's a good layout for cooking!














When we ripped up the kitchen floors to add hardwood, we also tore the old floors out of my laundry room. For a while I just lived with a concrete floor in there, but a few weeks ago we finally put a tile floor in there to match the tile in the bathrooms. It was the first time Dad and I had set tile, but we did a great job. Of course, I couldn't walk without pain for a few days but it was completely worth it! I just hope he agrees!

I'm so thankful that I only had to tile one area of my house. It was one of the messiest projects I've ever done! I was so frustrated because I'd get the thinset on my hand, and then I'd smear it on the tile, then I'd start to lose my balance and get it on the wall....I wanted to scream! I am so thankful I don't do tile work for a living.

Pecan pie, anyone?

In recent weeks I was surprised to see that my 2 little pecan trees have quite a crop of pecans. The trees aren't really big enough to support the pecans they're growing, so Dad and I propped up some of the heavier limbs with some old fence posts. It's kind of hard to see in this picture. Now I can actually kind of mow around the trees, but before it was getting really hard since some of the leaves were actually touching the ground! I sure hope these huge pecans taste good!

Hardwood floors

Most of my house had new carpet and tile, but the kitchen and utility room still had really old linoleum (with pastel-colored flowers!). My plan all along was to put hardwood floors in the kitchen, but I also decided to pull up the carpet in the dining room and extend the hardwood into that room. It seemed more practical to have hardwood in the dining room since it's my only eating area and hardwoods will stay cleaner. Dad and I had never actually laid hardwood floors, but we tackled it by ourselves anyway. It was a long, sticky job, but I love the floors and think they're beautiful!

In these pictures you can also see my new countertops! I love those too!

Kitchen Re-do

I would say the kitchen re-model has been the most dramatic of the whole house. It's just about complete now, but here are some more pictures of the process. Once Dad finished painting the cabinets we textured the walls and painted them green. This kitchen is certainly not the hodge-podge of white that it was when I first bought the house!

Move-In Day!

On March 29 I moved into my new house!! The work on the house certainly was not complete, but my apartment lease was up so it was time to go. The move wasn't too much of a hassle, but I learned which moving company I would not use again. The move took way too long for my small amount of furniture, but that afternoon I was finally moved in and ready to get settled. Although pictures of my mess during the move aren't very exciting, I'm attaching these pictures because they show the beams in my living room. We painted them dark brown so they look warm like wood....before they were painted white to blend in with the ceiling. I love how they turned out! Also, you can see the new windows in the dining room. I replaced all the windows in the house because they were really old and inefficient. These look so much nicer and it's a lot quieter inside. Note: the windows aren't tinted...it's just dark outside.

More changes

Work on the house continues on, but here are a few pictures of changes that happened months ago. Dad put up new porch lights for me since there was just one and it blinded the peep-hole so you couldn't see who was standing on the porch....not the best design considering there isn't a window there to look out of either. Yes, the street numbers in the picture are being held up with tape, but they had fallen and Dad used the tape to hold them in place while the other adhesive dried. Of course, we've had so many storms that the numbers have taken a beating and now the 1 and the 3 have fallen off......now my address is just 36. One of these days I'll get a real address that stays in place. My favorite part of this picture is the little patch of flowers that you can see in the bottom right corner. The elderly woman that lived here before me stuck a whole bunch of silk flowers in the dirt so it looked like she had flowers. I honestly had never thought of that as a quick fix to add curb appeal (but don't be fooled....it wasn't appealing)!


Have I mentioned lately that my dad is amazing? He built me a mantel! My fireplace was pretty boring before, but he built this mantel that is perfect and really makes it look nice. The box on the hearth is the fireplace screen that I will use later, but first I need to take the brass fireplace cover off and clean the bricks. I'm so excited to have a fireplace this winter! I really could have used it last year when we had so many snow and ice storms.

Dad has also put a lot of time into the kitchen. I really didn't like my cabinets because they were stuck in the 80's and thankfully Dad agreed that it was going to be difficult to sand and paint the current cabinet design. So, he cut the dated trim off the cabinets and made new trim to update the look of the cabinets while using the original wood doors. Pretty clever! Here are a few pictures of the work in process and the first coat of primer on the doors. They looked pretty funny for a while since the original cabinet was beige but the new trim was brown. Don't worry...they're white now.