Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you for your beautiful images, Norman!

Although it's been a LOOOOOOOONG while since I've posted, I did want to take a moment to wish everyone a happy, healthy, wonderful Thanksgiving. An enjoyable meal with friends and family--especially those we haven't maybe seen in a while-- and a little break to contemplate all that we have to be grateful for--what a lovely way it is to begin the season!! 
To you and yours--I hope you have a yummy and terrific day!
Big Hugs,
Kat

Happy Easter

Pretty crocus picture from here...

To you and your family and friends, Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

I didn't see any winged porcines, but...

Choose the Candy...

“You, and only you, are responsible for your happiness in life.

As a human, you can’t accomplish every goal in the world at one time.

So, you have to choose your priorities.

You may choose things that will make you appear happy in front of friends, family, coworkers or general society.

You can also choose things that would bring actual happiness.

The choice between the candy wrapper and actual candy is up to you.”

--from an inspiring story on Tori Holmes, the youngest woman to row across the Atlantic here...

Happy 2013!

Happy 2013 and wishing you and yours the best in the coming year.  Let your dreams take flight!

Merry Christmas from the House on the Hill!

Fits and Starts

In honor of "fits and starts"--including the near-six-month blog hiatus (where does the time go?!), I give you some pictures of our summer garden.
For a recovering black thumb on the first go, I think the results weren't too bad!  We got some zucchini, oodles of little tomatoes, some beans, broccoli and wild rocket out of our little patch.

 

Eventually, though, some sort of disease came through and hit our tomato plants and gophers wanted to share in our veggie feast. We ultimately wound up taking out the plants  and the ground is still "resting" (aka, we haven't bought seeds yet :) )--ready for the next crop.

We just found out recently that we will get to rent this home at least through the holidays, which is good news for us. In the meantime, we might plant a new crop of winter veggies, and prepare our home for the upcoming holiday festivities.  Our family will all be here and we are excited to share the time with them.

Life is currently a series of fits and starts--waiting to hear back about this or that, making important decisions for the future with just a little information, things needing to be fixed followed the odd windfall and generosity of friends and family, expectations or hopes fallen short, then others exceeded-- one step back followed by two or three small steps forward.  The challenge? Maintaining the perspective of living each moment fully and learning from and enjoying the journey.  
Hello friends, I hope you are well.  I hope you are enjoying your journey.

Big hugs,
Kat

A Long Relaxing Weekend

What did you do for this long weekend? We headed out to the beach (thanks Mom and Dad) and our sweet friends took care of our furbabies and our garden for us (thanks so much, guys!). We had a relaxing time, but it's also good to be home with the other members of our "family". 
Now, it's back to work, my friends!
Big Hugs,
Kat

Happy Memorial Day

Source

Thank you servicemen and servicewomen!

Gall' Darn Gophers!

The Garden is growing along pretty well, but we've lost two broccoli plants now to gophers...


Below was the first and the second was stealthily nibbled away at the roots.  I'm still hoping we can save the second one, but things don't look good.

First it was a whole row of lettuce (except the wild rocket--they don't seem to like the arugala/rouquette much) and then our broccoli.  Mark and I pretty much declared war at seeing two of our huge broccoli plants disappear within mere days of each other, but I didn't want to hurt the gophers--I mean, after all, a gopher's gotta eat too, right? And we certainly didn't want to jeopardize our furkid Mika by putting out poison or anything like that.
So my awesome hubby went out and got one of those sonic/kinetic combo gopher stakes and planted it right in the middle of the broccoli. Apparently it emits the gopher warning chatter/thumping and scares them away.
So far, so good.  No more (knock wood) broccoli or lettuce plants have met their demise although I have noticed that I'm seeing more gopher holes out in the yard, so maybe it is working.  I'll keep you all posted.  Do you know any other ways of non-harmful gopher control?
Big Hugs,
Kat

Garden Teaser

Christmas in...May?

Since I missed sharing our Christmas pictures, thought I'd post a few here for your shock and awe viewing pleasure.
Kind of makes me nostalgic for those chilly 60-degree days here in SoCal...  
Merry Christmas to all, a little late!!

The Moo Stocking

The Squidleydoo Stocking

The Mark Stocking

The Mark's-Little-Brother-Stocking

The Yours-Truly Stocking

Awkward Family Photos...

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Big Hugs,

Kat

Karma

Saturday morning was beautiful. 
I had scheduled with friends to meet up early in the morning and hike up a local mountain.
We met at the park by the ranger's station, grabbed our water and headed on up the mountain.
It was a beautiful day for exercise and girl talk.
But, while we were doing this...

And this...

Some unscrupulous person/persons did this...

And this...

You can still see the rock they used to bust the window over on the far floorboard.

It was a bummer, to say the least, when I returned to the parking lot to see my poor Frumpmonkey Beastie had been broken into and my purse stolen.  

I normally don't leave my purse in my truck, or even take it with me when I go hiking, but this was local and I had planned to stop and pick up my dry cleaning on the way home. Lesson learned, I guess.

Not only did I have to cancel all of my cards but they got my FAVORITE PURSE!! The crazy orange one with the goofy flowers. 

Anyhow. I wish them no harm or ill will. The fact that they bought red-box videos and gasoline leads me to believe that they possibly weren't SO in need that they would make the best use of the $6 or so in my wallet. 

It is merely an observation that karma has a funny way of leveling the field when one least expects it. I hope that these individuals are able to change their lives for the better and help people instead of taking from them.

On the bright side, I no longer have to worry about cleaning out my wallet AND I was able to get a new, inexpensive, pretty one that I think will help keep me more organized!

AND--thank heavens, I had forgotten my phone at home.

So, not as terrible as things could have been.  No one was hurt and although there is a certain amount of expense involved to do repairs and recover licenses, etc., things could have been much much worse.

Counting my blessings...

Big Hugs,

Kat

Catching Up is hard to do...

Well, Hellooooooooo there!

Yes. That is picture of our Christmas tree. 

Our SECOND Christmas tree to be exact, with Squiddley (aka, Siddhartha, aka Sqiddo, aka Sqiddleydoo, aka Jabba the Cat, aka "NonoyoubadcatgetdownfromthecounterRIGHTTHISINSTANT!") lying beneath it looking deceptively cute and steriotypically nappish. 

Yes, this is from this past December, which seems like yesterday.  

No, thankfully, our Christmas tree is not still up. It is lying in a shallow grave in the backyard next to the first Christmas tree (which promptly died two weeks after we bought it from Lowes), awaiting a proper cremation at one of the various California beach bonfire pits...erm, possibly, like, this weekend.

So here we are May, and I've been avoiding posting due to a combination of lack of my computer recognizing, in any form, the camera via cable--via memory card, via me saying some not very nice things, beating my fists on the table and typing much more forcefully than necessary--and just not having enough creative energy enough to fight technology and do my amazingly great but crazy job.  For a while--I'll be honest--I was really struggling about my job. Last weekend, however, I came to the conclusion that I love what I do, but I'm getting a little burnt out--so I've cut back on the hours a little bit in the hopes of striking some sort of balance henceforth and keeping the creative juices percolating.

Anyhoo.

Here we are. May.

And although life has been moving along as usual, I did manage to document a bit of it to share.

There's been Christmas, wineries, Mark's birthday, friends having little ones, being honored by my work, and the garden.

My goal is to post at least five days (Yep. Count 'em, five!) this week.

I'm lookin' to anyone who may still be out there to keep me honest!

Big Hugs and Happy Monday y'all!

Missed you,

Kat

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wishing you a warm, snuggly day with your favorite buddy!

Heavens!

Its been too long, y'all.  
How have you been?
December was crazy. Then, January became EXTRA crazy. Work has been busy. I took a really challenging yoga class. I took lots of pictures of Christmas and projects and baking nonsense and tree decorations and parties and fun, but still haven't figured out how to get the new laptop to recognize he camera (bad tech joo joo--sorry!). My Dad had surgery last week and is starting to feel better. I got to see my family on the other side of the country for a week (!!). I got to knit and knosh, snicker and slurp wine with my friends from forever-ago while sitting of the living room of the house I grew up in. I got to sew with my sweet momma while papa ate chicken soup and ice cream and jello and recuperated. I returned to the west coast to a snuggly, wonderful husband, cute, wriggly furkids, a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, gummy bears and... a garden with new topsoil--ready to be planted (eeklilhappydance!). I have been hiking and taking part in my husband's conditioning class at his martial arts school when I can...phew! And here we are...at the end of January. How does that happen?!
I may not be anywhere near the farmer-writer-artist-homesteading-diva I aspire to be yet, but to quote the tire-cover I got for Christmas from my MarkaLee, "Life is Good."


Big Hugs and happy to see y'all again,
I missed you guys.
Kat

Themes for 2012

Balance.

Simplicity.

Foundation.

Looking forward to the journey...

Big Hugs, 

            Kat

Picture from here

Guess What Santa Brought For Christmas?

Santa's made Kat a very happy girl! Glad to be back in the proverbial saddle...

(Thanks Mom, Dad and Jim for the amazing gift!)

Still Here!

Hi friends! I'm still here! So, we've borrowed a friend's laptop, since mine went down with unbelievable timing--right before Kim's at Newlywoodwards' link party started. Gah! Lesson learned about storing photos on the desktop. In any case, it looks like I have some catching up to do!
Until then, wishing you a joyful and productive pre-Thanksgiving Tuesday!
Big Hugs,
Kat

Dell, 2005-2011

It is with great sorrow that we mourn the passing of our dear Dell laptop.
After a long battle with various forms of dust and animal hair, the occasional droplet of coffee and chronic fatigue (Dell's battery did not work), Dell succumbed last evening at the dining room table of the family home.
Dell is survived by an elderly HP, a foster Sony laptop, a toaster, and several other household appliances.
Dell will be missed and as there is no current laptop to possibly fill Dell's shoes, posting will be light for a while. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a new Apple and some stainless steele polish.

The Laundry Trials: The Sequel

So, I tried making another batch of homemade laundry detergent.
 

 

This time, using Zote soap and a food processor (yes, we're still alive to tell the tale).

For some reason, Zote seems like it is missing an exclamation point, to me.

Zote!

See? Am I right?
Maybe its some residual form of 1950's marketing rolling around in the back of my brain; maybe too much I Love Lucy when I was younger.

The pink soap works pretty well, and clothes come out clean and smelling nice--perhaps a little better in my opinion than they did when I used the Ivory soap, but for some reason I have a difficult time with the smell of Zote in it's dry form.  It smells like a citronella candle, which I quite like (what country gal doesn't like to be reminded of camping), but there is some undertone there that I just can't handle very well--maybe it's tallow--something, I don't know.  So, even though I like the outcome and the swell pink color ("Gee Mom, let's get ZOTE!"), I don't think this one is for me--just personal preference, you understand.

Next up in the homemade laundry soap geekery department, I'd like to dabble with some castille soap, and my cousin recommended trying the lavender-scented Yardley soap that her family uses...  Stay tuned for the next installment of...THE LAUNDRY TRIALS.


Big Hugs,
Kat


(Zote!)
hee.

Ooo- a challenge!

 

Kim, over at NewlyWoodwards, has started a Dare to Do it Yourself Blog Party...and I've signed up! Eeps! I'm excited to try meeting these weekly challenges she's set and I'm hoping they will keep me on top of my holiday game!

Thanks, Kim for setting the stage and extending the invitation!

Big Hugs,

Kat