Sad & Snowy Day

I took this picture of our dog Onyx this morning as she was sitting by our back door watching the snow fall. I'm not too thrilled with how it turned out, though.....it was a LOT darker than it is now & this is the best I could do with making it lighter plus I changed it to black & white. It's hard to get my dogs to stand still for their picture & after I took this one, I wasn't even sure I was going to post it in my blog until I got a call from my brother-in-law this morning. He asked me to call my sister Linda because their pug Candy just passed away last night :*( She is so upset right now. She said that Candy was sick the other day & hasn't been eating, so she thought that maybe she just had another seizure since she did have them occassionally. She said that Candy was lying in bed with her last night & started shaking really bad. So she put some blankets on her because she just thought she was cold. Linda then got up out of bed & when she came back, she put her hand on Candy & she couldn't feel a heartbeat. She doesn't know if she ended up having a heart attack or what & she can't afford to have an autopsy done to find out. Candy was only 5 1/2 years old & she was a really sweet dog.

Now I have the hard job of telling my daughter today when she gets home from school. Cassie loves pugs & always played with Candy everytime we went home to visit, so I know that she's going to be heartbroken as well. Sometimes we tend to forget how much our pets become a part of our family. And sadly, they can't tell us when they're sick or in pain or if something's wrong. We often wonder why things like this happen. But sometimes, we just never know the answer unfortunately.

The next picture is of the snow we got last night. I was actually hoping for more. Wait a minute......did I just say that??? Am I nuts? I do love the first snowfall of the season, but after that, it can all go away!

Hope you have a great Thursday,
Benita
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Edited To Add: In honor of World Peace Day & Theme Thursday POTD, I'm adding these pictures of some things that bring me peace. One thing that always brings me peace is the sky. I snapped these pictures this afternoon on my way to pick Cassie up from school:


I have always been intrigued by the beautiful views that God brings us in the sky. Whether it's a sunrise, sunset, clear blue sky, rainbow or even cloudy, I just love looking up to the sky each & every day.

Something else that brings me peace is this owl necklace & prayer box that I have hanging from my rear view mirror in my Durango:

Why do these 2 things bring me peace? Well, the owl necklace belonged to my sister, Karen. After her funeral, her 2 sons let us go to their home & pick out some things to keep that belonged to Karen. Karen loved owls & had a HUGE collection of them, so when I saw this necklace, I just knew that I had to have it. But the best part.....she not only had 1 of these owl necklaces.....she had 4 of them! So my other 3 sisters each got one, too. We have no idea why she would have 4 of the same necklace, but we're all glad that she did. The prayer box was a gift from Denise, my niece. She made one for everyone after we lost Karen & Jimmy. Looking at it in this picture made me realize that it needs cleaned.....bad!

So there you have it.....just a small sampling of a few things that bring peace into my life.

Dreary Tuesday POTD

(click on picture for a better view)

What a wet & dreary day! This is one of 2 Crabapple Trees that adorn (or should I say mess up!) our front yard. While I love these trees in the Springtime with all of their gorgeous flowers, they can really be a pain once all of these little berries fall into our yard. The birds love them, though. And this year, they seem to really be overflowing with berries. Hope you can see the raindrops hanging from the berries. I took a couple of pictures this morning.....here are two more. These are the flags at my daughter's school. I'm still trying to figure out why they have 2 American Flags......anyone know?

I actually took this picture of the tree branches hoping the raindrops would show up, but when I got home & loaded it on my computer, I noticed the fog coming through the trees in the background & thought it looked really cool:

Well, there are my photos for today. Perfect day for taking a nap if you ask me! {yawn} Yep, a nap sounds really good right about now :)

Hope your day is filled with sunshine, even if it's a dreary day like mine,

Benita

Moon At Midnight POTD

My photo for today was actually one that I took last night, but since I took it after midnight, I'm using it as today's photo. I used my cross screen filter to take this picture of the moon. Unfortunately, I don't have a good zoom lens yet for my DRebel, so this is the closest I could get. I love how this filter made it look almost like a cross in the sky & I think the colors in it look really neat.

Thanks for looking,
Benita

Nascar & Closet POTD

If it's a Nascar Sunday, you can bet that the race will be on at least 1 of our tvs. But today, I had it on 3.....our big screen tv downstairs (pictured here), my scraproom tv & our master bedroom tv. Why 3? I was in the process of cleaning our master bedroom closet (which I'm very proud to say that I finished!), so it was on in there while I was working. When I took a break to check my emails & the message boards, I turned it on in my scraproom. And while I was downstairs eating lunch & doing laundry, this is where I was watching it from. Now you may be asking yourself "why is there a mantle above the tv?" Easy......about a year ago, my dh & I had our fireplace removed because we never used it anyway, so we used the 'hole' in the wall to put our tv in & we also added a shelf above the tv for our TiVo & DVD player. The funny thing is.....the mantle wasn't even there when we had a fireplace.....we actually put it up after we took the fireplace out. But now we're actually thinking about putting a fireplace back in. How's that for being nuts? :)

I've already decided what driver I'm going to follow next year since Rusty is retiring.....Kasey Kahne :) I even bought a Kasey Dodge jacket already along with several polo shirts. I really think that Kasey has a great career ahead of him, as long as he can stay away from all those accidents, that is!

My next picture is of my accomplishment for the day.....cleaning out our closet. I should have taken a before picture. But then again, maybe not! I ended up filling up 3 bags to donate & 1 bag of garbage & now we can actually walk inside our closet again :)

Our closet is very small & it's one of the things I dislike the most about our home, along with our master bathroom. But at least it's clean now & I do intend on keeping it that way.

Jim's off from work tomorrow for Veteran's Day (don't ask me why they weren't off on Friday instead), so we're going to spend the day running some errands & taking a much-needed bowling lesson.

Have a wonderful night,
Benita

Chocolate POTD

Jim & I wanted to try out a new restaurant tonight called The Melting Pot. It's a fondue restaurant & since I love both cheese & chocolate, I knew I couldn't go wrong :) The cheese part was okay.....kinda had a bitter taste to it, though. Plus I guess I was hoping for more things to dip in it. All we got was some breads, apples & veggies. But the chocolate part was HEAVEN! I ordered the Cookies & Cream Marshmallow Dream & it was soooooooo good! It was a dark chocolate fondue that they added some type of liquor & marshmallows to & flambeed it adding Oreo cookie crumbs on top. To dip, we had pineapple, bananas, strawberries, pound cake, brownie pieces, some marshmallows covered in graham cracker crumbs & oreo crumbs plus some cheesecake. I had to bring home some of their fondue bars because it was so good, but sadly, they were out of the dark chocolate :(

Earlier tonight, we did some shopping & I found my newest love while we were at Target:

Cherry Cordial Creme Hershey Kisses :) Talk about yummy! Every Christmas season, I will buy a couple of boxes of chocolate covered cherries & the funny part is, I don't even like cherries. But I love the cream inside of them, so I will pick the cherry out & eat just the chocolate & the cream inside, lol. Well, now I don't have to do that anymore because I found these. Now I'm just gonna have to stock up on them before they stop making them since they're a limited edition.

I'm off to bed to dream about chocolate :)
Benita

Before & After Friday's POTD

I tried posting these pics of my room last night, but I was having some problems with Blogger, so here are my POTD for Friday......my very messy scraproom. Someone posted a poll on 2 Peas asking how clean our scrap spaces are, so that gave me the idea for today's pictures. I can't even believe that I'm showing it in this condition! But at least it shows that I've been busy actually scrapping for a change :) That's my Scrap Goods box laying on the floor, still untouched for this month. Now here's a pic of the other side of my desk area where my Scrap Rack is.....all the stuff sitting below it needs to be put in it:

Now on to the afters......I was up until 2:30 this morning cleaning up this mess & the results were definitely worth it! I still have a large pile of pictures to organize, but that's waiting for another day & time.


There you have it.....my scrap home. I'll be posting another POTD later today for today's POTD :)

Have a wonderful Saturday,
Benita

Family Night Out POTD

Jim, Cassie & I went out to our absolute favorite restaurant tonight & all of my POTD's revolve around our family night out. The first one above is of the sunset we saw coming through the window at the restaurant. I just happened to have my DRebel in the car, so I left the table to go out & get some pictures of this gorgeous sky. I just love sunsets & always try to capture them whenever possible. I was going to put my camera back in my car, but figured I might as well take it back in the restaurant with me to show Jim & Cassie the pictures. And now I'm glad I did because I ended up taking more pics inside.

A little background.....everytime we go to this restaurant, we ask for this specific waiter & will purposely sit where he's working because he's so nice & he always brings us a basket full of rolls, sometimes even before we have a chance to sit down. While we were waiting for our food to arrive, I jokingly told Jim that I should take a picture of our waiter. So what does Jim do? He calls him over to the table & tells him that I have something to ask him.....needless to say, my face turned red & I was totally embarrassed! So I asked the waiter & he said sure, but I decided not to post his picture on my blog.....not sure if he would like that or not :) So on to picture # 2. This is of Jim eating his Canadian Chicken.....one of his favorite dishes there.

Jim & Cassie both thought I was nuts for taking the next picture.....a picture of my food.....pizza! What can I say.....I just love the pizza at this restaurant & I order it every single time we go there & the same way.....light sauce & bacon. Cassie then asked me if I was going to take a picture of the rolls, too. I think she knows me too well :) But I decided not to.....didn't want the people sitting next to us to think that I have totally lost it, lol.

As we were getting ready to leave we saw Gary, the owner & I asked him if I could get his picture. He said sure & then said "let's take it together", so I handed Jim the camera & he snapped our pic. I'm not going to post that one either, though because Gary even said to me "this isn't going to end up on the internet, is it?" LOL I said "no, but it may end up in a scrapbook layout." Which it will, along with all the other pics I took tonight.

The final picture is of the restaurant's sign.....couldn't leave without getting a pic of that to scrap, now could I?

I tried taking the picture in auto mode, but it didn't turn out very good, so I switched to night mode & this is the best I could get. Probably would have turned out better if I would have had a tripod. The white sign actually has words on it, but the light overpowered them in the picture.

Ah well.....there you have it.....our family night out. Lots of fun, lots of laughs & too much food! BURP! :)

I'm off to bed....have a great night,
Benita

Wednesday POTD

I'm actually cheating a little for today's POTD because I didn't take this picture.....my sister did. This is her new puppy that she just got the other day. His name is Toby & he's 5 months old. She just had to have her other poodle Cindy put to sleep a few weeks ago because her health was really declining & she couldn't even see anymore & she literally kept walking into the walls. Cindy was almost 16 years old & she originally belonged to our Grandma & Grandpa, but when they had to go to a nursing home, Donna offered to take care of Cindy for them & she ended up getting very attached to her. She emailed me this picture today since we live 500 miles away from each other, but now I can't wait to get home & see this cutie in person! Here's another pic she sent of him looking at her through the gate & sticking his tongue out at her:

I've never seen a poodle that was both black & white before....thought that was really neat. I just know this is going to be one very spoiled dog. But I'm glad that my sister was able to bring herself to get another dog after having to put Cindy to sleep.

Tomorrow, my dh is taking a personal day at work & we're going to go do some Christmas shopping together. I will definitely be taking my camera with me & may end up having more than one POTD to share tomorrow :)

Until then, have a great night,
Benita

My Kitchen POTD

(click on picture to enlarge)

Erin over at the Pub on 2 Peas posted a question this morning about the color of our appliances & also asking us to post pictures if we could, so I thought that would give me the perfect POTD for today. I have this love/hate relationship with my kitchen. I love my granite countertops, I love the plum colored walls, I love all my grape decorations (even though I don't even eat grapes), I love the centerpiece that a dear friend made for me & I love my kitchen when it's clean....and yes, I did clean it just to take this picture ;). But I hate cooking! I admit it.....I am sooo NOT a cook! And I probably never will be. I hate it when my kitchen is dirty & it seems like my island is always cluttered.....no matter how many times I clean it off, by the end of the day, it ends up being the 'catch all' for everything from the mail, newspaper, keys, my purse & Jim's backpack that he takes to work. I keep saying that I'm not gonna let it get cluttered again, but that just never works. We've done a lot of remodeling to our kitchen since we purchased our home 5 years ago. We had the granite countertops installed 2 years ago along with a new black sink & chrome faucet, the tile floor & backsplash were just installed 2 months ago, we hung up a pot rack above the island, painted the kitchen twice & changed the border 3 times plus we purchased a new fridge & stove. Sometimes I wish we could change out the cabinets, too, but I don't see that happening now after getting the granite. Ah well.....it's my kitchen & I love/hate it :)

Here are some pics of my bottle collection that I have on the top of my cabinets. Our downstairs ceilings are 10 feet high, so I love having all this space above my cabinets to display things:



I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for all the wonderful comments on my POTD's. I really enjoy reading them!

Off to do some scrapping & more cleaning.

Have a great day,
Benita

Monday POTD

If today's POTD looks familiar, it's because it is :) This is the same tree that I took a picture of on Friday, but this morning, it looked so much more orange with the way the sun was shining on it. I was afraid that after all the wind we had yesterday that there wasn't going to be any leaves left on this tree. But when I drove by it this morning on the way to take Cassie to school, it was still just as beautiful. Here's another pic that I took this morning:

Sunrise coming through some trees (different trees than in the above picture).

I have some errands to run today, so who knows, I may end up with a few more POTD's :) This has been so much fun & very addicting! Kinda like Pringles.....you can't take just one photo of the day, lol.

Have a wonderful day,
Benita