Rescue remedies

Time is running out. I threw down the gauntlet for this year-long house fix-up last September, and already it’s nearly May. The kiddos and I will take off for a month in the summer, so that leaves about 11 weeks to finish. I’m starting to panic, reaching for the Bach’s Rescue Remedy a little too [...]

I child-proofed my house but they still get in

The Mutt is ours! All week we’ve been wondering whether somebody would come forward to claim him. I rather reluctantly filed reports with Animal Control and the Humane Society. My heart lifted when I heard he didn’t match any of their descriptions, because after five days, those grateful eyes and that wagging tail, I don’t [...]

Dog days

Home is a four-letter word and so is love and so is mutt. I fell in love yesterday, with a mangy mutt who’d strayed far from home and ended up in our street. It was a Sliding Doors moment. If I’d have kept driving, our family would still be four, plus two cats. We wouldn’t have [...]

Gargoyles in the desert

So the Friday night party came and went, with no fixing up of the living room fireplace (no surprises there), but also no visitors running screaming from the house, hands flung up in horror at our unfinished projects. Thank goodness it’s nice enough weather to be out on the patio till midnight, thus enabling us to ignore [...]

Now do you see what I’m talking about?

Thought I’d better share the famous fireplace with you. This is a ‘before before’ pic as since then I’ve ripped out the shelves at the side, and painted the middle wall above the fireplace so that it’s the same colour as the rest of that wall. That sooty red brick though – fetching or what? [...]