A piece of my backyard for your viewing pleasure.

Now that I blog at my kitchen table instead of in my comfy living room chair (gotta keep an eye on the pup, ya know...), I am greeted each morning by this fiery display out my window. This vine has always been there, climbing all over the neighbor's fence, but this year it made its way over their fence and is climbing it's way across mine. Now - I hate my back fence and have been wanting to replace it for all the years we have lived in this house, but I'm thankful for it this year because it's the sort of fence that will support this lovely autumn frippery. When we replace it with the cedar plank fence that is in the works, I'm sure the vine will take it's garnet leaves and go elsewhere. It really is lovely, and I'm enjoying every minute of it's potent scarlett spectacle.

My brain has been working overtime lately, with all the hours it's had to be engaged when it normally would be sleeping (up in the middle of the night with the pup, of course.) I've been thinking of all the different ways to scrapbook this new addition to our family. I can't begin to tell you the opportunities I have now to shop - previously, I would walk past the pet section of any scrapbook store - now I need to add cute little dog embellishments and papers and doo-dads to my stash. I'm getting some great pictures, so the excitement is building to sit down and make some pages... I still need to decide if Gracie gets her own book or if she'll just fit into the family albums... probably both, since there is no shortage of mini-albums I've completed that are just begging to be finished off with pictures.

I've also been thinking a lot about the kitchen... it's really time for me to start packing things up in preparation for the demolition crew. We're supposed to start tearing things apart here in the next couple of weeks. I did some major cleaning before Gracie came, so it won't be as much organizing and throwing out as it will be just packing up the stuff I can live without for a couple of months. I'm sure I'll still find stuff I can get rid of - which always feels REALLY good to me.

It's time to go walk to pick up E. - my car is in the shop today, so even though the air is chilly enough that normally I would drive to get him, I'm hoofin' it. The back window in the car sounds like someone stuffed gravel down inside the mechanism that opens and closes it - never a good thing. We'll see how expensive that's going to be... hopefully the extended warranty Asia got suckered into buying will come through for us.

Cheers to everyone - have a cupahotcider on me...

Oh - and one more thing. The dog has gas. Serious gas.

Asia is lovin' having a scapegoat. He never has to accept responsibility for stinking up the house ever again...