The daylilies that I transplanted from the courtyard to beside the Azaleas have sprouted up like nothing happened to them.

Beside the front door, my skinny succulent bed is doing well.  I think I finally found the perfect thing for the planter at the front door – Rosemary.  It doesn’t seem to mind the terribly hot conditions there.

The Little Gem Magnolia tree in the front yard has done really well.  The comparison pictures are from September 2009 and from this week.

Over in the courtyard, I have been working on training the Japanese Maple tree up each year so that it gives head clearance for the pathway.  The comparison pictures are from April 2011 and this week.

Also, it is nice to see how much the Berkman’s Gold Thuja has grown.  The creeping thyme I put between the stepping stones last fall was hit or miss.  I have some clumps that look really healthy, but also some that are dried up and dead.  Hopefully it will spread quickly and root the soil to keep it from continuing to wash down our driveway every time it rains.

Initially it has shed a lot, but I love the pile and it still looks great.  I love the added color, and that our rug now goes under the front legs of both couches and the side chair.

Bradley got a new camera that is somewhere between  a point-and-shoot and a DSLR that should make taking pictures for the blog easier for me, and make keeping up with (and actually using) a camera on trips easier for both of us.

For comparison, here is how the living room looked two years ago.  Lots of changes! Pillows, tables, lamps, chair, and now the rug.

The asiatic lilies survived the move and have started coming back up.

The Scabiosas ‘Butterfly Blue’ never died back in the winter, and it looks like it will start blooming soon.

The Georgia Blue Speedwell has taken off this year.  I’ve really enjoyed watching it work its magic over the side of the retaining walls.

I am waiting to see if the Cannas and Gladioli survived the move this year.  Thankfully, the Japanese Barberry – all 8 of them – have put new leaves out after their move from the front yard to the backyard hill.

The drift roses survived their first winter and have fresh new leaves as well.  I also saw a few leaves at the bases of two of the mophead hydrangeas I transplanted in the fall, so I guess they are going to make it as well – and I hope they will be happier with a little shade from the Dogwood tree.

The garlic has gotten really tall – I counted 45 plants!  I think everyone I know is getting some garlic this year.

My newest additions to the hill in the back yard went in front of the Dogwood tree.  I purchased a few plants that were on a list of butterfly/hummingbird attractors.  In front I put Lobelia – it was labeled as a spiller.  In the middle, I put a Fox glove, then out from there I put in Columbines and Bee Balms.  They look kind of puny right now, but I tried to space them for their projected average sizes.

After signing the paperwork and paying for the little man, we had to leave him to be neutered the next day.  So far, he is a great car rider – curling up in a ball in the back seat almost immediately.  He seems to love all other dogs and people.  We have had him in training classes for the last month, and he is a quick learner with most of the commands we have worked on.  He does get distracted (puppy energy) and it is hard to get and keep his attention when he gets that way.  He has had a few accidents in the house, which is to be expected, but he has gotten very good at going outside almost immediately when we take him out.  He loves to cuddle and loves every toy we give him.  He hasn’t tried to chew on much that we don’t want him to, and is easily diverted to a toy on the occasion that it happens.  He loves playing fetch and has gotten good at bringing the ball to us and dropping it for the next round.

So far, he has not been overly concerned that there is a cat in the house.  Our cat has always stayed hidden while we are at home even when it was just us, so nothing has changed there.  When their paths have crossed, he is interested and sniffs her, but not hyper with her, and she doesn’t freak out, just tries to quickly get back to a ‘safe’ place.

Naming him proved to be extremely difficult.  I wanted his name to fit his personality, but we ended up just calling him Buddy, which is what I call all male animals by default.

We ordered a dog DNA test for him and the results came back yesterday.  He comes from a Cocker Spaniel mixed line and an American Staffordshire Terrier mixed line.  From initial inspection of the included descriptions, I think he gets his overall size, head shape, and eyes/eyebrows from the Cocker Spaniel side and his coat, tail and ears from the AmStaff Terrier side.  We think he is pretty much full grown by his guessed age: 8 months.  The last time I weighed him, he was 20 pounds.

Say hello to our new Buddy!

The food table was covered with an astroturf rug from Home Depot.  I cut the little football banner that we stretched around the table out of brown felt.  The white laces were cut using my Silhouette Cameo and glued onto the balls.  Food for the party was standard tailgating fare: sliders, sausage balls, potato bites, hot dips, veggies and fruits, hummus, cookie bars and brownies.

On the drink table, I made a penant banner out of various red and black scrapbooking paper.  I had a couple of UGA magnets that I stuck to the drink tub.  The lemonade punch recipe that I found here was pretty tasty.

In the entryway, I made a big banner out of red and black crepe paper streamers.  We hung it in a zig zag pattern to fill the two-story foyer.

The gifts table was set up in front of the fireplace, from which we hung a clothesline to show off the baby clothes that the couple received.  I found them a ‘My 1st UGA bulldogs tee’ shirt and the super cute UGA teddy bear on the mantle.

We had a table set up for guests to write notes on diapers for the parents to read as they change diapers in a couple of months.  I also made cards for guests to make predictions about the baby’s birth date, weight and length.

As guests left, I had set up a some Cracker Jack favors for them to take home.  I painted a thrifted frame red and attached chicken wire to it to hang the individual bags from, concession stand style.

I had a lot of fun helping with this shower.  We can’t wait to meet the little guy in a couple of months!

I had found a gift card on ebay for Bone’s here in Atlanta at about a 25% discount for Bradley’s gift.  So we will get to have really good steaks again soon.  I put the gift card in a Valentine’s chinese takeout box filled with Kit-kats – his favorite.  Bradley gave me a new white gold chain for the pendants he has given me over the years.  The few chains I have were all 18″ long and I really wanted one that was 20″.  This one is adjustable up to 20″ and is a nice thick wheat chain, which I have decided is my favorite – though I also liked a foxtail chain we looked at.

My dad took him to a specialist, because he is a complete softy about animals.  We learned that he was basically missing the major bones in his back legs.  The back right leg was completely turned upward, the back left leg was skinny and limp, he had crooks at the base and tip of his tail, and his left front leg was turned in above the paw.

From day one, we learned what the attitude associated with Siamese cats is all about.  He was a punk and a total diva about having things his way.  We were always accommodating - how could you not be, he was broken!  Surprisingly, he could run around the house, climb stairs, and even claw his way up onto a piece of furniture as fast as a normal cat could jump onto it.

His coloring got much darker over the first couple of years and his face shape elongated, but the crystal blue eyes remained the same.  He never seemed to even acknowledge that he had limitations.  We figured he felt that we were there just to lift him on the furniture whenever he wished.  If there was something on the floor, he would somehow find a way to lay on it, whether it be a shoe, a box, a plastic bag, or just a piece of paper.  His other quirk was something I researched and found is commonly called wool-biting and is evidently something a lot of Siamese cats do.  He would get completely caught up in suckling on a blanket, or shirt in some cases, and rocking back and forth like he was in a trance.

He stayed with my parents when I transferred to UGA my sophomore year of college as well as for the first two years of marriage while we were living in a one-bedroom apartment.  He came to live with me again in 2007 when we moved into our first house.  His punk Siamese attitude really mellowed and he became more like the loving lap cats we always had before him when I was growing up.  But there were still times that he would just give you a look that we called the ‘What the hell’ stare.

From the very beginning, we had no way of knowing how long his life expectancy was.  Cats born with his type of defects never survive because they are abandoned and die.  He had just been very lucky.  In 2010, he started having mouth pain.  I took him in every six months for another round of antibiotics and steroids.  That wasn’t a good long-term plan for a chronic problem, so when the mouth infections were cropping up within a few months of one another, we decided to have all of his teeth pulled.  It was a scary prospect, not to mention expensive, but it was the best plan for a case like his.  That happened in July 2012.  He bounced back amazingly!

Unfortunately his problems weren’t over.  In October, we noticed that the normally small pad he had built up on his twisted back leg was growing.  I took him to the vet, where the leg was drained of a very viscous liquid like joint fluid.  It never went back down completely and after another draining, it ended up rupturing on its own.  My cousin’s wife became his doctor during all of this and she put his x-rays and pictures on a consultation board and the response she received over and over was that no one could believe that he had survived, much less for 11 years and with as much mobility as he had.

He wouldn’t leave the rupture opening alone and it opened into a huge sunken sore.  That filled in with tissue and we could finally take a biopsy.  Unfortunately, it came back positive as cancer.  After consulting a specialist, we learned that it was a very localized type of cancer, so in a normal cat, the course of action would be removing the leg and doing radiation.  Losing a leg when he is already so broken seemed like it would be too much for him.  After thinking over the options and what would be best in our special case, we decided to take no further action other than making sure his last few months were as comfortable as possible.

The cancerous area continued to open sores and drain.  He was eating fine and extremely loving, but his mobility decreased and he lost weight.  Every morning I would carry him downstairs, put him on a special area I had made for him to go to the bathroom, feed him, and make him comfortable on the couch.  When I got home from work, we would go through the same bathroom/feeding routine, then at night I would carry him upstairs to sleep with us in a nest of old blankets on the bed.  He seemed content and happy up until the very end.  We decided to go ahead and put him to sleep when we could tell the tumor had started to outgrow the blood supply by the smell of the afflicted area.  We wanted to make sure he was gone before we saw signs of real pain and suffering.  Thankfully, we were able to be at home when he was put to sleep – less stress for him and for us.

I have never been a part of the decision-making and actual euthanasia of any of our childhood pets, so this was a first and has been extremely difficult to process.  I know we made the right decision and that the timing was best for him.  I think I am thankful that I knew it was coming so that I was able to prepare and spend a lot of time with him.  I won’t ever regret neglecting the dishes in the sink in order to just sit with him on the couch the last couple of months we had him.   The first couple of days without him were the hardest, because he was so integrated in my routines.  I had to cope with all the ‘firsts’ of not having him around.  As trying as he could be at times, all-in-all he was a great companion and I am so thankful that he was in my life.  He has now joined the small group of wonderful pets from the past, all buried lovingly in my parents back yard.

I am happy to say also that the succulents I put in the tiny strip of dirt by the front walkway are doing really well.  I was afraid that all the rain we’ve had this winter would rot them, but they have grown a lot and seem to be very happy.

Here is a reminder of what they looked like when I first put them in the ground back in September:

This year I decided to try my hand at making homemade vanilla extract.  I used two types of vodka: one organic and the other potato vodka (for gluten free).  I purchased the Avery labels from Amazon.

I gave this to my mom along with some homemade Lavender Gardener’s Hand Scrub and Hand Cream.  I also found a neat little potmaker for starting seed that uses newspaper.

For my best friend, in addition to some homemade vanilla, I got my mom’s help to make a scarf that was inspired by the one in this post.  I found lace curtains at Goodwill and the scarves (I made two and decided to keep the color she didn’t want) at Target.  The fabric of the scarves I chose was scrunched, so sewing the curtain lace on proved a little more difficult, but in the end they turned out super cute.  The one I gave her was a lime green, so I kept the black one.

And speaking of sewing, my mom got me this for Christmas:

I don’t know how involved I will get in sewing, but just being able to hem or mend seams and make simple things like curtain panels or pillow covers on my own will be nice.

This year, I left some of the elements from my autumn tablescape – the burlap and chocolate table runners and the birch slab – out for Christmas.  I used a pair of brass deer that I found at Goodwill and a gold mercury glass tree from Michaels in the center along with gold and silver mercury glass votive holders from Target.  The snowflake plates also came from Target and are paired with our wedding china and silver glass chargers that also came from Goodwill.  I did not attempt the ornament chandelier this year, just to keep things more simple on myself.

I bought some vintage Christmas ornaments last year.  When trying to decide how to display them, I pulled out the large lantern I got from Lowes on clearance in the fall.  The ornaments no where near fill the lantern, but it gives me space to build on my collection each year.

I also added a second mirrored tree that I found at Bealls to the powder room this year.

I did not really change anything in the foyer this year.  I love this one-piece nativity and it fits so perfectly under the large cloche.

 I decided to go back to my traditional bow topper this year.  I kept the red blanket as the tree skirt, though we have so many gifts under the tree this year that I don’t think the cat can even get under there for the time being.

Our new ornaments this year include a Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and a Biltmore ball from our anniversary trip to Asheville, NC.

(To keep my annual Christmas decorating post from becoming too long, each year I try to only post about new or changed-up items.  I keep a running page for Christmas decorating over the years at the top of the blog.)

See my Christmas Tree and special ornaments from over the years here.

See my Christmas Tablescapes from over the years here.

See my favorite tabletop decorations and nativities here.

See my UGA wreath and DIY Christmas card holder here.