How to outsmart a golden retriever

 Thank you -- thank you!!! 

I love all the comments you leave, and I'm so glad to hear that I am an inspiration. But here's the even better part -- YOU are an inspiration to me! The blog has allowed me to reach many people and meet new people, but that was never the intention, and I have no desire to ever monetize the blog. This is about community, this is about commitment, and it's all about fun! And we are all learning from each other!!

Thankfully blank pages don't scare me because often, that is the first thing that I have to do each morning -- deal with an empty page. But I love being committed to you (and myself) to document what goes on. 

Anyway -- thanks for being out there!

Here's a little dog humor. Of course, you know who I'm going to talk about. Yep -- that would be Murphy! While she has a large bed in the family room, I must say that Lexi often steals it, so Murphy is left to sleep in the smaller beds. Lexi won't touch these smaller beds -- not large enough for a princess!

From time to time, Murphy gets HOT and usually sleeps on the floor, but yesterday? Nope -- she just flipped the top half of her body out and onto the floor. What a silly!

Way too big for the dog bed

The broken floor vent was sitting on the kitchen table the other night, and when DH and I were having dinner, I started to fiddle with it. Here's the difference between the two of us. As he saw me fiddling, he said, "buy a new one.". And I say -- "it can be fixed." And within minutes, the darn thing was back together. I need to glue the bottom part to the top. But HEY -- what if everyone had the "buy a new one" attitude? And many people do. But I'm old school -- I like fixing things. 

Anyway -- the vent is still on the kitchen table, awaiting a glue job, and meanwhile, DH spotted a scratch in the new window sill. And now, this is what our window looks like in the living room. 

The window is barricaded

The two of them can look out the window but can't touch in prison -- "HELP - we are living in a jail!" Good grief -- they are so dramatic!

I used to place boxes or the furniture to keep someone from jumping up when she wasn't allowed. Since giving stuff away and trying to make the house look somewhat normal, I've run out of stuff to put on the chairs. I could use the cushions, but will they be enough? If the cushion lies flat, Miss Murphy has no qualms about laying on them. She is definitely NOT a princess -- she'll sleep anywhere. 

I came up with a brilliant idea the other day. Tents! Yes -- now our cushions make little tents on the chairs. And we haven't had one furniture jumping incident since!! Now, why didn't I think of that earlier? No extra stuff is required to prevent her from jumping up. And she was only jumping up at night when we were not around. Oh yes -- she's not stupid! 

Little tents on the chairs

Little tents made from cushions

All in a good day's fun at our house! And learning to outsmart these intelligent dogs!

OH -- I bet you're wondering how I knew that she sleeps on the chairs when she does it at night? Well, I'm a MOM, and I know that all Moms out there are good detectives. Sometimes, I would wake up and hear her jump off something. Just a soft jump, but a jump nonetheless. Once I even got up and came downstairs to see if a piece of furniture had been left bare. Nope -- everything was intact. I've even touched the furniture to see if a spot was warm. 

Then one morning after I heard her jump, I spotted this! 

A clue!

Hmm -- what's on that cushion? Oh, that would be a twig, and we know of only one girl that brings stitches and leaves into the house. 

BUSTED!

And that's how I found out she was sleeping on the cushions, even if they were flat on the chairs. Hence, the tents, which she hasn't figured out how to move the cushions. Or maybe she gave up? I don't think so -- I know she is studying those chairs to see what she can do to get back up. Or maybe she flattens them out and sleeps on them, then puts them back into the tent formation. No -- she's not that intelligent - not yet!

I was terrible yesterday, and instead of focusing, I took a couple of hours off. I had an errand to do. In the tidying up thing that happened at the beginning of the year, I had the head and footboard that we no longer used. 

Headboard and footboard

I still have the nightstands and the dressers, but we no longer used this part, and it's been sitting upstairs, and I wanted it out! I put it on Facebook Marketplace for cheap and suggested someone use it for the wood. Imagine my surprise when someone wanted it. They came to pick it up but couldn't fit the larger piece in their SUV. Not going there. 

So I generously offered the services of Ronda (who has a VAN) that we would drop it off and yesterday was the day. 

Imagine my surprise when we arrived to find out what she would do with it. She is shipping it to GUAYANA. Seriously??? That is heavy? Anyway -- not my issue -- it's out of my house, and that's all I care. 

But then we decided to do some geocaching. With the cold (OK -- NOT super cold like out west), but cold enough, it's best not to wait until the end of the month and then run around like crazy trying to find caches in the snow. So there we were out geocaching. Most of them were easy ones to find in parking lots. But the very first one we looked for was a mystery. We were near a pond by the side of the road in an industrial area. 

At last, Ronda, says "I think I found it." She discovered a golf ball with a stick in it, and that can't be the cache. We both tried to pull the stick out, and it wouldn't budge. So we abandoned the golf ball and went back to the car, which was close, but we still had to traipse through some brush to get there. 

She starts to log it as a Did Not Find, and then we read some of the comments and decide it was worthy of more investigation. I went back, got the golf ball, and brought it to the car. This is where you need pliers. I have pliers in my car, but she doesn't. I don't know if it was because it was warmer in the car or she used her tweezers, but she managed to pry the stick out of the golf ball, and there was the logbook -- frozen into a pulp. 

Frozen logbook inside a golf ball

AHA  -- that was a clever find, and thank goodness for Ronda's persistence, or we would not have logged this one. That's the beauty of geocaching -- you never know what you will find, but if something looks odd - then it's likely the cache. I mean -- have you ever heard of a stitch (or plastic cap) drilled into a golf ball? 

And by the time we were done, I had this many points. I need almost 7,000 this month, but I have an excellent start to that. 

My geocaching points

That was a good haul on a cold day. The sun was out, and it ended up being pretty decent with no wind. But by lunchtime, the clouds were back and a bit of a breeze. 

We ended the day at Indigo -- the last cache was in that parking lot, and we popped in to look for the Special Issue of People Magazine for Betty White. Not there, and it's not anywhere!!!

But we spotted this page-a-day calendar of Bob Ross. Who knew?? Well, I'm NOT buying any more Page-a-Day calendars. So it remained in the store!

Bob Ross Page-A-Day calendar

Shoot -- we were supposed to talk about scraps today, but I've run out of time. So tomorrow will be scrap day. And I've got some great photos to share. If you're still working on the sewing table or cutting table, be sure to forward those along. Decluttering, like life, is NOT a destination; it's a journey and should be a small part of every day. We need to be accountable for our decisions, messes we create and have fun while doing it!!

On that note, I'm out of here. I put together two presentations for classes/clubs running this morning. One of them is an early start! I can't wait to get started. A new year -- new quilts!!!

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!