A Couple of My Favorite Things

My new favorite thing is to sit in the living room with the fireplace turned on!  I never knew how much I would love having a gas fireplace.  When I thought of fireplaces before, I thought of my mom getting up every morning to light a fire in the basement to heat the house in the winter, and the carbon monoxide alarm going off constantly.  Either we don't have a problem with this at our house, or the batteries are dead in our monoxide alarms.  Flipping a switch for an instant fire is probably the greatest thing ever, and now that I'm spoiled with fireplaces, I don't think I could ever live without one.  That is unless we move to Florida! 

Tosca is in agreement, but then anything involving sitting and warmth is her cup of tea!  It is getting colder here, so this is the first time we've really been able to enjoy the upstairs fireplace.  This time last year we had no floors and were in firm denial about the length of time our project was going to take.  

This is going to sound silly I'm sure, but another one of my favorite things is picking out the weekly table decorations.  I enjoy picking out a table runner or cloth and finding an object in my home that would make a good centerpiece.  I'm sure by the end of my life I will have amassed enough table runners to have a different one every week all year with no repeats (hint hint relatives who don't know what to buy for me at gift giving occasions!).  I am very enthralled with my new Pottery Barn table runner, and I think my Grandma's cracker dish goes well with it. This has actually been the table decorations for a couple weeks now, but both items are new acquisitions and I'm not through enjoying them yet!  Next week I'll have to get out the obligatory Christmas decor, but for now I think these colors are "Fallish" enough. 

I FINALLY finished these paintings for our bedroom.  I have had these half done for months now, and I spent many hours finishing them up.  These are the largest paintings I've ever attempted and I had no idea how time consuming they would be!  I don't pretend that they are anything but amateur, but I'm pleased with how they turned out.  I had fun making them, and we needed something in this big empty space anyway! 

Making No Bones About It!

These are probably the last pictures I can scrape into a blog posting from our summer vacation. 

On our drive back home, we stopped at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman Montana.  They have a world famous collection of dinosaur fossils!

This is the world's largest Tyrannosaurus rex skull!  I never would have survived in prehistoric times, taking pictures all nonchalantly.  

 

Jason probably wouldn't survive either.  He is always complaining about his family's stubby fingers, and they are obviously no match! 

 

They also have the world's most complete Triceratops growth series.  I was honestly more impressed by this. They had a huge room devoted to the triceratops, and those things are big!  I think they really should get more star power than some of the other dinosaurs.  Whose favorite dinosaur is ever the triceratops?  I'm switching.  Sorry, brontosaurus! 

I thought this one was downright beautiful!  

This one lived to be very old because all his spikey things are worn down.  There is also probably the world's smallest triceratops there in the foreground.  Impressive! 

They also had captive researchers that you could watch.  Jason didn't want me to take this picture because he thought the flash would be distracting, but I took it anyway and they didn't react.  They're probably used to this paparazzi filled rock star lifestyle.

Don't Feed the Wildlife (unless a fat lady already is)

Our summer trip pictures have offered quite a lot of blog posting material, and today's post is no different.  While RVing with Jon and Roberta, we happened to camp next to a middle aged lady and her mentally disabled adult son.  One evening while we were dining on some wonderful macaroni and cheese (with pine nuts!), the son came over and pounded on our door.  He wanted us to come out and see the deer in our camp!  

This lady was feeding the deer an entire loaf of white bread.  When I came out with my camera, the lady said "your friends are going to wonder who that fat chick in your pictures is!"  So true!  I never got her name, but she is forever immortalized in my blog.  It's like being famous! 

Here I am, smug as can be because I get to stand so close to a deer.  This picture is funny because it looks like the deer is nibbling my boob but in reality it is just scarfing the terrible white bread. 

I know this is bad because it is horrible for the deer in several ways, but I figured that lady was going to continue feeding the deer the entire loaf of white bread, whether I participated or not.  I definitely would not feed wildlife of my own volition unless it was a bag of feed that you purchase for $10 from a state park employee.  These poor deer were already doomed to a stomach ache.  But her velvety lips tickled my fingers, and look how cute she is!

 Jason and I got to scratch her fuzzy head and she totally didn't care as long as the other hand had disgusting white bread in it!