Olive, my 4 legged toddler.

The culprit 

I first want to tell you 2 somethings fun...fun for me anyways:
1.The fair
So I did another show in the beginning of November. It was a two day event and I did okay. Unfortunately many of the vendors lost out due to a major increase in the entrance fee. Despite that, for a beginner, I think things went fairly well.
While I was there, i did some walking around too and left Fritz to mind the booth. There was some really fabulous stuff there, and some tacky things too. But what do you expect, I mean it is a craft fair. Last spring when I was there for the first time, I knew as soon as the customers started coming through the doors that I was among the wrong crowd. So this time around I added some kitschy pillows and they went like hot cakes. I don't even know what a hot cake is but I know they go fast.
Near the end of day two of the fair,  I was approached by another vendor who sells pottery. He told me that his friend owns a consignment shop and is looking for a pillow lady. so I got her information and now my pillows are being sold in a great little shop called Humblepie on James street here in Hamilton. It's a great little store with some really cool items. If you are in Hamilton, you should check out the shop, just click on the link and you can get location info, or if you are going to the art crawl which happens every 2nd Friday of the month (so that means December 9th) you should stop by the shop.
and 2. My birthday
 So I have had some interesting moments in the last couple of days. I celebrated my birthday on the 21st, and since I took the day off work, I decided to spend the day in the mall. I received some money for my birthday, and so I thought I would treat my self for the day. I ended up going to three different malls to find a pair of flat brown boots. I'm a big time thrift shopper so before my birthday I was already keeping my eye out for any that came into the store, but the odd time I do like to buy some brand new things. But not expensive things. So I skipped all those big brand shoe stores, even though they have beautiful footwear, I am not willing to spend that much. I know  many people don't have a problem spending $100-$150 on a nice pair of shoes or boots, but the most I ever spent was $60...and that's when I was in school and had some OSAP money. I think that my shoes average about $15.  Anyways I found a great pair of brown "leather" knee high flat boots for under $45 

The actual blog entry:
Olive, my four legged toddler.
Olive sometimes really makes my week interesting. especially the last four weeks...no, make that 2 months. I'm not entirely sure what has gotten into her. Olive was supposed to get fixed back in September, however, the surgeon was unable to come in for the day that we booked and so we rescheduled for two weeks later on October 6th. On October 5th she went into heat. Olive also has a lot of male friends, some of whom are fully intact. On Tuesdays, Olive spends the day at the in-laws, and they have a fully intact male golden retriever. So she cant go there for three weeks. I had to change my work schedule to accommodate her which wasn't too much of hassle, but if she just held off for a couple more days, we wouldn't have to deal with this fiasco. And now the surgery will likely cost more. But maybe not. lets hope for that at least.
After the whole ordeal was over we started hanging out with the neighbours dogs, Kya and Phoenix and with Kiba the golden retriever. While at their houses, Olive of course ate all food there including Milo the cat's kibbles. However, during that week and the following, Olive started puking up a storm and I would come home to the kitchen floor being covered in...well.... liquidized number 2. This happened for several days. I eventually called the vet and we fed her boiled chicken and rice for a weeks... even though you really shouldn't feed your dog grains, it was what we had to do to clean out her system. then I was at the pet store to pick up dog food, I asked about different dog brands and the girl said not to change brands because that causes diarrhea and vomiting due to their short digestive tracts...that explains why she was so sick.

Then about two weeks ago or so Olive and I went to the dog park with my my neighbour, and phoenix and Kya. Phoenix is a black lab who is one day older than Olive. He also thinks he is the same size as Olive, but is in fact at least 6 times her size. So we were all at the park when Olive decides to follow Phoenix into the long burr filled grass. Of course Phoenix who has short black hair is not really affected by the one burr attached to his side. Olive on the other hand has long curly fur. After a run through the long grass, Phoenix, the black short haired lab, makes a run for the muddy cold creek. Olive, the long/curly haired WHITE spaniel, follows him.  I had to go home with a brown, muddy, wet and soggy dog that had burrs stuck in her paws and belly and ears. I had to use almost half a bottle of doggy shampoo to tidy it all up.

This week was a whole other story. Our house is heated by a corn stove, which is amazing and amazingly cheap by the way. At night, we turn it off and the house goes down to about 13 *C at which point our baseboards kick in to make sure it doesn't dip below that. So Fritz and I were watching an episode of some show and we were enjoying some alphabet shaped pretzels. At about 10 pm our house was starting to get a bit cold so we figured we would crawl under the covers and finish the episode there.  I started to hear some funny noises coming from our living room. Fritz didn't think much of it but I was convinced that Olive was up to no good again. Sure enough as we peeked around the corner, Olive , with front paws on our coffee table,  carefully making sure not to touch the bag itself was eating our pretzels by the mouth full.!

Later that week,I bought myself a 1000 piece puzzle. It took me about one hour to get the boarder done while watching Beethoven with Olive, when I realized that Olive was chewing on two puzzle pieces!!! I managed to save one, kind of, but the other was unrecognizable, so my 1000 piece puzzle was now a 998.5 piece puzzle. At that time I was running late for an appointment so I went to the bathroom and when I came out ( which was only maybe two minutes later)  Olive had taken the entire border of the puzzle ( an hour or more of work) off the table, shook it apart and was running off to the kitchen with a chain of puzzle pieces hanging out of her mouth!!! All In could say was "Dammit Olive!" as she ran into her crate. I guess I need to start my puzzle over. Which  I did. I got all the pieces back together and some more over the next day. I would say I had about 1/3 of the puzzle done.

olive chewing my puzzle

my puzzle.

these are the seeds that I
have removed from the pods

Yesterday I decided, that since I had the afternoon off, that I would plant my tulip bulbs and clean out the front garden. (I have been harvesting my marigolds for all the seeds and I have a tonne of them so if you want to grow marigolds, you can have some of my seeds cause I have enough for an entire acre if not more)

I still have half a pail of pods
left to un-seed

it's hard to be mad

I spent maybe 30 minutes in the garden, and when I came in  I found my puzzle on the floor again in a 1000 pieces...oh wait, 998.5 pieces. But this time she chewed up some more pieces...and they were chewed to complete mush...little balls of mush cardboard! I had to throw my puzzle out :(

in the trash. There's no point now.

my tree this year

And just a while ago, right before I started writing this entry, Olive is playing with one of the Christmas balls that came from the tree! How on earth did she get that? Our tree ( a small 3ft tree) stand on top of a table/trunk thing. I looked down at my computer and then when I looked at the tree, Olive has her two front paws up on the trunk and she is reaching for another Christmas ball with her teeth! that little sneak is un-decorating my tree!