My new office wrist rest….

She comes well accessorized…

Happy weekend everyone!

A discussion came up on Twitter a few days ago about whether it’s better to schedule blog posts in advance or post spontaneously.  I always have a idea of what I want to talk about and I’m constantly jotting things down, but I prefer the spontaneous route. Things change by the day and sometimes a great idea comes out of the blue.  This is one of those spontaneous posts.

I logged into my Twitter feed, where I receive updates from HouseBlogs.net, which gives new posts from their group of house bloggers.  This post from The Box House popped up and I had to immediately read it.  I know I’ve mentioned losing our part Maine Coon kitty Sunny here and there, like my new appreciation for the color orange, our wedding favors or how we ended up with the cat who ruined our carpets. For the most part, I’ve tried to keep this blog house related though it’s hard not to mention something that has impacted your life as much as Sunny did.

When I started this, many of my friends reminded me that this was not indeed my first foray into blogging… my cats once had a blog, macandsunny.com.  We stopped posting after Sunny died because it just didn’t feel right.  But since I know so many people enjoyed reading it and I am thankful that it is saved forever on the internet, I figured I’d share it with my new friends.  Gives you a glimpse into us crazy people a little more 🙂

So tomorrow, I will give you my newest Sunny-inspired house addition.  For now, hug your pets, make your pets hug each other and if you have some loving words for The Box House, please head on over. I’ll leave you with this picture of Sunny’s beloved brother Macky…

Yes, he is in my wood basket and no, he does not belong there. Someone is going to end up with a splinter in their you-know-what….

They grow up so fast :::sigh:::

Yesterday, Sara from House Bella posted this entry about making pom flowers. What’s a pom flower you ask?  Well I asked the same thing and luckily Sara included a picture and some links…

I watched the YouTube video and saw how easy it was to make these adorable and stylish pom flowers.  I think I am going to have to make some because…

a) my cats eat flowers

b) Mike is allergic to many flowers

c) I kill all plants/flowers

Prior to Sara’s post, my solution was to buy some fake hydrangeas.  I don’t like fake flowers, but I love hydrangeas and though we planted some, I will have to wait until the spring for them to bloom. I figured fake hydrangeas don’t look all that fake, so I’d give it a shot.  I stuck two on our mantle in vases to test them out…

That vase is the Mira vase from Crate and Barrel, which they currently only have in purple. Which means I may have to buy another one in purple…

A close up of the fake flowers.  See, they’re not so bad afterall…

Some of my failed missions in flower owning include: (pictures via iPhone)

The time I bought these flowers, which you may recognize as the blue version of the flowers I used for my sister in law’s baby shower…

Macky chewed them so they were photographed in the bathroom, where they were safe.  Until they caused Mike to have a sneezing attack so bad that we had to leave the house.  The flowers walked out with us and went into the trash.  I tried. The vase is from Ikea a few years back.

So then I got a few Ikea plants, which we had in the condo and I always called Miss Leafy.  We bought 3 when we moved here to line up on our mantle. As of 2 weeks ago, this is what was left of them…

The fake hydrangeas are my mantle substitute… for now.  I think I’m moving them… I have house A.D.H.D.

So special thanks to Sara for the suggestion and accompanying links!  Families like us need some stylish fake flowers. Especially since I once killed this Ikea cactus…

Really guys, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

No, we’re not having a baby.  We came home from dinner tonight to find this…

As if turning on the stove MULTIPLE times wasn’t enough, the kittens have now discovered the under the sink cabinet full of hazardous materials.

As I’ve mentioned and previewed in my last post, this week we are having hardwood floors installed in our upstairs hallway and master bedroom. Wait what? Don’t we have brand new carpet? Yes we do, but like many things in this house it is your run of the mill, builder grade, vacuum-leaves-marks-on-it, carpet.  And I hate it.

Our reason for going with this carpet was to save money.  It was the standard carpet, meaning we didn’t pay anything out of pocket for it.  We had the vast color options of white, pink, blue and this.  I wasn’t a fan of the gold hue, but the upgrades were pricey.  Our bedroom is so large that even just a “level 1” upgrade (read: same carpet better colors) would have cost us $1,000. And that was just for one room.  We decided to upgrade only the 2 rooms downstairs that have carpet (the family room and office) to a berber style and live with these until we could afford otherwise.  Here’s Macky modeling a close up..

The carpet actually didn’t look as gold as I thought it would, and I was thinking I could live with it a little longer than anticipated.  But then this happened…

We had this problem in our condo and knew it was only a matter of time before it happened here.  Macky is a master carpet seam finder.  And he’s also a very high maintenance, needy cat.  Think puppy with separation anxiety and that’s Macky.  So I was painting Brielle’s letters in a spare bedroom one day and he got extremely upset that he couldn’t get to me.  I ignored the crying for no more than 2 minutes when I heard a tear.  Yes he found the seam.  It was all downhill from there.

We didn’t get too upset about it, because we had spare carpeting and knew it could be repaired.  But then something else began happening.  This is a very embarrassing topic that few pet owners discuss, but I’m going to go there. Darwin started peeing on our carpet.

I know, you’d give your cat away, yell at him, spray him with a water bottle, whatever.  But you see, Darwin has a neurological disorder called cerebellar hypoplasia.  We knew this when we adopted him, and it actually was the main reason why we did adopt him.  We lost Macky’s brother, Sunny, to feline panleukopenia when he had just turned two.  When we saw that cerebellar hypoplasia could be caused by a pregnant mother surviving feline panleukopenia, we knew that Darwin was a survivor and felt immediately connected to him.  Plus he happens to be orange, just like Sunny, and the sweetest little thing you’d ever meet.

I found this video of a cat with Darwin’s disorder.  As you can see, his disability doesn’t affect him too much and isn’t very noticeable most days…

So we didn’t know at the time, but Darwin’s disorder can cause litter box issues.  He has trouble keeping his balance and sometimes misses the box. So we can no longer use litter boxes with lids and we cover the surrounding area with puppy pads, incase he misses.  But I think that sometimes he confuses cheap, fluffy carpet with a puppy pad and goes there.  It is not at all a behavioral issue with him and he honestly thinks he’s going in a litter box.  Luckily, he kept to one end of our hallway.

We cleaned it almost daily with our Bissell Spot Bot and Hoover Carpet Steamer, so we never got that “cat lady” smell in our house.  But we never, ever, eveeeer want to get to that point.  We knew it would be nearly impossible to stop him, so we made the decision to tear up the carpet in the hallway.  We feared he would then start going in our bedroom, so as a preventative measure, we also tore up the bedroom carpet since the hallway leads directly there.

And while we decided to tear things up, we figured we’d get some new baseboards to match the higher ones the builder gave us downstairs.  And while we were at that! Our bedroom is massively huge, like in a bad way.

This is the view from where our bed sits (though taken before we moved in). That little area back there is our “sitting room”, but it makes for a quite uncozy bedroom.  We have just a bed, 2 night stands and a dresser, so this is my view every morning.

We wanted to eventually add a wall here to separate the rooms.  Keyword: eventually.  Many people immediately tell us that this room would make a great nursery, though I picture it being my art studio of sorts.  Either way, it would need a door to keep out the terrorizing cats, but we wanted to keep that open feeling.

So the solution? Build a wall with double french doors.

The doors are being installed as I type.  Once it’s all done and the dust has (been) cleared, I will get some after pics up.

But the moral of the story here? Our cats are very important members of our family, so we make sure this house works for all of us.  Luckily, this time, the level of style in the house improved thanks to the cats.  We knew that carpet doesn’t really work for us, but we gave it a second shot and hoped for the best to try to save money.  Though we sacrificed our planned vacation, major office remodel, food, clothing to eventually end up with hardwoods… our floors are going to look pretty awesome and I am very excited to see the outcome!  Plus Darwin just looked at me like he was sorry, and he melted my heart.  One more time for good luck!…

Until the after, kids!