Sally: The country cat

When we lived in the illustrious "big" town of Marble Falls, Sally would occasionally bring in her latest catch to show us/play with/eat. (See post below)

Since we moved to the country, Sally has taken to finding new and different things to catch (like giant, mutant grasshoppers) and bring inside for our inspection. The goofy thing is, she brings them in, sets them down, then leaves them. She doesn't play with them, or eat them. She just drops them on the floor somewhere.

She usually lays next to her catch for a while, but after a few minutes of it laying paralyzed by fear, she'll get bored and leave it where it lays. Then Peter and I get the joy of catching it and releasing it again.

Wednesday alone she brought in 3 grasshoppers between dinner and us going to bed. Ah!!!

Yesterday morning, she trotted out her little cat door to go play. A few minutes later I see her coming in with what I think is a big frog. I yelled at her to take it back outside, but, she is a cat, and they don't follow orders very well.

She brought in the "frog" and laid it on the kitchen floor and then plopped down beside it. That's when I saw it's looooong tail. It wasn't a frog, but a LARGE lizard. Not a gecko, a big lizard that looked like it should be spiky and live on a rock in the desert.

Of course, after a few minutes she got bored and started to walk away and when she moved, it freaked out and starting running all around the kitchen. I finally dropped the mop bucket over it to keep it in one place.

After searching for some stiff cardboard, I finally slid it under the bucket and got it outside. Once I put it outside it sat in the same spot for an hour (no wonder Sally caught it, dumb lizard). So, I was able to take this picture for comparison.

Sally and her lizard (bad cell phone picture)

The lizard and Peter's shoe

Amber and Josh are married!!!

This weekend Peter, me and my BFF Lauren ventured to Vegas (baby!) for our friends Amber and Josh's wedding. We had a great time at the bachelor/bachelorette parties and the wedding was beautiful!

All of the girls got ready together in Amber and Josh's suite before the wedding which was a lot of fun. (I think we gave our hairdressers a good taste of Texas women).

Congratulations Amber and Josh!!!!

The bridesmaids toast Amber and Josh's future

Me, Amber and Lauren (roomies!) before the ceremony

The guys waiting for the girls to arrive (the only picture Lauren could take before the celebrant nixed the picture-taking).

Peter, Josh, Amber and me
(Peter keeping it classy, as always)

The beautiful bride and handsome groom!

Sally has an ouchie :-(

We're finally moved out to the new house and Peter got Sally's door installed. Yea! (No more getting up at 6am on a Saturday to let her out!)

She was having a grand ole' time going in and out until she lost her collar and fancy magnet that lets her (and only her) go in and out the door. Luckily, the door came with 2 magnets. So, we put the other one on and off she went. The next day she lost ANOTHER collar and her other magnet.

We ordered more magnets and went to the store and bought her a different kind of collar, which she managed NOT to lose.

Until Sunday morning....she ran in and out to her heart's content until she finally ran in for the last time at 9:45. Peter sat up and said, "Is it my imagination, or is she limping?"

Poor Sally had cut her leg open and it was bleeding badly. Later the vet would tell us it looks like the kind of injuries that horses get when they get stuck in barbed wire. She had to get four stitches and has to wear an e-collar (cone) for 2 weeks.

And the worst part is, she can't go outside until she gets her stitches out. Sally is an outside ADDICT and she is totally miserable (see the pictures below).

Sally in her collar (she is not happy).

Staring longingly at her new pet door that she isn't allowed to use for 2 weeks.


Her new favorite past time (all she can do without running into things).

More house pics!

Last week we had a frenzied "almost buy" on a different house in Burnet. The price was low and the house was in decent shape. We got excited to live so close to work and to have internet access (which we're thinking is going to be spotty at best at the lake). We made an offer, and unfortunately were turned down. But, we're OK with it. Now back to the original plan!

We got to work today painting the living room at the lake house. It was a pretty, light blue, but so was the dining area, kitchen and now the bedroom (read below) . We wanted to break up the color a little bit. We found a really pretty red at Lowe's (Oops! paints, only $5 a gallon!). We love the way it looks!

The finished living room!

A view of the new color and the old color. We're still trying to decide if we want to paint this wall that leads to the kitchen.

We've also painted our bedroom. It was a dark, sandy color, which wasn't bad, but definitely didn't brighten the place up any. So, we used another thing of Oops paint that Peter has been saving for a few years. We thought it was lavender, but it ended up being light blue (see why we wanted to paint the living room?) It turned out really nice and I think will be a lovely room to wake up to.

The bedroom after being painted. The walls were the color of the door. Yick!

Our biggest challenge (read: P.I.T.A.) was painting the bathroom. It was the same tan color as the bedroom, and it's so small that the color didn't do it any favors. So, we painted it a light, sunny yellow.


These aren't the greatest pictures. It's hard to take a picture in the bathroom. We're getting a new vanity to replace this tiny one and we're bringing a cabinet we already have. It'll be tight storage, but we'll make it work.

This is our tiny shower. Notice how low the showerhead is. We're not the tallest of folks, but even for us that's pretty low.

It was a pain to get around all the nooks and crannies, and we'll probably have to go over it a bit more with touchups, but it's pretty much done. And it definitely brightened up a lot!

We're hoping to move out there in mid to late May. We've been packing since last weekend. Our house is a wreck!

It'll be interesting to see how Sally adjusts to her new house. I hope she likes it! There are lots of other kitties in the neighborhood, and she likes to be social. I guess we'll see!

Sally's first catch

Most of my friends that blog are posting things about their babies "firsts." First step, first world, first solid food, etc.

So, I'm going to tell you about one of Sally's firsts....

This past weekend was the annual Burnet Bluebonnet Festival which is the biggest thing since Kool-Aid if you live in the Highland Lakes area. It's like homecoming in other towns. People come from miles around for the foot-long corn dogs, funnel cake and tater twisters.

Nelly was one of the pilgrims who journeyed to Burnet County in search of some food for the soul (and to hang out with the fam).

On Sunday, when we had our fill of all the fried goodness the festival had to offer, we decided to journey out for a "fresh" breakfast. As we were getting ready to leave, Nelly made it downstairs first and let out a scream.

"Oh my god! Come look at this! Ewwwww!"

We ran downstairs to find Sally, who had brought us a little treat. If you can't tell, yep, it's a bird. Ick! (Doesn't she look evil here?)

She was so proud of herself!

Sadly, her aunt Nelly picked the bird up and threw it out (after informing Sally's mom that birds carry many diseases). Thanks Aunt Nelly!

Though it was a gross discovery, we were pretty proud. She's been trying to catch a bird since we first starting letting her go outside. Her collar is so loud that she's not exactly stealth and she's still learning how to pounce and catch her "prey" on the first try.

The move is on!

So, we made our big decision. We're heading out to the lake sometime in the next month or so. We'll be about 15 miles out of town, and about 30 miles from where we're living now. It'll be a jaunt to go to the store or to a restaurant (but maybe that'll discourage us from shopping/eating when we should be hanging at home).

Here are some pics of the house(s). I meant to take pictures while we were at the house working today, but I forgot my camera. These are pictures from the realtor's website.

Our new home

Our kitchen, we may be getting new cabinets soon. (We'll see).

The view from the living room into the dining area

Our property. Our house is on the right, garage in the middle, guest house on the left.

We did some painting today. We thought we thought we were painting our new bedroom lavender, but, it's more like light blue. So, now almost everything inside our house is blue. It's pretty, but not what we were aiming for.

I'll try to post pics of the inside next time we go out there.

To Lake House or not to Lake House...that is the question.

Peter owns a lake house (actually, there are 2 little houses on the property) outside of Burnet. They have been sitting vacant for about a year now, with nary a buyer in sight. Now that we both work in Burnet, we've been looking for a house to buy.

We haven't found a house we're madly in love with. And there really isn't anything within our price range (which is pretty low as it is).

So, we're considering moving out to one of the lake houses. Here are some pros and cons:

Pros
1. Free rent! (Well, sorta). We've been paying the mortgage on these houses AND rent. So, we'd be saving a lot of money per month. Which leads to:

2. Saving money for a down payment! We'll have a nice down payment in a year if we did move out there.

3. Sprucing up the lake house! While we're there we plan on doing some fixing up of the house which will make it more livable and hopefully help it's resale value.

4. A cat door for Sally! Our kitty loves to play outside, but she has to wait until we get home in the afternoon to be able to do it. We live in a rent house now, so we can't exactly cut holes in the doors. If we lived in a house that we own, we could do that!


Cons
1. We're nervous for Sally. This area is a lot more "wild" and I'm worried that she'd get into something or that some big animal would come get her. Though, most of the animals in the area are cows and deer. I don't think they like to eat kitties.

2. The drive is dangerous. The road between the lake house and Burnet is very twisty and turny with no shoulders, and there are a LOT of deer out there. So driving at night can be hazardous.

3. The houses are little bitty. There are 2 houses on the property, and according to their real estate listing they're 1600 square feet, together. So, seperately, they're probably about 900 and 700 square feet. Right now our duplex is about 1200, so that would take some getting used to.

4. The cost of "amenities." The cost for having internet and TV is a lot more than we're paying now. It's hard to get those things when you're 12 miles outside the city limits.

Well, it's neck-and-neck with the pros and cons. I don't think any of the cons are undoable for the amount of time we plan to spend out there. And I dont' think any of them outweight what we'll save for a downpayment (except for Sally. But, hopefully she'll get used to her surroundings).

The idea is looking better and better, but there are still things to think about.