I had a moth in the house....and Jessie was in full destruction mode to get it.  She missed the moth, but took out one of my potted plants....I took care of the moth before she destroyed anything else...

 

And the hummers were very happy that I cleaned off their feeder for them. It was a very busy area yesterday and today, and the bird seed feeder out front is doing a good business too.

 And we got snow!  It looks like we got a good 6 inches, and still snowing!

Yesterday was not the best day ever, but in the end it worked out all right. They’ve been forecasting the storm to come in, and I saw reports of anything from rain to a foot and a half of snow so hard to judge what was really going to happen. Then at noon before it even started raining, we lost power. Turns out a big rig hit a power pole and took us out and we were out of power until 8 o’clock last night. Since the generator and the battery won’t run my HVAC system , we use the pellet stove for heat in power outages and of course, guess who forgot to get the pellets that she’s been meaning to pick up for the last six months….

I made a dash into Lowe’s to pick up pellets because Home Depot was out and Lowe’s said they had 957 bags of pellets in stock and Redding, woo hoo! But when I got to Lowe’s, they didn’t have any in stock. The lady was kind enough to make some phone calls and found out they had just been delivered so she had someone  get some special for me five bags of pellets and carried them out to my car for me!!

Then we had to figure out how to get the generator going. It’s always hard to start when it’s been sitting for a while and it turns out it was out of gas. The fuel indicator line is usually a partial color, white or red and it was all white. I couldn’t remember if that made it was full or empty. Oh by the way, white is empty….  

Alex and I managed to get everything up and running and operating like it should and life went back to normal, making it a good day after all

Spring is coming!  Our temps were in the 70's this weekend, but....this week has another winter storm coming in with rain, temps at 29 degrees at night....it may be a poor fruit year this year, since so many fruit trees are budding out right now.  This is a volunteer apple tree in the field.

 

What you don't want to see on your computer when you're shutting down the house at night:

 

And, when I did a reboot, it didn't help.  Since that is the extent of my knowledge of how to fix anything on a computer, I went out to see if my resident IT specialist had gone to be yet (not likely, I go to be a lot earlier than he does!).  Luckily when AJ did the reboot, it popped back up and finished an update, so....whew!  Dodged that bullet!

We had a flock of egrets in the field on one of our walks - the light was beautiful. I don't think I captured it enough, but it was a beautiful evening!

 

A sunset photo from one of our after-work walks....

 

Alex and I have been walking the dogs after work, and the reflection of my favorite tree in the puddles was beautiful - one day crystal clear - the next day a bit ruffled with a slight wind.

 

Sunrise the other morning!!

 

I took a quick shot of James looking cute (sitting on the table - not where she's supposed to be!!!) and sent it to AJ.  He then sent it to his friends (because James is just soooo cute - she is more his cat than mine!) and they all immediately noticed who was in the background...

 

Jessie can't do anything the easy way - this toy has a ball in a track for her to chase, and she crawled under the furniture to play with it....

 

I finished up a quilt top I had started - I love, love, love the colors!  Since this was a kit, I didn't chose the colors, and I have more confidence in someone else's choice, lol!  This went together very quickly, and already has a home picked out for it - I just need to quilt it now...."just"....sigh.  

I picked up some fairly generic fabric at Walmart this weekend to practice quilting with - their fabric is cheaper, and since it is just for practice, I didn't get anything special, just some coordinating fabric.  If they happen to turn out "okay" they can be a baby quilt or something, but if not, they can get tossed out with little regret.  Then, Alli gave me her cold, and I didn't spend much time practicing.  My concentration level is off, and even the simple things were confusing yesterday....time to take a break and NOT try to learn anything new.  If nothing else, a sneezing fit while quilting leads to some serious "non-smooth" operations!

I got my quilting frame in and put together!!  This is a stock photo of it, not mine.  I tried it out last night mixed results. (Operator error!!). It was a lot of fun to play with. When I moved the fabric to a new spot (rolling up the fabric) I forgot to move the straps holding the top down and sewed over them….over and over and over them, since I was just playing. I think it took me longer to get them out than I actually spent sewing.  I like it!!  I need to play a lot more before I put any quilt in it though, for sure.

 

I found a new cat toy at IKEA - a box with a hole in one side.  Both cats really like it, but it's hard to take a photo of Jessie in it - she and the box are the same color.  She can hide in it quite well.  James posed for her photo in it for me though.

 

I picked up a new dog bed recently - I think it got Ripley's approval.