Kitten Cuteness

We got our new babies this past Saturday.  They are so sweet and adorable!  Just what we needed after losing our precious Heckle a few weeks ago.  I thought I wouldn't be ready, that it would be too soon, but as soon as I saw pictures of these babies on my cousins' Facebook page, I knew I had to have one.  Then ... we decided to get 2 of them so they could be companions and playmates for one another.  We are so glad we did!  They have added so much joy to our lives already (in just 2 days).  They took to us right away, have not been scared at all, so we think it was meant to be.

This precious one is Pepper.

And this sweet baby is Bootsie.

Taking a nap together.  So sweet!

I'm just like a new mother or grandmother.  I've been snapping cute photos like crazy.  I'm going to get an album and document their growth from babies to adults.

Kittens

I never posted about this on my blog because I was so heartbroken about it, but about a month ago we lost our beloved cat, Heckle to a leukemia cancer.  He had had all of his vaccinations, so I couldn't figure out why he got it.  The vet said that it was old age mostly, that when cats reach a certain age, they start to get these kinds of things.  Heckle was 16.

Ever since he died I've been missing him something terrible.  He was such a good cat, had his own personality and was just like having another little person in the house.  He loved to be loved on and petted.  It was so tragic when he got sick and near the end he just didn't resemble himself at all.  The illness took it's toll on him.  After he died, I lit a candle one day and had a little memorial service and talked to him and it made me feel better and gave me closure.

That was a little over a month ago.  One of my cousins has a cat who had 4 kittens about 6 weeks ago.  She posted pictures of them on Facebook and they are so darned cute!  Well, my mind started churning thinking about it and I asked Eddie about adopting one of the kittens.  He said ok and then we started talking about getting 2 kittens.  Now, we are going to adopt 2 of the kittens.  We're very excited, at least I am.  I think Eddie is too, he just isn't saying much.  I think he misses Heckle too and just have that warm presence in the house.  So, on Saturday we are planning to get them.  I've posted a few pictures here that my cousin has posted on Facebook over the last few weeks.  She took these pictures with her camera phone, so they are not very clear, but I think you can get the idea of what they look like.

The ones we are planning to get are the gray and white one and the striped tabby one with white feet.  They are so cute!

Origami Bookmarks

I think I'm addicted to making these little bookmarks.  They are just so darned easy to make and take less than 2 or 3 minutes.  I've already made a bunch of these.  I'm using one right now on a book I'm reading and it's working pretty well.  It doesn't fall off the page or out of the book.  It reminds me of when I first started making origami cranes.  They turned out to be so easy and therapeutic that I guess I became addicted to making those too.  I have hundreds of them at home.  I'm probably going to be making some more origami crane mobiles to give for gifts.  Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the bookmarks I've made and the cranes.

Earlier this week I found a pretty origami crane mobile with beads that I want to try and make.  I love this mobile and I can't wait to try one.

Lots of Things

I've been working on a few things since I last posted.  I dabbled into making fabric bowls from the book, It's a Wrap by Susan Breier.  This was something I had seen at my local quilt shop and thought it was cool, but didn't think I would ever try it.  Then, one day I started thinking about it and decided to try it.  I ordered a used copy of the book from Amazon from a dealer in North Carolina.  I live in Tennessee and I thought that by ordering it from a state nearby it wouldn't take as long to get it as maybe from a state farther away.  Wrong!  They didn't even ship it until almost a week after I ordered it.  It was very frustrating since when I'm in the mood to work on a project, I work to work on it NOW.  Fortunately, there were lots of Youtube videos and online sites with tutorials and I basically learned how to do everything without the book.  This was a fun project, but the worst part of it is wrapping the fabric around the clothesline.  Also, it was a bit of a challenge to find the clothesline in my area, so I ended up using a macrame cord that I found at Hobby Lobby.  It worked fine.  So, I made a couple of bowls.  One of them is pictured here:

I think it came out pretty well, but by the time I had made the second one I was just over it.  It came out pretty well too, but I still have to put the fabric edging at the top.  By the time I finally got the book, I was just over it all totally, but I did look through it, decided that it didn't tell me any more than the online resources had.  You can basically learn this technique and not even need the book.

After that, I just got in the mood to work on crocheting granny squares.  I did some images searches in Google and saw some really pretty scarves, so I decided to make one.  I made the first one and really liked it, then I decided to make another one for my mother-in-law for Christmas.

The lighter colored one is the first one I made and the second one in the dark lavender is the one I made for my mother-in-law.  Granny squares are really fun to crochet and you don't need that many for a scarf .. about 12.  I crocheted a single crochet around the outside edge of the scarf all the way around and added some fringe.

I was on Pinterest earlier this week and I saw a really cute idea for bookmarks.  I love origami and I found this great tutorial for making them.  When you get to the blog page, just scroll down a little bit and you will find the tutorial for the origami bookmarks.  They are so easy to make and lots of fun with different colored papers.  I first tried it with some origami papers and then realized that the paper is not strong enough to stay on the corner of your book page.  So, I found some scrapbook papers that I had at home and they are the exact size (3 inch square), so I made several with them and they came out great!  I love these!  They stay on the corner of your page and you can keep them on there until you finish reading and then move them to mark your new page.  One thing I did a little differently from the tutorial was fold in the back flap also, so that when you turn your page, the bookmark will not be in the way of your reading.  Here are a few that I made:

To give you a little more detail, here are some photos to show you how I folded the back flap in so that it doesn't show on the back when you are reading the next page:

After you follow the instructions in the tutorial (the link I mentioned above), your bookmark will look like this:

To fold the back flap in, I turn the bookmark over and fold the flap toward the back to crease it,

Then I turn it back over, and fold the flap inside the bookmark, like this:

When you finish, the bookmark will look like this:

Then you can put it on your page,

and leave it there while you read, and move it to mark your place when you stop reading.

I love these little bookmarks.  They are fun to make and really cute out of the scrapbook papers.  I hope these photos make sense.  If not, let me know and I will try to take some pictures of the whole process.