Owls and Pussycats

new totes for fall 2012

some sketches for new items

owl & sukicat :)

some sweet press from the new modern cat magazine

It's Raining Cuteness

With such a rainy Spring this year, I was determined to find Whitney some cute but affordable rain gear...

and I think I found it.

She already had the hat, a gift from one of her Aunties. And after scouring the web for a raincoat, I found this steal of a deal. The shipping was more than the coat, which almost stopped me from getting it. But I decided it was too cute and cheap to pass up.

We picked up the rain boots from Zellers, which not only coordinate perfectly with Whitney's new coat but were under $10. Sweet!



We've been taking advantage of the warmer weather and our backyard almost on a daily basis, even letting the kitties experience the outside. But we'll most likely keep them inside, at least Dex, who managed to get out of his harness on more than one occasion, until or unless we set up a cat run for them.

Our yard and garden needs some major work and Matt and I have a lot of learning to do in that area. Although I'm not a very outdoorsy person, I have to admit it's so nice to have a backyard that we can go into anytime.

And it's especially great for Whitney.

Meow Are You?

I've been busy!

After rearranging my home office last week, business picked up a bit. I am by no means a feng shui expert, but I have an interest in it and try to rearrange things in our house by following certain guidelines. Whether or not that had anything to do with the sudden surge of business, I don't know. But the work was much needed, as we've had a string of unexpected bills to deal with the past month (or two). Funnily, I even inspired Matt to rethink his desk arrangement at home and his office, as well as those of some of his coworkers.

I will get around to showing you more of my new setup soon (along with other parts of our house), but here's a peek of one part of my office that stayed generally the same.

And a pic of my new business cards/hang tags including the other side of it.

Before things got busy, I reworked one of my old greeting card designs by eliminating the phrase on the front and adding a message inside (first photo above). It's now available in my shop.

The image ties in with Spring but it's also the purrfect anytime card for a cat lover.

Other cards and things will be listed in the shop soon. The rest of this weekend will be mainly devoted to spending time with my sister who's in town for a conference.
Her wedding is only a few months away and she also is eager to get in some Auntie time with Whitney.

Happy weekend to you!

Packing and More Packing...

Almost all the shop orders have been packaged and mailed out.


Now to tackle packing for our move!
Matt has done most of it so far.

Hopefully the kitties will love their new digs. This will be the third move for Dex and the sixth for Suki!

I would gladly trade places with Dex right now. But there will be time to sleep after the move...

I hope.

Yes, Please & Thank You!

Yesterday I had a STELLAR day on etsy, thanks to getting this on the front page and some really great customers. It was my best in a long while and yes, please, I'll have some more. Thank you :)

I love this site that I somehow happened upon last week, via twitter I think. A great way to keep up with your etsy stats and it's an attractive and well-designed site too.

Anyways, just wanted to briefly toot my own horn...


After all, it's the small things and moments in life that keep me happy.

Be back in a few days with this month's giveaway.

It's a...

?? MYSTERY ??

still

--- what we're having.

We went for the latest ultrasound yesterday, where the sex of our baby could have been determined. But the technician said at the beginning that she wouldn't be allowed to tell me if it was a boy or girl. That's the doctor's responsibility. So Matt and I are trying to be patient with it... My next doctor's appointment isn't until September 9th, but I can call my doctor and get the news in a week. I will probably call him before the end of this week though :)

We will be happy either way, but we both have a feeling it's a girl. And of course the most important thing is that he/she is healthy. And from the ultrasound, baby seemed to be doing well. He/she is growing bigger everyday (along with my belly) with a good heartbeat, so we're pleased.

I also found out what caused my erroneous blood test results last month... someone messed up and entered the wrong estimated due date, which totally affected my numbers. And luckily someone noticed the error. It was good to get to the bottom of things, considering all the stress it put us through.

Okay, these are a little late, but I have a hard time taking decent photos of myself. At least ones that I feel okay sharing with others.

before

after

My haircut couldn't have been timed better though. The past week has been so hot and humid, I'm glad I don't have hair flowing down my back right now. Plus I was badly in need of a cut, I had so many split ends. Although I'm not a Katie Holmes fan at all, I do like her hair right now. And I thought a short bob would be more manageable as I transition into motherhood. That's what the cut was based on, but of course it never looks exactly like the photo you bring in, at least for me.


I also went on a little shopping spree last week, spending some birthday money from my sister. I had planned on getting stuff for my home office from Ikea (of course) but ended up buying some much needed maternity clothes instead.

I adore this tunic from Suzy Shier that I think will serve me well into the Fall/Winter season over a pair of leggings.


New sandals were on my list of things to get too but I didn't see any that I liked at the Mall, so I decided to save that purchase for another day. Go figure that as I was walking to meet Matt after work for one of his coworker's going away party, my one sandal decides to come apart. I still had several blocks to go so prayed that there was shoe store around. Luckily there was one just down the street and I limped my way over, then rather hastily bought a pair of sneakers AND a pricey pair of sandals.



Love the red sneakers despite the one giving my right heel a beating on the walk home, but I will be returning the sandals as I don't really like the way they fit my feet.


I'll round out this post with a photo of some less recent purchases: these sweet miniature renditions of Suki and Dex in paperclay by one talented artist and devoted animal lover/activist. They have the purrfect place on my desk atop this darling miniature chair that I found at Value Village many months ago and share it with two ceramic lucky kitties from my mom.

And new things are coming to the shop soon. Really! Ciao for now.

The August Giveaway & A Superbad Cat

(Click on image for a closer view)

I've been superbad at blogging lately, but honestly haven't felt inspired to write much lately. It's time for the August giveaway though, so a post is due!

This month's giveaway features some great summery items...

The prizes: include two tank tops, one each of pirate kitty and clever kitty (pick from S-L); a clever kitty glass tile pendant necklace and three moustache kitty buttons in new eye-catching colours. Total value = $67 US

To enter: All you have to do is leave a comment telling me what your favourite movie has been so far this summer - could be one that you saw in a theatre, on dvd or on tv, old or new.

As usual, any purchases made in my shop from now until the 31st will also get your name entered in the draw.

For bonus entries: Become a follower of my blog (follow button to the left) and/or on twitter and come back here to let me know that you did so.

**********

Since I did not hear back from the original winner of last month's giveaway, Matt redrew a name last night. This time Ashley was the lucky kitty! So I will be in touch with her shortly and hopefully get those goodies mailed out to her early next week. If worse comes to worse and I don't hear back, I will simply add last month's prize to this month's. How's that for a prize?!

**********

In kitty news, I was not a pleased kitty mom the other night, after discovering a chunk of fur missing out of Suki's neck scruff. The cats were alone in the house for about 7 hours - not long at all - but ample time for Dex to get restless and decide to use Suki as his plaything. Of course, I don't know for sure that he was the cause of her little wound, but that's my first guess, since I found a few tufts of fur scattered on the floor downstairs. Plus Suki has never hurt herself on anything else in our place before (knock on wood!).

My little sweetpea, I'm sure she curses me for the day I brought Dex home. He is actually really good-natured 99% of the time and I don't think he ever means to harm Suki. And after their last vet visit, we found out he's not even that much heavier than her anymore (9.5 pounds vs. about 8 pounds), but still, that little bit of size difference plus the fact that he's younger and male gives him the advantage when he decides to wrestle with Suki. The way she's yowled before, I know she doesn't enjoy "playtime".

Anyways, I'll be back in a few days with photos of some recent purchases, my new do and hopefully the results of my next ultrasound!

Happy Weekend!

Recapping the Past Few Weeks

It's been a little while since I've taken or posted any photos of our kitties. Leave it to my mom to be the snap-happy photographer while she was here a few weeks ago.

Here, she caught Dex in the midst of his bag antics. He adores cloth bags and will literally jump in one if you hold it open for him. Then he'll proceed to attack it. We discovered this one day after coming back from the grocery store. He now has his own bag(s) since they quickly became fur-lined.

Suki is a little more serene and ladylike when it comes to bags. Here she is on the same bag.

And some more photos from my mom's visit:

outside of our loft building

the view from our rooftop

Mother's Day cake

on a walk

Matt says I look like a love-spy (whatever that is) in my heart-shaped glasses and trench coat. I'm loving my new trench, that's for sure, which my mom treated me to when she was here. It was such a steal from Jacob, reduced by more than 50%.

This past week, we also had a sort of surprise visit from my dad, who had some research he was doing in Ontario. Unfortunately I didn't take any decent photos since he was only here overnight and we were all a bit exhausted from work.

But here's a photo that my dad took of his research:

I have no idea what that is or what it does, but luckily my dad does. He is a professor of Chemical Engineering, and from time to time also does consulting for different companies, which brought him to Lakefield (about a two hour drive from Toronto) this week. We enjoyed a yummy dinner in Chinatown and even scored a free parking pass from a kind man who happened to be leaving when we arrived at the parking lot. He said someone else had given it to him, so he was just passing it on. Reminded me of that movie Pay it Forward.

The rest of the week kind of flew by without me getting much done. I made a new screen and have printed some shirts which still need to be photographed... the screen itself was kind of a nightmare but I like the new design and hope it's a hit.

I'll leave you with some lovely treasuries that I was made aware of recently. Thank you to the sweet folks who took the time to curate them and also for including my goodies. And thanks to everyone for your kind words about my new stationery set.

Happy Earth Day!

Our taxes are done and if I did them correctly, we'll both be getting nice little refunds back. Mine will go towards paying for our new bedding, which we're loving... and so is Suki. And Matt's will go towards his new bike that he bought on the weekend.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Furry Friday!

I'm heading out for the rest of the afternoon, but wanted to wish you all a Happy Furry Friday and Weekend! The week flew by and there's more I'd like to share, but it'll have to wait until the weekend. I managed to snap this photo of Suki this morning and captured a little video of Dex. Enjoy!

Recent Purchases & Things That I'm Loving

I am loving these:


and these:
which I got from this lovely shop.

And I'm loving this:



and this:




I know, I know.
I'm such a bad kitty mom, putting things on my kitties when they obviously don't appreciate it. But this is just payback for all those times that I've been woken up in the middle of the night or way too early in the morning by Dex meowing his head off, which then gets Suki rattled and they proceed to chase each other up and down the stairs...

You see? It's payback :)

Plus, I just thought they would look so much cuter modeled on the cats!

They are really for me, of course. I spoil the cats enough as it is, so from time to time I'll treat myself.

image from modern cat

And speaking of spoiling the cats, a recent customer mentioned this awesome site through which she found me. I'm flattered to be linked to such a great site devoted to "cat owners with a modern style."

Check out this image from a former blog post:


Now Matt is wanting to build something like that for the cats in our place. I told him, maybe we should think about treating ourselves to some new furniture/decorating before we go splurging on the cats.

I wasn't kidding when I said in one of my previous posts that I've been obsessed with decorating ideas lately. While Matt has been devoting much of his spare time this past week to building a new camera rig, I've been brainstorming on how to make the most of our living space.



So I was thrilled to come across this book at a new bookstore in our hood yesterday. Lots of gorgeous photos to give me ideas of how to decorate and reconfigure our loft space. Open concept living can be tough when you have (a lot of) stuff that starts to

s p r e a d

all

over

the place!

Must be Spring fever. That, and I tend to like to rearrange furniture every 3-6 months or so. I always have.

I'll be back in a few days with photos of my work space and more.