Solace

sol·ace/ˈsälis/Verb: Give solace to.

Noun: Comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness: "she sought solace in her religion".
 
As seems to be the case all too often here lately at High Cotton Home, things have happened in the past few weeks that have left me a bit sad, a tad reclusive, and once again seeking solace in time spent quietly at home with family. I apologize for leaving you all behind without a real explanation or anything else for weeks... Here is my resolution, to try to begin posting regularly again, whether it's something little or something long... just begin posting again. From our home to yours... thank you and here we go again... together this time!

Dog Bed, Schmaug-med...

Who needs a dog bed when you have luggage you haven't unpacked yet?  Dogs and kids, always keeping you on your toes and helping you see the world in a whole new way that you never imagined... Thank you.

Sometimes Nature is just a little too... Natural...

Wellington looking a bit nervous...

It's been a long and busy week here at High Cotton Home and I was happy to see the weekend come... but it was as busy as every other day this week! Saturday was spent helping out with a transport for English Springer Spaniel Rescue Society of two adult dogs, Wellington and Jessie, and two ADORABLE puppies! The puppies have retinal dysplasia and they will be blind by the time they are a year old so they need to hurry up and get to their new homes so they can find their way around before they loose their sight completely.

Jessie, my over-the-shoulder "backseat driver!

The two tri-colored spaniels were just so stinkin' cute that I had to take one out and cuddle with him for the last twenty miles... and then cuddle with his brother... I almost hid the little brown one in the trunk and claimed, "Second pup? What second pup? I don't know what you are talking about!!" when I got to the next stop on the transport. But I was a good kid... and didn't steal a puppy! ;P

  

Wouldn't you be tempted to steal one too?

For some reason I had a crazy case of insomnia of Saturday night so I read a book until 4am, napped a little, and then got up when it was light out and started working on homework for school this coming week. I can't believe it's the fall semester already... CRAZY! It's still so hot out and yet it's "fall!" But it is my favorite time of year, so I can't wait for the cool autumn chill to kick into high gear, even if we are in Florida! But Sunday I woke up and Cali was really feeling sick; hiding, shaking, just looking terrible. I couldn't figure out what was going on with her, but I went outside to investigate if she had eaten something she shouldn't have.

It was stormy and ominous outside so I was trying to do a little detective work, turn the compost pile and get back in the house as soon as possible. I found some mushrooms so I was certain I had solved the mystery but then I saw this hole next to the garden and I noticed a cord dangling down into the hole. Now here's where I admit that, though I documented all of this in photos, I had the camera on the wrong setting and once I figured out what was going on I was too shaken to check the photos and they were all lost. So I see this weird, banded cord hanging down and I think, "Cali... if you ate the in-ground plumbing, I may just feed you to the gators..." but I pulled on the cord and something was just not right. "Wait, a minute... this kinda looks like..." I peaked over the edge of the garden and I had been PULLING ON THE TAIL OF A DEAD SNAKE!!

I literally almost threw up (and I'm someone who likes non-venomous snakes... really... I used to take the snakes in the Biology lab home over Christmas breaks in high school) but no one else was home and I had to do it. The snake was all intertwined with bird-proof netting and I didn't want to touch him really (when I tried to pull him loose, a scale flew off and hit me in the arm and I just couldn't take it...) so I decided to cut him out, along with a nearby stake and the watermelon tendrils that were there. After I got him out, I pulled a little C.S.I. Panhandle and determined that I thought he had probably died because he was being chased by Cali, got all caught up in the netting and then as she dug and chomped on his tail (which is why it had a blunt end and looked like a cut cord), it was all over for our intrepid little garden visitor. I felt kinda bad for him, but the whole situation still made me want to vomit. Honestly, sometimes nature is just a little too... natural. 

"Guilt is absent when the act is justified.”

Scout feels the need to be in literally EVERY photo....

I have had two rescue dogs and I have raised two purebreds from puppies... the rescue dogs are infinitely easier and better dogs from the get go, hands-down. But in one aspect, my purebreds take the cake. My rescues have no conscience. None. Not even a glimmer.

Not even the least bit chagrined...

This morning I woke up looking for my flip-flops (cheap ones that my mom knits padded straps for out of organic, bamboo yarn.... HEAVENLY)... rather, looking for the one that wasn't sitting by the back door where I'd left them. And I finally found the missing mate, who ended up being on top of the dog bed, missing part of its top and bottom due to someones teeth. 

The victim...

Now, because I've never lost a shoe to a dog before (and I've had my other dogs for two and four years respectively) and since I have a new rescue in the house who likes to destroy little cloth animals, my powers of deduction tell me it was Cali. Beyond that, my two spaniels have what my best friend likes to call "An over-developed sense of guilt" which means they will confess to just about anything... both of them will confess to pooping in a hotel room when it was clearly only one dog... the pantry door fell off its hinges and both spaniels confessed even though they were both clear across the room and had nothing to do with it. I worry that I am a bad mom that comes down on them too hard, but I think that it's probably just a symptom of the breed... Springer Spaniels are worriers, through and through. Anyway, Cali gave me a blank look when I asked about the shoe as did the spaniels, so either my new rescue has no conscience as well... or I have a phantom chewer...the mystery deepens...

Pay No attention to That Dog Behind the Curtain

Always the economical home remodeler I try to do everything on a budget... and by that I mean I try to do everything I want/need to for our home while still keeping us afloat, eating food, paying bills, saving money... etc, etc. My husband and I jokingly watched "The Money Pit" when we bought this house, laughing at Tom Hank's antics and the wild adventures of his fictional home ownership.

The living room while the home belonged to the previous owner...

 a little crowded, no?

Now, two years into being home owners, we've: replaced the same ceiling twice; found out that half of our second floor was leaning on a non-load bearing wall and causing our home to slowly implode; ruptured a well pump; nearly had a jacuzzi tub fall through the ceiling from our master bath into our living room because all of the floor joists had been cut by a previous owner (why, Geoffrey? WHY!?!); walked on bare concrete and tack board for three months due to a carpet mix-up; overflowed two backed up air conditioners flooding an entire closet below (which I tried to fix with ingenuity and pots & pans but botched horribly in my husband's absence) and generally suffered a host of other home related maladies and disasters. It's not a joke people. The money pit is real.

Knocking out the archway. You can start to see where we are going with the project.

   Anyway, in the few rooms that I feel are getting close to finally being "done" after two years, my living room has been limping towards completion for about nine months now. It started out as two rooms, a formal sitting room and a family room, and we knocked a huge archway out; stenciled the walls; and put down new carpeting. The windows were a problem because, now that we had a great room, you could see from the street directly through the house especially once we had some awesome recessed lighting put up to light up the place. I had thought I would be remodeling the dining room first, but due to a massive water leak, the living room moved up the priority list.

Walls painted (soon to be stenciled) & carpet waiting to go down...

     I'd bought goldenrod curtains on clearance from JCPenney's for a shockingly good deal, but due to only having two windows in the dining room I'd only bought four panels and the new living room had three windows. Undeterred, I created one "giant window" flanked by one panel on either side for one set of windows and devoted the other two panels to the remaining window.

The curtains in between stages, after we added the extra silk at the top.

Oh, and did I mention the curtain were way too short for the living room and the curtain rod hole was much to narrow for my "$60 marked down to $9.99 plus a 20% Off coupon" wooden rods from Bed, Bath & Beyond, so I had to get Mama to add a 4-inch tube of chocolate silk to the top of each one? Yeah... miserable...

The finished product...

    Now, to the problem of sheers. I bought sheers from JCPenney; they were awful, so I returned them. I bought clearance sheers from West Elm, they ran out mid-shipment and I only received four instead of the six I needed; returned as well. And then I lusted after these sheers from West Elm for months... months... and finally last month I thought, "Every budget, and every wife, has their breaking point" so I logged on (thankfully they were running a special for $10 off each panel... it's the little things) and finally more than $200 later I am pleased. I know it's not true economy but sometimes, you can only be so thrifty and still keep your sanity.

"Ugghh... these curtains are really cramping my style..."-Atticus

   The only downside to the new curtains is that Atticus, our oldest spaniel, likes to use the front window as a vantage point to lay down and observe passersby with the sill as a chin-rest. These new curtains really put a crimp in his style and he was none too pleased.... "Can a dog catch a break around here?" he says... nope, sorry... Mama needs her sanity... and her privacy... but I still love you, Atticus. A lot.

"You're killing me, Smalls..."

Across the Plains...

I have been wanting to visit my parents for awhile now and I decided to see how hard it was to drive to their house with all three dogs to discover if it would be a doable adventure in the future for holiday trips, with our kids one day, etc.

Roadside U-pick peaches somewhere in Missouri... best peaches ever...

With a car packed to the gills, the pups and I headed north towards Canada (our destination, Grand Forks, is only 75 miles from the Canadian border!) for over 25 hours of driving... that's not 24 hours of travel. That's 25+ hours of straight foot-to-the-pedal driving. Yea, you can be impressed now. I know I am!

So sleepy, Mama... Cali napping on the drive...

I have to admit, I didn't really plan out the trip before I left, I just punched my parents address into the GPS and drove. As a result, I didn't really know what cities or places we would hit before we arrived, and each road sign held a new surprise! We crossed through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and then finally North Dakota. I swear I thought Missouri would never end... EVER... South Dakota was full of pipeline workers for the oil spill and all of the bikers heading to Sturgis which left me literally bidding for the last hotel room in town (then I had to sneak the pups in and out the backdoor of the hotel, because of course they didn't take dogs... that was an experience in and of itself!)

Gorgeous sunset on the road...

Anyway, for the next few days I will share some of my roadtrip adventures with you all so that you can appreciate all of the beauty (and boredom!) to be found traveling 1700 miles across middle America!

Grounds for Your Garden

Yes, we all know that Starbucks (like Wal-Mart) is an evil cooperate giant and we should shun them whole heartedly. But you know what? Everything in moderation of course, but when I am stranded in some airport, my flight six hours delayed, no sweater to protect me from the incessant AC chill and all of my family and friends a million miles away and completely unreachable on the phone... honestly, the only thing that can instantly calm my soul is not a glass of wine, it's a toasty grande chai with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. Oh... or that amazing caramel apple cider that they make that transports me instantly to fall in Seattle with my best friend, Rachael. So, yes, I know Starbucks is the devil. And, yes, a couple times a year I do give them my hard earned dollars to fund their cooperate empire. I am an enigma.

Anyway, one thing I do love to see when I go to Starbucks to steal free Wi-Fi or to Target (with the Starbucks conveniently located inside) is their "Grounds for Your Garden" program. According to the Starbucks website,

We introduced Grounds for Your Garden in 1995, which offers customers complimentary five-pound (2.27-kilogram) bags of used coffee grounds to enrich garden soil.

Now every time I am in Starbucks or Target, I pick up a few bags of their used grounds and throw them into my compost bin with the other "green" material and let them go. You can also add the grounds directly to the soil around nitrogen and acid loving plants. When I went to get a bag to take photos for this post, our local Starbucks only had the little bags sitting out (of course!), but I went yesterday to another store and scored 15lbs of free grounds! Whoo-hoo! The "instructions" for use can be found on the label of the Grounds for Your Garden, shown above. Happy hunting!