just because

she hasn't made a blog appearance lately, here she is. looking very angelic by our tree.
she has not been very angelic the last 2 nights whimpering and whining in her crate during the night. steve and i are exhausted (as i'm sure she is but.... she gets to nap all day. we don't) as we've been up for several hours both nights trying to figure out what's wrong with her. normally she LOVES her crate at nighttime. runs in to it at bedtime without instruction. steve took her outside 5 (yes, 5) times in the middle of the night in a torrential downpour for potty breaks the other night when her whimpering woke us up.

speaking of our tree.... here he is. yes, it's a "he" because he's 9 feet tall. i tried my best to get a good photo of the tree but it wasn't happening. mainly because there's been no natural sunlight in the house for, oh, the last 3 weeks. so you're getting the indoor shot with flash. trust me, he looks better at night with his lights on. (and thanks to my mother-in-law, there's actually some presents now under the tree since i took this photo!)
i searched high and low for wide ribbon to pull off this effect. but could not find any that i liked. i think it would be the finishing touch on our tree.

image via here

goofballs.

and some of my favorite ornaments. this one from here. i ordered some coasters from her shop and this flew along in the package. love it!
crate and barrel.
got this one at craft show. love it too.