Friday Mishmash

First, thank you to everyone who entered my latest giveaway - it was really great to see so many readers, new and old, come out of the woodwork to comment!  To those of you who are just starting out with your weight-loss journey, welcome!  Best of luck to you, and I hope to hear about your successes soon!  And now, the winner of Foods That Harm, Foods That Heal is:

Coopsmom!

Congratulations!  Please send me an email (40somethingsjourney@gmail.com) with your mailing info so I can give it to my contact.  If I don't hear from you within a week, I'll have to choose another winner.   

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With all the hats I've been knitting, I needed a way to block them (FYI, blocking is a process where you soak your knitted piece in special soapy water, then you squeeze out the water and stretch it out to dry - it opens the stitching as well as gives you a chance to shape your garment).  After asking around, the general consensus was to use a Styrofoam mannequin wig head, so I ordered one and, of course, had to introduce Paco to it:

Who dis person?

I was surprised he didn't bark at it, but knowing my dog, he'll decide six months from now that the head is not to be trusted and go insane, so I'm storing it in a bin when I don't need to use it.

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Several of you have mentioned in the comments that our house looks so cleanly decorated.  Yes, we have gone fairly simple and minimal with the amount of stuff on display, but that has evolved over the years.  In our first apartment, we covered almost every inch of wall space with our treasures.  I scanned some old pictures to show you just how far we've come:

Living room walls, plus you can see the kitchen dining area wall covered in pictures in the lower left shot.  Pretty much you name it, we had it - and we showed it off!

Tiny kitchen, but we managed to find wall space above the window and put up a shelf to display our bottles.  And yes, this was me in 1984 - big glasses, shag haircut and all.

Even the bedroom was loaded with stuff!  I still have the dresser on the left in our bedroom to this day; the dresser with all the drawers was mine from childhood and is in the garage now, holding Jeff's tools.

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Henry is a drooler when he's happy, and it can get pretty disgusting - but the other night he managed to double drool which was quite the feat.  Blogland, I present to you, Vampire Henry:

Sometimes, you gotta laugh.  And then wipe off the drool.

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Another 5K fun run is on tap for tomorrow - this one will help raise money to build chicken coops for an orphanage in the Ukraine.  Have a great weekend!