it brightened my evening considerably

last night i left work at 5 and headed to the house. i had just sat down on the couch to take a break after finishing up this week's editorial for the paper. i also spend a good part of the afternoon trying to work out a plan for the next two weeks that will cover the few days i'll be on vacation in iowa.

so there i was, eating a piece of cold pizza and looking through a new catalog when scott called and asked if i wanted to join him and trav at the beacon. i figured, why not, because i needed to head that direction to give friend jamie our garage sale stuff (community wide garage sales tomorrow in paradise valley). so i hurried over there after getting all the stuff together, and, already being tired and worn out and stressed about taking time off, was a little miffed that i didn't see his truck in the parking lot when i got there. so i went on in to find trav and ordered my drink, times two (happy hour!).

a few minutes later scott texted: 'can you come outside? i need your help with something.' being a good girlfriend, i was confused but went outside anyway. 'you really need to get all your crap out of my truck' he said. i was still very confused. then he opened the back door of his truck, and there sat the hat box pictured above.

and before i opened it i knew it was the seratelli hat in the new 'dirt' color that's been on my lust list ever since scott and i went into lou tauberts the night he bought my new palm leaf. he'd stopped by to purchase it before heading to the beacon, and there i had been upset that he was late. :-)

this hat makes three that he's given to me, actually all the hats that i have now have been gifts from scott. these photos don't do the color justice. it's a gray/brown shade.

i'm a big fan of bound edges - my other hats also have them - and scott will help me reshape it a little before i wear it, right now the brim is way too narrow, it feels like it looks pointy when i've got it on. but it's pretty classic, and now i have a light-colored felt to add to my black felt and palm leaf. :-)

more gifts

some time ago scott bought me these two prints done by a photographer his sister penny knows. i had them for a while and moved them to the new house before taking them in to hobby lobby for mattes and frames. i just picked them up last week, and i'm very pleased with the finished product.

these aren't their final hanging places in the house, i just hung them on existing nails for now, until i decide where to pair them up. i'm still in love with the yellow wall in the front room.

the top photo is of the little log church up at a place called esterbrook just east of laramie peak. it's very pretty, i went up there once on a tour for the roundup. i'm not sure where the windmill one was taken, but it appears to be the same evening.

a new house development is that i've decided not to have a renter move into the finished basement living quarters, at least for now, and i'm at least not going to force it. i'm going to turn the upstairs bedroom, which is a little small with limited clothes storage, into an office/guest room, leaving the existing twin bed there, and put the new full-size bed i'm going to get downstairs, and move my bedroom down there. i figure, i bought a house so i'd have more space, so why not spread out? then i'll make part of that living space downstairs into my project room for my sewing and fabric, and then i don't have to be in as much of a rush to get the laundry room finished and presentable.

a surprise

publisher d ordered one of these statues from drysdales a couple weeks ago, and everyone in the office agreed that we really liked it.

i thought about ordering one then, but couldn't justify the cost at that time. the one in the image here is the one i liked, called 'when beef was wild.' the cowboy has roped the calf, the mother cow's coming after both cowboy and horse, and the cowboy is holding a knife in his hand to cut the rope and let the calf go so they can all get out of there.

i wanted to give it to scott, because he and his brothers and friends are all the time talking about all the ranch and cattle wrecks they've been in over the years - although i have a feeling some of them have turned into tall tales...

so i hadn't ordered it, but since i received that check for my rental deposit, and since publisher d ordered the another one, the one i wanted, and i got to see it in person, i decided to go ahead and order it yesterday.

meanwhile, i told scott that i ordered something for him, but won't tell him what, and received incessant texts on the subject yesterday. :-) it should be here tomorrow, and i'll have him open it, and i hope he likes it as much as i do.