Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I'm back!

What a bad blogger I am...it's been forever since I have posted anything! What can I say, it is extremely tiring and challenging being a new mom, but it's also super rewarding!

What?!
Yep, I've got a kid now. Actually two. Brother and sister, born 3 weeks apart. Let me tell ya, that 3 week lag time in there is tough! Ha ha.

Okay, the kids are pugs. Yes, PUGS!!!! If you have known me for longer than 5 minutes anytime in the past 8 years, you have heard about my unabashed love for wrinkly little pug-mugs, with curly tails and sheddy fawn coats. For years, ever since I fell in love with a New York puggie named Boris, I have had the Pug Lust. Bad!

Here are my little monkeys!
















First we have Miss Penelope Victoria von Pugsley, aka Penny Pugsley, the Classic Fawn Pug! She was born February 28th, and I adopted her on April 11th. She is my dream pug--albeit a very naughty one! She is full of energy and sass, and is enjoying life to the fullest! She is so much fun, there is never a dull moment when Miss Penny is on the loose! She is textbook pug, in looks, eating, and SNORTING! She is always making cute little snorty sounds and I call her Pig Girl.

As much as I adored my little Penny, I still had a hankering for a black pug. Everyone says you cannot have just one pug, and everyone is right. Well, I just happened to be reading the paper, and read about a black male puppy that was available. I thought about it, but it wasn't easy. I wanted him, but Penny and I had such a nice mother-daughter bond, I didn't know. My mom and I talked about it, and mused about what we would call him...if we got him, of course. I wanted something with a P, that was cute, and she came up with what is possibly the best, most ironic name for a pug ever: PINOCCHIO!

Well, that did it, we had to get him now! So on May 21st, we got little 8 week old Pinocchio Venicio von Pugsley. Have I ever said I have seriously weird taste in names? But I had always wanted a pug named Vinnie, so that would work as his nickname.

Now my babes are 15 weeks and 12 weeks, and I am ridiculously in love with them. Pinocchio, aka Nokey, is a sweet little doll, nothing like the wild child Penny. I actually call them Sugar and Spice.

Look at these little angels:



Can you stand the sweetness?! They like to sit on these chairs on the front porch at The Whatever Shop...this is the only place where they will sit still for a few minutes at a time! (Cookie bribes help, too.) They come to work with Grandma at The Whatever Shop every weekend. I haven't turned them loose on the shop yet--or on the public. They are still a wee bit too wild to be around all my inventory, but they will enventually be shop pugs! (Okay, Nokey would be totally fine, but that Penny is pure mischief!)
Having two puppies at once is definitely fun, but definitely tiring. If you've noticed my hours at the shop are even MORE haphazard than usual, you now know why! For a while I would get up at 4am every night to check on them, give them a potty break, and of course they needed to play and have a cookie, too. (I have learned I am a very indulgent mother.) It was wiping me out. But they have grown leaps and bounds and are not quite as needy as they were, so can wait a little longer for fun, especially Penny...she plays hard and sleeps equally hard, just like Momma!
So if you've known me longer than 5 minutes, you've heard about my pug-love. If you've known me longer than 10 minutes, you've heard about the city landfill I have in the back of Frivolities. That would be my office. For over 6 years, it has been dreadful. I tried and tried and I could not tame it. Broken stuff, inventory, papers, craft projects, half-assembled furniture, and odds and ends everywhere. I finally decided something had to be done, and I wanted to surprise my mom with it. So I worked faithfully every night--not doing displays or tinkering in the shop, but just hardcore cleaning and organizing. And I got it one, on her anniversary May 26th, which was very thrilling. Sorry, no pictures--I got it a little hairy again in that time span! Ha ha. But I will fix it all up and never let it get bad again. It's amazing the treasures I had back there.
My latest (and ongoing) project has been the transformation of The Whatever Shop, my second shop, which is morphing into an antiques-vintage-junk shop. I am having SO much fun with it! I literally cannot wait to close Frivolities at night and run over there and work on stuff. It's not your granny's antique shop, like I like to say. I will post some pictures tomorrow, I promise! It's open Thursdays-Saturdays, so I will snag some when I am over there. I love selling vintage stuff, so much history, and people have such cool uses for it. I don't really care what the pedigree of an item is, so long as it is pretty, functional, or interesting. I can't tell Sandwich glass from most Depression glass, so don't ask me! I just buy what I like! I love repurposing things.
So that's a quick recap about what I am up to, in addition to gardening in THREE locations, gadzooks. (Home, shop, my farm.) I am a tired shopgirl these days, for sure!