Pardon My French

I saw this while walking around our neighborhood today. Live your life to the fullest and try not to die with feelings of regret.

Today is Phil Hornshaw’s 28th Birthday.

We celebrated with friends earlier this week by heading out to El Coyote for margaritas, tacos, burritos and all edible things Mexican.

I have a bit of an ongoing tradition–I’m incapable of keeping Phil’s surprises a secret. I get too excited and spill the beans. Because Phil enjoys video games and solving puzzles, I created a treasure hunt just for him.

How it worked: I handed him a puzzle that when solved would lead him to the next hiding place. Each time he found a clue, he also found a tiny present and a letter.

At the end of the treasure hunt, he had to create a word from the anagram of letters that he found. The letters spelled out his big birthday surprise: a framed print of Ripley from the Alien movies.

Happy Birthday, Boo Boo! I love you!

It’s been a week since all 80 of our holiday cards have been send out. Because none have bounced back my way, I can only assume that they’ve all been received.

We can’t possibly send a card to every person we know and we’re exchanging gifts with even fewer people. I’m going ahead then now and posting our holiday greeting on my blog for the world to see. Happy Holidays to all!

It’s not the most flattering photo of me, but because everyone else in the photo seems to be cooperating at the moment, I didn’t want to hold everything up on account of my vanity.

As much as I love sending out a Christmas card, I truly love sending and receiving greetings and letters all year-round. Some may call it a lost art or an archaic practice, but I find it to be beautiful. It’s so much more meaningful and memorable than an email or a Facebook message. When you take the time to write a handwritten message and then pay for it to come through the mail, I just think that it sends a bolder message.

I’ve always loved sending letters, even as a child. I remember being 8 years old and staying up late to write letters to my pen pals from my bed. (Yeah, I had pen pals.) I would doodle in the margins and use up as many of the lines on the papers that I could. When I was finished, I was careful to make sure that I addressed the envelopes properly and in my very best handwriting.

I’m sure Phil is annoyed that I spend our hard earned money on pretty little cards, wax sealer’s and stamps. I just think it’s so neat to have the tools that make sending and receiving mail so magical. And when it has my name on it, it makes it that much cooler.

I recently bought a really beautiful return address stamp from PaperSource, the stationary company where my good friend Maria works. (This is the same company where I ordered our holiday cards the last two years.) She actually designed the template for the card design we ended up using this year!

Last year’s greeting

The self-inking stamp has our initials on it and an ampersand–just so we’re really driving home the fact that we’re high class people (WINNNK)–our wedding date and a very beautiful floral frame.

My favorite part: The stamp comes in a large plastic mechanism, which makes an echoey “BA-BOOM” sound when I press it to paper. I get such a gratifying feeling from that.

I can’t explain why, but this very simple stamp makes me feel happy and sophisticated. And, yes, I am aware of how silly this sounds.

This is what our stamp looks like!

Our brand new Xander sticker completes our car window family!

I ordered these stickers for our car last summer and immediately tacked them on upon their arrival. I’ve gotten some guff and giggles from people for having these little guys plastered to our car, but they make me smile.

Because he’s a big nerd, I put Phil in a little “Game of Thrones” outfit complete with cape. My sticker happens to depict me with decent hair (which never happens in real life) and a large bust, which is how it goes in real life.

Kiwi’s a big kitty with a bow and Xander’s the little guy with the scruffy fur.

I love my little family.

This morning a representative from Best Friends Animal Society: Los Angeles sent me an adoption follow-up email. She wanted to know how Xander was settling in.

She mostly asked a bunch of pretty standard sounding questions about whether or not he has litter box issues, bad habits (and how I deal with these habits), how he responds to being left home alone and how he does interacting with other people and animals.

Because it has been two weeks since we officially welcomed him into our family, I do appreciate that they’re being thorough in their follow up. They want to make sure it’s a good fit.

And well, I’m pleased to say that things seem to be going exceptionally well. He’s a really good kitty:
-He doesn’t have accidents outside of the litter box
-No fearful or aggressive tendencies
-He has only a few bad habits: he likes to eat from Kiwi’s dish instead of his own and he can be a bit of a play biter. It doesn’t hurt, but we’re still teaching him that it’s not OK to munch on people.
-No health issues
-We don’t feel the need to crate him at night anymore and we leave him to the open space of the apartment when we go out.
-Xander doesn’t seem upset when we leave. (He doesn’t cry or scratch at the door.) We’re never gone for long and he has Kiwi to play with/keep him company.
-He’s friendly and really seems to like the company of people and other animals. (Kiwi and he have become best friends!)

I’m sure it helped that we fostered Xander for several weeks prior to adopting him.

Best friends!

A man and his kitty