Kitty Deschanel: Interior Design, Travel, Recipes, Humor, Cute Dogs

I am a cheap thrifty person.  Okay, maybe it would be accurate to say that I'm right up along the very border of cheap. I'm not crossing the line though. Only my toes are over the line.  I have a story to share from my college years. I was 18 and working as a Pizza Hut manager and there was a time when trying to save a few dollars put me in a dangerous situation. Okay, there were several times, but we're just going to focus on one for this blog post. I had a coupon for a free car wash. The regular price was $4.99, so without the coupon there was no way I would ever be getting my car cleaned. My Alero wasn't that dirty and I didn't want to waste the coupon, so I put off the car wash until the day before my coupon expired.  After leaving work at nearly midnight, I took my Alero through the automatic car wash. After the thorough washing, I decided to drive next door to do a little grocery shopping before going home. It was the middle of January, so I bun

Every autumn, SN and I enjoy a visit to the mountains in New Mexico. This photo was taken during a walk around Monte Verde Lake in Angel Fire, scarves billowing behind us and with mugs of cardamom-infused coffee warming our hands. The leaves were golden and the fragrance of pinon firewood hung pleasantly in the air.  The lake cast an irresistible spell on us, with proof provided in the nearby property we purchased shortly after. That was a surprise even to us!  Our little Olive , who is not quite so little these days, has joined us on small drives, but never on a wondrous road trip. She stays behind to mind the house and keep Bernadette and Biscuit company.  Oh, except there was that one time back when she was a young pup; the time Olive set out on her own, seeking a grand adventure. She's our little biker babe. In honor of National Pit Bull Awareness Month, join Olive on a virtual autumn road trip across the USA. There are plenty of wildflowers, fire-hued leaves, and selfie stops.

Stealing a Clawfoot Tub (Or So They Thought) We recently built our dream home and were able to save money by supplying many of the fixtures ourselves. We had an acrylic clawfoot tub shipped to our current house and brought it to the construction site the Saturday that it was supposed to be installed. There was a delay though (if you know anything at all about construction, you surely just read that and thought OF COURSE there was a delay, as that's Construction 101), so the plumber was not going to be able to get to our tub installation until Monday.  We left the tub and my husband returned to the construction site on Sunday to work on the landscaping. To his surprise, two men from the construction crew showed up around the same time. No one worked on the house on Sundays.  The men seemed startled when they saw him. Flustered, they announced they were just there to install baseboards. After about 30 minutes, they left.  They drove from town to our home in the mountains on their da

Funny Memes Post 2 of 2:  kittydeschanel.com/2021/05/funny-dog-memes.html You know those people who have nothing better to do than browse through memes for hours at a time, many of which are in poor taste? Yeah, I'm one of them. Oh, except I actually do have so much to do and absolutely should not be scrolling through memes. Just try and stop me. Covering everything from cute dogs to COVID, here are my Top 20 Funny Memes from the last week: Funny Memes Post 2 of 2:  kittydeschanel.com/2021/05/funny-dog-memes.html

The timing was not great for my birthday in 2020. COVID was brand-new and especially scary, so we didn't risk any sort of get-together, socially distanced or otherwise.  This year, SN and my parents are fully vaccinated (here in New Mexico, we're #1 in the country for our COVID vaccination rate ), so we planned a COVID birthday party. Welcome (finally) to our home! SN and I are not big on housekeeping. We try to keep up with daily tasks like dishwashing and sweeping up endless tumbleweeds of dog hair, but even that often gets away from us. Pre-COVID, our house would benefit from a good scrubbing every time a visitor came.  COVID = No visitors for more than a year. Our home was a disaster! We tidied and dusted and rearranged our decor for springtime. Much better. I'm clearly incapable of taking a straight photo (too much peer pressure coming my way through the glass), but I was able to hang my carrots properly. You know, whatever is the proper way to attach linen table runne