My teeny-tiny Christmas Tree and 3 Katie photos

This year I finally found a tiny Christmas Tree that easily fits on my dinette table, and will be super easy to store during the year.  I got the tree at Quiet Times and purchased tiny flowers to wrap around the branches, a few little bags of gold ornaments and a string of battery operated lights.  And Waaaa Laaaa! - my Christmas Tree:

A close-up of the tiny cloth flowers, gold musical ornaments, gold and white round bulb ornaments and lights:

That's all I've done this year to decorate for Christmas, but I love my little tree.  When I was done decorating it the other day, it looked exactly they way I pictured it.  :)

Here's Katie - when we get back from our walk, or a drive with Hazel and the Greyhounds and I take Katie off her leash, she runs home and waits for me.  Notice her left front paw raised?  She still does that a lot when she "sits."

And here she is playing ball - she'll bite her tennis ball, shake her head back and forth until she loses it, and then she wants me to get it for her.

Mom??  Mom??  Mom??

I DO usually get it for her because I don't want to trip on it and, having gone through this over and over, I know she ISN'T going to get it and put it on the couch, out of my way.  Just like a kid.  LOL!  I remember, back in the day, when "playing ball" meant I'd throw it and Katie would run and get it. 

From me and Katie, have a great Friday, everyone!  :)

Can you tell the difference? And new camp furniture and a new camp ; )

I think these are so clever - notice the large eyelashes on the mom and the thin eyelashes on the baby:

Don't you just love these clever water towers?  They are at the edge of the parking lot where the big tent will be in January.  A family - Mom, Dad and Child.  Very cute, and you can't miss them when you're driving past - what a cool way to advertise.  I don't know if they are full of water, but I'd bet during the Quartzsite Big Tent event, they are.

I got some new chairs a couple of days ago - from K & B Sales on Khuen Street - $39.99 each, and $87.97 including tax for two.  (High sales taxes here at Quartzsite - which I don't mind at all.  We RVers who come in for brief periods of time, or even the whole season, are using all the facilities, roads, etc., and paying no taxes to the town, so the sales tax is the only way we can help out, and that's fine with me.  First time I've happily paid a tax.)  So far I'm really liking the chairs.

They have a side table that folds down when not in use:

And the other side has a number of storage compartments  attached - for a Kindle, cell phone,  camera, etc. Two are fastened closed with Velcro, one zips and the largest is open at the top.

I've put them on my new rug, an 6 x 8 I think it is.  Just the right size for my small camp, and it'll be easier to store when not in use.  I had a larger one last year, but I gave it away.  It was just too big to store.  This rug has some brown touches in the center flowers and they match the chairs - wasn't that good luck!

Merry Christmas to me!   :)

Oh yeah, this is kind of embarrassing, but I forgot to tell you.  Katie and I moved camp again.  I decided I wanted to stay in this area, but I really wanted to get TV if I'm going to stay here for months.  So the other day when I left camp to fill my water tank, Katie and I drove around in this area, testing for signals, driving on, testing again, etc.  We finally found a spot that has a pretty good signal, and so I'm nesting now.  Everything is out, the new rug is "nailed" down to the desert floor so it won't blow away, and we are settled.  We are a little ways from the Dingbats' camp, but I can see them and we go down once or twice a day to visit around the campfire.

I hope they don't move again - I'm getting tired of following them around looking for this seed.

Welcome to our newest Followers:

Black Sheep no info is shown for you Black Sheep, so I can't give you a plug  left me a comment that he does have a blog and here is the link:  Voyager54, so you can check it out.     I'm happy you're following along with me and Katie.  Katie is a White Hat sort of dog, but I'm a bit of a Black Sheep myself, so even if you aren't an RVer, we have something in common.  Thanks for joining the blog and traveling along with us.

And Wendy's trip log -  Wendy isn't an RVer, but she has a blog that she's hoping will keep her creating and connecting with others.  She lives with her husband, kids and dog Upstate NY.  Wendy is an independent consultant for Close To My Heart scrapbooking and crafting supplies (that's her passion) and as a therapist for her day job.  I'm a scrapbooker, too - but with space being an issue in  my small motor home, I'm loving digital scrapbooking for now.  It must be fun working with Close to My Heart.  Thanks for following me and Katie on our travels.

Welcome aboard to you both!

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)

Wordless Wednesday - Beautiful Photos

More photos from the National Geographic Photo Contest:

Scott Bechtel - Male Rufous.  (Isn't this a great photo?  I wish I had taken it!)

Mark Bridger - Large Red Deer Stag calling.

Sara Malas -  Blue Footed Booby in the Galapagos Islands.

Graham Erik Mandre - Brown bear cubs climbing.

Ian Schofield -  Little owl and great spotted woodpecker with dramatic full wing extensions. 

From me and Katie, have a great Wednesday, everyone!

New speaker, campsite birds, a broken chair and a funny text

I said in a previous post that I ordered a small, portable, battery operated speaker with volume control.  It arrived and I love it.  The photos below are of my new speaker.  It's the best small portable speaker I've had yet.

AmazonBasics 3.5mm Aux Portable Speaker (Amazon photo)

 

Since I said I'd post a review of this speaker, I'm doing that today, but unfortunately, when I went to get the link for you this morning, it showed the speaker is sold out, and they don't know if it will be available again.  I was going to give it a glowing review, but there's no point now.  If you're interested in an MP3 or Audio product for a Holiday Gift, check out this link.  It will take to to the Amazon.com page for those items. And if the radio above is available, I highly recommend it!

Last evening one of the ladies in the group, Chrisma, invited us all for a bowl of delicious shrimp bisque at 5:00.  Another lady, Sue, made some fantastic cheese biscuits - made from a mix she got at WalMart.  It comes in a box by Red Lobster and if you like their biscuits, you'll love these.  Then for dessert the soup maker also had fresh baked cookies.  Yum, it was all so good, I had seconds of everything!  Thank you both for a wonderful dinner!

When I went over to the campfire for our soup dinner, my canvas chair had a rip in it, so had to borrow a chair.  After dinner I brought mine back to camp and tried to fix it.  First one row of red stitches, then another row of white stitches, then I glued it, top and underneath, with E6000 glue.

Next I duct taped it on the the top and bottom of the repair.  I hope it holds, or I'm going to end up on my butt!  I've been assured by my neighbors that if that happens, they will help me up.  It's been holding pretty good so far. 

My second chair is a really good one, but very old.  When I hold it up to the light, you can see through it.  It's fabric is getting thin, so I'm expecting it to fail any time now.  I thought it would be the first to go.  So, I'm searching for new camp chairs.  I have to go to town tomorrow, and maybe I'll see what's available.

Here are some bird photos snapped in the last few days - first Gambel's Quail:

Next, House Finches - these birds are all over the place in Arizona and New Mexico.  I always seem to be getting photos of them.

I think this little guy is a Say's Phoebe:

And I think the next two photos are of a juvenile White Crowned Sparrow.

Feel free to correct me if I've gotten any of these bird types wrong.

Have you seen the lists of test messages gone wrong?  I saw this one the other day and had to pass it along:

Sounds like something I'd do.   ; )

Welcome to our new Followers:  Jean Fox, laurie aggas and Virginia Martynowicz!  None of these new followers show any information, no blog or "About Me" info, so I can't tell you anything about them, but we're sure happy to have you all following along with us.  So, from Katie and me,welcome aboard to you all!  :)

From me and Katie, have a great day, everyone!  :)

You'll NEVER guess what I bought yesterday

My friend Hazel said she saw the perfect stroller for Katie at one of the resellers in town, and yesterday we drove over to take a look.  I decided I wanted it, and the man who owns the store said to get the dog and make sure she liked it, so I got Katie out of the car, put her in the stroller, and the man and I took turns pushing Katie around the area.  She just sat there looking around, enjoying her ride.  I was surprised at how she just took to it, like it was normal - business as usual.  Maybe her first owners had a dog stroller?

I've been wanting something like this for when I want to take a walk longer than Katie wants or if the ground is too hot.  Or when we walk to town, or over to the Big Tent in January - this will be perfect.  It'll keep her up off the ground and out of the foot traffic, and it has two net areas that I can use to stow purchases.

It looks like this model, the Baby Jogger II-16, was sold starting 1999/2000 for $250, so this is a good jogging stroller, and is now probably 13-14 years old.  It was marked $50.00, but I got it for $40, a bargain!  It's in pretty good condition, and I couldn't believe how easy it is to use.

This morning I had my normal bag of daily trash, and also some boxes to toss.  It would have taken two walks to the dumpster to carry it all. So I put it all in the stroller, put Katie on her leash and off we went.  It went up little hills, down little hills, over rocks and sand - all super smooth.

The wheels come off easily, it folds up and will be easy to keep inside if needed, but I'll probably keep it outside, locked to The Palms in good weather.

And here's the Princess in her new stroller with the canopy up:

 And with the canopy down:

Then we walked down to the fire pit area - everyone pitched in for wood, and I wanted to get my money in since they brought the wood today.  I wheeled Katie down in the stroller and she sat happily all the way and then sat in it while I stayed and talked.  Then one of the guys, Bill, brought three large pizzas and wings from town and we all chowed down.  Katie just sat in her stroller watching everything.

Pretty cool, huh?

From me and Katie, have a great Monday evening, everyone!  :)