We spent most of August out in the yard or at festivals. And our Calgarian friends came for a visit with their sweet boy, Sully, who took a shine to Chris especially when he was playing his guitar -

Awe.

Another awe moment happened when Chris went into the garage one morning and came out with this little Hummingbird in his hand - 

It had flown into our garage the night before and was locked in overnight. When Chris found her on the floor, she was covered in cobwebs and almost lifeless. We quickly made some sugar water and brought it up to her beak, but her eyes were closed and she didn't respond for several minutes. Eventually she started to drink and after about 15 minutes she was up, flying to the nearest flowers. We put up a feeder in the yard and she zipped through to drink from it for most the day. It was quite the experience and I'm so grateful for a happy ending!

We had a very cold September but luckily cooler temps always put me back into a torching mood. However, my studio wasn't ready until last week as I was renovating it. For awhile now, I've been concerned about my ventilation so after some research this summer, I hired a plumber to revamp it. Now I have a very powerful fan (in the attic) that sucks all the glass and metal toxins outside while another vent brings in fresh air. In order to do this, I had to deconstruct my work area so I took advantage of the situation and had the whole room painted, including scraping the "popcorn" ceiling and adding new baseboards and moldings. I also replaced the rugs, exchanged my tile top on my desk for a stainless steel one and bought some better lighting. It's all made a huge difference, the room is so much lighter and brighter! 

This is my work desk before the reno. The ventilation was in that steal box, a bathroom fan and a flexi-hose running directly outside - 

A close up of the previous vent, notice the black sod... that was what I was concerned about - 

Now I have a hard frame and a stronger fan (which is in the attic) that vents to the side of the house, instead of into Mickey's catio directly outside. The other silver vent is the intake. Note my slick, new stainless steel top too. 

Everything is so clean!

And because it's less obvious in the pictures above, here is the previous color being painted over with the new one, called "Vanilla Milkshake". When you walk into the room, you instantly feel energized!

And another wall just so you can see how bright it is -

Now that I'm back to work we are making some pretties for our Annual Christmas show, which will be Dec.1st and 2nd, more details to come.  I am also trying to get out into nature as much as possible and have been loving the beautiful fall colours - 

Hope you're having a lovely fall and staying warm. :)