Outdoor living

Happy Monday! How was your weekend?

Jimmy and I were able to sneak in a date night on Friday while my mother-in-law watched Sadie. It was so nice to spend some alone time with Jimmy! We went to a local pool and spa store to look at hot tubs. We’ve been wanting one ever since we stayed at my parents’ beach house last month and went in their hot tub daily.

Time will tell if we actually get one because we are going to be spending a good chunk of money here soon on a fence extension to keep our Houdini dog from escaping, lol.

On Saturday, Jimmy went to a work day at our church and Sadie and I did some cleaning and organizing around the house. She’s been getting into our snack drawer lately and running around with crackers while Niva chases her and it’s just a constant mess. I put all the snacks up high and hopefully it saves me from cleaning cracker crumbs 24/7 😉

I also filmed a vlog on Saturday because I realized I’ve rarely documented a Saturday at the Zottola household. In the evening, we had a bonfire!

Remember how I said I was really excited to decorate for Christmas? Well, I made a pom pom garland. I had some twine laying around the house and I used a hot glue gun to glue pom poms I bought at Dollar Tree to the twine.

Simple and easy! I promise I won’t hang it up until November 🙂

Well, I better get going and start my Monday. I hear Sadie stirring in her crib as I type up this post.

I’ll leave you with a funny occurrence that happened yesterday while we were at church…

There’s a family on our street that has a siberian husky that looks just like Niva. The dog escaped and was running around the neighborhood and a woman a few doors down from us thought she was Niva so she was throwing bologna into our yard to lure her in and even got her into our fence. Our next-door neighbor had to break the news to her her that the dog wasn’t Niva, lol. We have been blessed with some amazing neighbors!

One of my biggest worries before we brought Niva home was that she wouldn’t get along with Malcolm. I’ve heard that Siberian huskies and cats aren’t a good mix because huskies have a high prey drive for small animals. It was definitely a gamble to bring Niva home to a cat without knowing how she or Malcolm would react, but we had a few things going for us:

Niva is a very submissive dog
Niva is a puppy
Malcolm is a very friendly cat
Malcolm has been raised with dogs

It’s totally true that Siberian huskies have a high prey drive. They are also pack-oriented dogs. I think Niva saw Malcolm as part of her pack when we brought her home, so she doesn’t hunt him.

If you’re considering bringing a husky (or any breed of dog, really) home to a cat or vice versa, I would take into account each animal’s age and temperament before making any decisions. It’s definitely possible for cats and huskies to live together, and it’s amazing to watch them play and live in peace and harmony when they do!

Okay, onto our back patio renovation progress. I wish I had more before pictures, but I snuck into my archives and found this one below from a post I wrote in 2014(!). Our back patio area had wooden railing and a canopy with wooden beams and a ceiling made out of…. I don’t know?!