May 2015 – turtle + mole

there was some mild outrage 😉 at the lack of cat photos in the last post. i understand. and you don’t have to ask me twice, i have so many cat photos that never get shown!

mathew’s most recent catification. he took this cradle off the cat tree he made when the cats were babies. the cradle was at a lower level and never got used. now it’s up near the ceiling and they love it.

arwen enjoying the new perch. bella wondering how she can steal it from arwen.

it’s hard to know when they’re done loving a box. bella trying on my ALC sweatshirt.

a low-light photo of arwen. this is the face she gives when she wants something. usually food. sometimes she wants outside time. or a cuddle.

nap time.

arwen my cuddlebug. she is more cuddly when it’s cold. i call winter: cuddle season.

bella investigating my birthday donut. she decided it was disgusting. (plus chocolate is toxic to cats.) bella relaxing on her hand rail.

arwen “helping” with cutting out the pattern for my ALC red dress. bella in the sun. probably right after she kicked arwen out of this spot.

this is what it looks like right before a fight breaks out. bella is always trying to exert her dominance over arwen. plus bella eventually owns everything. she is the queen and we all live in bella-land.

more nap time. arwen on the left, bella on the right.

this is bella’s smelling face. 🙂 she just sniffed the table. bella also tells us when things need cleaning.

arwen was very sweetly looking out the window with her paws on the windowsill. she often leans in when i take photos, so this is the shot i got. 🙂

bella giving mathew a massage. or maybe just exerting her dominance. it’s hard to tell.

I finished up the base of the shower. For the base, I switched to a 2″ square, white tile that had a flat finish, to make it less slippery. I also turned the tile 45 degrees. Because the walls are not parallel, there would be no way I could get the grout joints to line up properly.
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Once it’s grouted, the grout lines don’t show up much. I decided to stick with white grout in the shower, but for the floor, we’ll use a grey — I think.

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Then I started laying out the hexagon tile for the floor. [That makes it sound like I didn’t leave this project alone for a month…]

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We’d already decided that we are going to use black tile to make a border, or pattern of some sort in the floor tile. I like it for two reasons: First, it has more of an old Victorian decoration quality. Second, patterned borders catch your eye, and take it away from any flaws or imperfections. Deciding on a pattern, though, is not easy.

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I like the whimsical quality of the pattern above left, but is also has an animal tracks feeling…

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Then I thought: Maybe it would be nice to do a very simple border, and put a pattern in the center of the floor

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Hmmm, more on that later…

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Here’s another thought: a double border. We like it, but it uses a lot of black tile. I didn’t buy nearly enough to do this in the laundry room too. But they may exchange some sheets of the white for black.

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More ideas, trying to reduce the amount of back tile.

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After trying lots of different patterns, I started to go back to my initial pattern. Instead of running the animal tracks all the way around, how about just doing a pattern in the corner?

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