Dog Mug

I'm loving this sunny day with the snow glistening outside, the cats sleeping in their hammocks in the windows next to me, and the sound behind me of quiet munching of a hamster who is awake in it's nest eating a midnight snack.  Days like today give me peace and joy.  When I am at home working, I often go without music as I find the silence so refreshing.  I think I surprise some people when they find out I would describe myself as both shy and introverted because I can be so friendly and talkative when I am with others.  But my ability to do that well is linked to how much quiet and alone time that I have recently gotten or that I can look forward to in the near future.  In case anyone might think I'm a music hater, I will clarify that I do love to listen to music, but sometimes it's too distracting for me or sometimes I crave silence, so I mostly listen when I'm doing housework.

These pictures of Haleth are just as old as the ones I posted last week.  😬  She doesn't look this brown anymore as her color has faded.  I don't know exactly when she was born, but I estimate that sometime next week she'll be 2 years old.  My plan is to gather up some of her favorite treats, get the pink hat out of storage, and throw her a party.  I will be sure to take pictures to post next week!  💕

This mug is actually in Glorfindel's tank now.  I decided that Haleth's pictures in this mug that were taken many months ago were too cute to not share, so I had to recreate the scene with Glorfindel too.  He didn't really sit still for the pictures and wouldn't look at the camera, but that's okay, because he's still adorable!

Hams in Basket

At the beginning of this week, Joe and I were feeling pretty burnt out.  He was thinking he might take a day off work even because he just needed a break that badly.  But the break he needed came in the form of 6 inches of snow causing 2 e-learning days.  😊  Unfortunately, I had to work all day yesterday, and by the time I was done, I ended the day with a pretty bad headache.  But today I can take it a bit easier which I'm definitely grateful about, especially since I got my flu shot this morning and my arm is starting to get a bit sore.  😞

These pictures of Haleth are honestly so old.  I don't remember exactly when I took them, but it was back when Fili was still alive and before I had gotten Glorfindel.  But Haleth is just so cute that I still wanted to share them.  Haleth will be 2 years old in a couple weeks, so apparently I need to start planning her party!  Haha!  I can tell that her hair is much lighter now than it was when these were taken, but other than that, she's doing well.  ❤

I decided that I loved those pictures I took a while ago of Haleth so much that I had to find the basket and redo this scene with Glorfindel.  I seriously just adore Glorfindel!  I don't think I've ever had a Syrian hamster that was as active during the day as he is.  Also, Joe normally doesn't interact much with my hams, but he actually really likes Glorfindel and has gotten him out to hold without my prompting which just melts me.  ❤

Arcade Toys

I meant to post these like a month ago.  😐  I have had a busy month, but I'm close enough to being caught up on the more important things that I figured I could take a few minutes to get these out there.  These toys were won from a claw game at Combat Ops when we went with our friends.  We had to wait in line to use this machine, and when we finally saw our chance, we decided to have Joe use it as we figured he'd be the most successful.  To our surprise, on his first try, he managed to grab two toys.  I reached into the compartment to grab them, but I quickly realized that one of the ones I was holding wasn't one that I saw drop from the claw.  I got on the ground to reach farther into what was actually a quite large compartment and found a couple more toys left behind.  So that was cool!  Haha!

The weeks have been flying by and I recently realized that Haleth is getting fairly old.  She'll be 2 years old in February!  I don't see her too much as she's always only been active while I'm sleeping, so I don't really know if she's really slowing down any.  But she seems healthy to me, so I hope I still have a long time with her as she's so sweet!

For the first few weeks of having Glorfindel, he was always already awake when I got up and would stay up each morning until about 10.  I'd also find him awake at night starting around 8, so I would get to interact with him a lot in a single day.  I especially loved hanging out with him in the mornings while I drank my coffee.  But as it's gotten colder and darker, he seems to have switched to a more normal hamster schedule like Haleth, and now I don't see him as much.  He's so dang cute though!  This was his first photo session, and he did so well!  I can't wait to do more pictures with him!

RIP Fili

 My little old ham, Fili passed away earlier this week.  He was about 2 years and 9 months old which is super old for a hamster and why he earned the nickname as my immortal ham.  I got Fili in March of 2020 (along with his brother Kili) from the Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control right before we went on lockdown for the pandemic.  Kili passed away back in April 2022, but Fili lived on for another 7 months.  Fili loved food but got progressively grumpier over the last 6 months and seemed happy being mostly left alone, so that's what I did.  After Kili passed away, Fili became my favorite office buddy because he took over spending a lot of time awake during the day to get snacks and go for a run on his wheel.  However the last couple of weeks, Fili really wasn't out and about much, so I knew that his age was finally catching up with him.  Each day that he would wobble out of his little hut to grab a drink and putter around doing hamster things brought a smile to my face knowing he made it to yet another day.  I'm gonna miss the little guy!  Below are some pictures I never ended up posting of him, including the last 6 pictures which were taken just last week.  💗

Sweet Potato

Happy Halloween!  I hope you all are having fun and staying safe!

For Haleth's final Hamster Halloween Costume, I knew I wanted to dress her up as a sweet potato.  I'd like to start by saying that I hope that no one takes any offense as that is not at all my intention with this.  So the explanation is that I have nicknames or sayings for all my pets, and from the beginning, I've always called Haleth my cute little potato.  I also generally refer to my hamsters as hams.  So from there it didn't take long until I began calling Haleth my yam.  So this final costume is to honor my favorite sweet potato aka yam.

It's been such a joy doing Hamster Halloween Costumes again this year.  I hope you all have enjoyed following along with my silly creations.  While I am sure I won't get another chance to do this with Haleth as she is already fairly old, I am quite confident that Glorfindel will be able to continue this tradition as he already begs for attention and I think he will be a fabulous model.  💗

Meeple

Today has been a busy day, so I'm just now getting to posting day 5 of my Hamster Halloween Costumes series.  The idea of doing a meeple came from last weekend when Joe and I were out for lunch after church.  I told him my plans and how I was running out of time to actually do the project.  At that point, I had too many ideas and needed to make decisions on which ideas to use for this year and due to the time constraints, I specifically needed easy ideas.  As we talked and finalized the list, this just popped in my head, and I knew it was perfect!  Joe and I love board games and have over 150 on shelves that line a wall in our basement, so I'm actually surprised that this idea hadn't come to me sooner.  Of course, an idea for a costume has to include the set or background for the costume to make sense.  With so many games, I had to figure out which one to use.  Obviously my choice had to include actual meeples which did narrow down the list of possible games I could use to about 10.  My first idea was Stone Age and that's the one I went with.  Stone Age was one of the first board games we got when we first started building our collection.  I really love it, and we still play it fairly often even though we have so many newer games.

I know I put way more effort into setting up this game than necessary, but I wanted it to look like it could be a real, in-progress game of Stone Age.  As I carefully arranged pieces, Arien kept batting them around so I eventually had to lock her up.  And then I brought out Haleth, got her costume on, and set her in the middle of the board. I think she must have been a bit confused as to what she was supposed to be.  Instead of staying in one spot as a meeple for this worker placement game, she acted like King Kong trying to destroy everything in her path.  In the end, I was just pleased that Haleth didn't eat any of the game pieces.  😂