Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Batoning Down the Hatches!

Well, our Tofurky was fantastic, the girls and my DH loved it, so worth a try for anyone who wants to try a vegetarian feast. It was neat to have a "traditional" holiday feast with all the trimmings.

The forecast is predicting some wicked winds here in the desert. We KNOW how to do wicked winds, and with all the dirt we have it can be a nasty thing. They say we should have sustained winds around 40 mph with gusts up to 70+mph, YIKES! The last time we had these winds come through we lost our roof and our entire wooden fence fell down. It was wild with the big kennel runs we have almost going over the 6 foot fences, everything was flying. Hopefully the forecast will be wrong or at least we will weather the whole thing better this time.

Knowing the winds were coming-it was getting pretty windy this afternoon-I set to work trying to clean everything outside up. I asked the girls to help, and anyone who has teenagers will be able to imagine how that went. Usually the girls are pretty good helping if I ask but boy today I got some rolling eyes and they clearly thought I was a bit nuts when I said the light plastic chairs should be brought up into the garage, after all they put two light weight chairs on top of each other, so what the heck-after all how much force could a wind pack, right?

I am in a no win situation, if there are no winds, then the girls will forever think I am a little short in the logic department, and if the winds do come like they are predicted I will be able to say I told you so, but those type of winds always bring damage to at least some of the people in our area.

One thing that will be safe no matter how strong the winds are is my new table. I posted a picture of it on facebook when I completed it last week, but figured I would show it off in the blog too. This table started its first life as a table my friends husband built for her, then she gave it to me, I resurfaced it, and resurfaced it, changed the legs and had it as a baby pause table to use with the puppies or when I wanted to have one of the dogs drive to something-they could go to that table if I wanted to use two tables. I wanted to do some teeter training with the two table method and so I needed another higher table so I decided to give the table yet another life. I LOVE using the table as a huge target for exercises and we do LOTS of table games, so you can never have too many tables in your back yard.




I think I am basically a pretty inventive builder. YEAH, that's what we will call it. Sometimes with training or building something it is just too easy to do something the tried and true way, so I will set out on a search on the 'net to see if I can find a better way to go about things. LOL, sometimes, well.....USUALLY that can get me into some trouble and this project was no exception.

The reason this table will be very safe even if we have hurricane force winds is that it probably weighs a ton. Hey, me and ten of my heaviest friends could jump on it, it is sturdy as they come but with each new life I just added on another layer of wood onto the top. It doesn't take many layers before a table is pretty heavy-IT ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE!. If worse comes to worse tomorrow with the winds we will all be heading to hide under the table so at least I know we will be safe.

The painting was done with a new method I read about on the net where people were suggesting using raw sugar and rock salt for the traction in the paint instead of using a finish with sand. Sounded like a great idea after all then if I needed to refinish it I could sand it down which does not work if you use a sanded surface. Well, it looked fantastic, until it would not dry for days and days and there was an oily slick surface. Hummmmm, so I sopped up the oily stuff and put another coat on, and added some rice. Well, at that point we could have ate the table, we almost had rice pudding. I am not sure if there was a chemical reaction with the paint and food....or if the paint was reacting to when I watered it down. It was a new type of paint.

I finally scraped everything off and did a traditional finish. After probably spending twice as much on this table and taking way more then twice the time it should have we have a sturdy, wonderful table. SEE,it all turns out in the end, LOL. The table is supposedly adjustable and there are all the heights on it from 8 inches to 24 inches, but in reality,....it is PVC and PVC doesn't come apart that well once you really pound it together so I have left over pieces I will make a baby table with and I think I will just leave the table at 20 inches.

If anyone needs to make a table, and you use the tried and true methods and don't do a lot of experimenting,.....this table was really easy, and I am really impressed with how stable it is.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EXPERIMENT!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVERYONE!

I hope everyone is having a great day. We are being adventurous today--I made a traditional Thanksgiving feast with stuffing, mashed potato's, pumpkin pie, etc....but since I have been a vegetarian for 10+ years....it always takes a little more thought as to what to serve on the holidays--do I go with a non traditional thing like enchiladas, or Lasagna, or do we go out to eat????

This year I am trying a Tofurky. It is shaped like a Turkey breast but of course made without meat. I like the lunch meat slices made out of tofurky, so hopefully the meal will be good. The stuffing is looking marvelous and it has been years since I had that, and mashed potatoes and homemade biscuits are always delicious, so I figure we can not go too wrong....and if all else fails there is pumpkin pie.


Luckily the holiday is more about being Thankful for everything we have, so how ever our dinner turns out I am sure we will have a good time.

Yesterday was my birthday. I was not as traumatized by the day as I have been in some years, hahahahah, mostly because I did not think about it or pay much attention to it.

I did get a cool i-touch and wow, I spent last night playing with Apps, I am always a little late when coming to the technology show, but I think this is going to be FUN!

The puppies have all been good but complaining that everyone has been busy and not paying enough attention to their training lately ;-(.

We did a video for the recallers course, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT9jD623u9s which everyone who did a video about their experiences with recallers gets to take the course for free as a prize, so we are once again going to revisit the Susan Garrett Recallers games, YIPPIE, I am looking forward to it.


ANOTHER RED LETTER event for all of you, is that I think the post at the bottom of the page with Breezes bday video should be off the page now. WHEW! I had to post that video to Vimeo and for some reason I could not figure out how to not have that auto load and start when ever someone came to the page, ughghgghgh, so sorry for how much of a pain that had to be, but it should be off the page now. ;- ).

Monday, November 7, 2011

Buddy Bowls and Swimming Updates...

For the kitties and puppies---

BUDDY BOWLS-http://greatamericanspillproof.com/buddy_bowl_instructions how cool are these? I found these at a little store by us and I thought it might be neat for the car, but when I brought it in the house when the car was going to the shop I had the bowl in my room and I LOVE having it in the house because it will not get spilled. I bet Ellie would like one of these.....


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A little update on one of my two legged kid:

Emma had another swim meet. It was cold and all the kids were shivering in between races, guess we will need to invest in a swim parka, the swim gear back pack, some blankets to bring, see with each sport comes a list of things ya gotta get.

Emma did really good, she got 3 firsts, 2 seconds and just missed a few times good enough to get an invitation to the invitational meet she is trying to qualify for. She shaved off more then six seconds in two of her races, and a couple of seconds in a few other races. Emma has one more meet to try to shave off half a second to make two times good enough to be invited to the invitational meet she is shooting for.

These are her times for this meet.
50 Free 28,88 100 Free 103.16 100 Breaststroke 123.07 100 Fly 111.66 and 200 IM 243.31

Emma is second from the front with the blue/grey swim suit and the black AV waves swim cap:




Butterfly



Breast stroke


Happy at the end

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

I am an Auntie again!!!

Well, unbelievably by Tuesday Nel had not delivered her puppies and she was totally worn out. Karen her owner decided in view of how big Nel was....and the fact she was so totally worn out before labor even started...that she would have Nel have a csection, it turned out to be an excellent decision.

Luckily I was able to attend as a helper, so I got to help revive pups as they were born, to help the babies settle in once Nel left the vets office, helped to weigh the pups and even to help some little ones start to nurse. I always liked Nel before but she is the sweetest girl ever and put up with everything so well, that is one sweeeeeet dog!!!

I of course left the ranch with MAJOR puppy longing, LOL, that is the danger of being around pups, but no none of these puppers will be coming home with me....although the little black female with the small pie shaped spot on the back of her neck is just soooo cute. The puppy with the almost white face and the huge black dot is a tiny thing and another favorite of mine. So I elected myself as their auntie and can not wait to see them as they grow.

I got some video of the babies birth in between my puppy duties!



I just got off the phone with Karen before I posted and Mom and babies are doing great.

The only bad thing is that I am now one more day behind, and I was already so far behind, but how often do you get to go play with puppies?