Bath time for Phinny

Bath time is always interesting in my house. The bathroom isn't particularly big, add to that a dog that doesn't particularly like water and you have an interesting situation.

Phinn smelled. There was no getting around it. He needed a bath and pronto.  He happily followed my into the bathroom as he does in the mornings when I shower, then I closed the door. No problem. I think he figured out something was up when I pulled his shampoo from under the sink. I'm not sure I've ever seen a dog glue himself to the floor like Phinn did, but I was laughing so hard that I could barely pick him up to put him in the tub.  And oh how did the looks of "how could you ever do something like this to me" go on throughout the process.  It was like I had betrayed him until he got out of the bath.

He happily shook in the tub, then out of the tub before I could get the towel over him, then proceeded to attack the towel. When I opened the bathroom door he did his laps of the house before settling on the couch pillows (still damp!) to sleep.

I wish I had pictures, but as only one person I didn't feel like sacrificing my camera to a wet dog.

Weekend adventures

It was a busy weekend which leads me to writing this two days after the official end of the weekend.  It began on Saturday with weeding.  I wish I could report that the area in question was successfully de-weeded but I must disappoint.  Burrs+rocks+grass+Rocks+alfalfa+ROCKS=a very difficult area to defeat. It's halfway done, but it's windy/rainy again.  It'll get done.  Sometime.

I was able to plant some colourful flowers in the front of the house, and I had help!  My parent's neighbor, Cassie (10) was bored so I entertained her through planting then baking.  I bout a new cupcake book on Friday and as we were looking though it we found a recipe that sounded too good to not make right away: Frosted Peanut Butter Cupcakes.  Oh man, so tasty.

Since we decided to make mini-cupcakes, we had to figure out how much to put into each paper.  It turned out 1 tablespoon was the perfect amount! Then we frosted them...yum!  It was a cream cheese frosting that came out perfect with just a tint of purple!

  The perfect plate!  It was to first time I'd piped frosting on like this.  I think they turned out really well.

Today my task for the afternoon was to re-pot my poor seedlings.  They really need to get into the ground, but first I have to finish pulling weeds/rocks/alfalfa out of the place I want to put in my beds.  This will have to do for now.  Oh and my lettuce and carrots have finally sprouted!  So excited for fresh lettuce for salads!

Garden starts

I have always loved to garden, and now that I'm living in my own (sort of) house, I can finally have that edible garden I've always wanted.  Well, mostly.  Of course Phinn has started digging again and takes great pleasure in doing so.  Luckily I have a large side yard that will allow me to have a place to plant outside of the fenced-in backyard (somewhere Phinn can't get to!) So I started to sow some seeds inside in starter packs, then got creative.

The store bought seed starter kit

Green beans!

Just emerged corn stalks

A barrel full of carrots, round 1 (found it in the shed)

Home-made sifter. Lots of rock in the yard

Newspaper seed pots of sunflowers!

The leftover mess of a good day's work

We have a visitor!

My mom has a conference this weekend in Las Vegas, so my dad decided to go with her.  A little bit of a vacation for them is great, except they have a dog, Dodger, who happens to hate Phinn.  And he's staying with us this weekend.  It's not that Dodger has something against Phinn, he just hates pretty much every dog out there.  He's 10 and a crotchety old man who does not appreciate a puppy constantly harassing him.  Here's Dodger:

And here's the two of them.  Phinn's trying so hard to get him to play!

And now observe.

Cupcakes Galore

Have you ever seen the t.v. show "Cupcake Wars"?  Well, it's evil...in a good way :)  Cupcakes are generally a lovely treat, all tasty and sweet goodness wrapped up in a little paper cup.  Easy to serve, easy to eat, how could you complain?

Today my boyfriend and I were watching this show and decided cupcakes sounded really good.  So the search began.  I tried allrecipes.com, one of my favourite food sites, and didn't come up with anything that sounded really good.  I then tried googling cupcake recipes and success!  I came across this great site called , ironically enough, Cupcake Recipes.  They have a large variety of recipes, but one specific one stuck out: white chocolate mud cupcakes.

So we gathered up the ingredients and began baking.  Except for one problem, I don't have a kitchen scale and everything in the recipe is measured by weight.  Problem?  Possibly, but where there's a will, there's a way!  We managed to convert everything over to regular measurements and began baking.  We melted the chocolate and mixed the batter and found that it was really runny.  I was worried, but went with it anyway.

They baked. And we waited.  And they were amazing!

Then we made the frosting...well I guess you could call it frosting.  Its base was whipped cream, and it really didn't taste that good.

So I guess overall, the cake part was great, but definitely going to have to find a better frosting.  And no pictures.  They didn't turn out very well :(

The Phinn Strikes Again

So I had a post nearly ready, but I just can't bring myself to talk about cupcakes or ice cream after I saw what Phinn had done this afternoon while I was at work...

I've been working on my backyard in the hopes of making it, well, making it presentable before the end of the summer.  There's a lot to do, but I decided to start with something relatively easy: pulling weeds.  I began in a round central planter and did about half this weekend.  Feeling like I accomplished something, I left it knowing I wouldn't be able to work on it again until next weekend.

Phinn, exceedingly curious but not destructive (yet), left it alone.  Until today.

Notice the dirt everywhere but where it's supposed to be?  Yep, I spent my afternoon with a broom.