Fall is here!

The fall has officially arrived! I love the fall. The weather is perfect, the holidays are just around the corner, and the food is always divine. Soups are one of my favourite meals to make. They are hardy, yet so simple.

But this post is about more than just food. It's a run-up of everything I actually accomplished (and didn't) this summer. My biggest conquest: my bathroom. When I started, it was all the same colour, an off-white that wasn't exactly pleasing. And when I say the room was the same colour, I mean the whole room: the ceiling, the floor, the walls, the trim, the vanity base, everything.  And I love color as much as I love the fall. So, here's how I changed it:

This gives you some idea of the colour of the bathroom originally.

Ta da!

Pretty flowers adding another splash of colour.

Behind the door decoration.

A view from further back.

More house projects to follow.

And here we add another.

The summer is here, the garden is growing (granted not in the place I had planned it, but growing none-the-less), and I have managed to acquire another dog. How did this happen, you ask?  Well it all started on a sunny day...

I work with a woman at the library who runs a dog rescue. Diana and her business partner Sheila rescue dogs from private homes and kill shelters. Well my aunt had mentioned she might be interested in getting a dog and I mentioned this to Diana who then mentioned it to Sheila...you get the picture. We found this sweet dog named Mickey. He was a poodle/bischon frisee mix who happened to not speak English. Oh and he wasn't fixed. Small problems, but I agreed to go retrieve him and foster him until we could find a home for him. It turned out my aunt decided to not take him so he ended up living with me for nearly a month. Mickey was very sweet, but he was an idiot. Steve and I called him "Mickey the Idiot" (good job Dr. Who fans) as lovingly as possible, but man I haven't met that dumb of a dog in quite some time. Phinn wasn't thrilled he was there, but he quite nicely (mostly) put up with him. Long story short, last weekend we found Mickey a forever home. The woman was great and just loved Mickey. I was so happy that I went out and found Phinn a new friend...

Backing up. I'd been admiring this beautiful female lab mix for some time. When I found out Mickey would be going to a forever home I immedietly began to worry about Phinn. What would he do by himself? Would he be depressed? Would he start to howl? What would happen? I decided when Steve and I took Mickey to Tahoe to pass Mickey off we'd meet this pretty girl, Lady, and see if Phinn got along with her. Well he did. He did so well he peed on her (real charmer, right).

And now I have two dogs?!

Mickey his first day with us.

A very curious Phinn.

The new pretty girl of the house!

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.

Another one bites the dust

Date: March 2011
Scene of the Crime: The living room

The Evidence:

The Suspect:

The Verdict:

Without a doubt guilty.  That was less than six hours after my aunt bought him the toy.  Nice job, Phinn. You killed it.

Muffins!

I hate throwing away food ingredients because I a) forgot I had them or b) bought too much of said ingredient.  Not only is it a waste of money, but it's such a waste of good food.  I found myself in this situation today with some bananas and I thought to myself "What can I do with these?"  And what came to mind but banana bread!  Except I have a problem with breads.  It's not that I don't like them, its just that I never eat them.  I either forget I made them or don't want to take the time to cut off a chunk (I know, silly, but true).  So whenever I want to make bread I make muffins instead.  They're fast, easy, and really tasty.  And I eat them.  Mmmm....they do smell good!

Here's the recipe, just in case you were curious:

Ingredients
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup applesauce or butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3-4 ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups all purpose flower
1tsp baking soda

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350F.  Prepare muffin tin.
2) Mix white sugar, brown sugar, and applesauce; add vanilla, eggs, and bananas and mix until just combined.
3) Add flour and baking soda and mix until combined (again)
4) Spoon mixture into prepared muffin tin.  (I fill each cup with a 1/4 cup)
5) Bake 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

Make about 12 muffins.

Enjoy!

Ropes are for pulling on, not chewing

Phinn, in all of his puppy chewiness, decided it would be a great idea to eat his toy rope this morning.  Granted, I should have seen this coming, but it did almost look like he was trying to kill himself.

I bought him this rope the day I brought him home before I knew just how young he really is.  I really wanted him to play tug-of-war, but sadly it was a vain hope.  He had no clue and would just drop it and wait for you to do something with it.  He finally learned from a playful yellow lab named Daisy and would even play with me before he'd get bored and start chewing again.  A piece here, a string or two there, but nothing major.

This morning he took it to a whole new level.  He somehow managed to untie the knot at one end of the rope and began pulling strings out in chunks then proceeded to try to eat them.  Really, dog?  Eat strings?  Don't you know that can kill you?