The Days of the Week as said by my Dogs

 

My Sad Attempt at Watermelon Cupcakes

I made Minnie Mouse themed cupcakes last week (blogged in a previous post). That was my trial run at themed cupcakes. I love themes. I love themed birthday parties, holiday themed things, seasonal, anything with a theme, really. So Minnie was a great first theme. Easy to make chocolate cupcakes, even though I've never baked cupcakes before. Easy to put pink strawberry frosting on top, stick white chocolate chips in it, and easy to twist Oreos and use the non cream side as ears - just stick them into cupcakes after being frosted. Bam. Done. It was so easy, I was ready for something more challenging (I thought). This time I wanted more of a purpose for going all out on a cupcake. I though, hey! - my sister loves watermelons and watermelon themed things and it's also summer time - watermelons fit summer time theme and I can show them to my sister and give some to her! Perfect idea.

Image in my head

I made the cupcake mix and put in some red food dye. Mixed in some chocolate chips with it too and then poured it out into paper liners in the pan. The mix was a little more liquidly than the Minnie ones were. I thought something seemed a little off about it, so I added a little more flour. Still didn't feel quite right, but I shrugged it off and threw them in the oven. 22 minutes later and they were ready to come out. The chocolate chips, the "seeds", were not visible through the paper liner, which was a bit dissappointing. That was one of the main effects I was going for to make it look like watermelon. I decided to let them cool and would take off the paper lining after so you could see the seeds in the red cake better. When time came to do that though, the paper stuck right to the cake and it looked horrible. So, I frosted the cupcakes with their liners on and tried to make them still look somewhat resemblant to watermelon. I experimented, tried out different ways that they could maybe still pull it off. I got frustrated and ended up with this assembly:

This is a watermelon with the seeds on the outside...  

This is a "tall, grassy hill with poop droppings all over it"
according to my boyfriend, Adam. 

This is happy watermelon Steve. He's just happy to be here. 

This is happy watermelon Harold. 

And this is what happened after I tasted one. They were really, quite awful. Adam agrees.

Doggie Drama at 2am

The boyfriend and I have a wonderful, loving, playful, goofy, and fun American Bull Dog Pit Bull mix with a little bit of Boxer in him too...we think. You may have already seen him in an earlier obedience school graduation post. His name is Chance. We think he is about a year or so old. We adopted him in February of this year and we instantly fell in love. He has been a delight to have around and he very quickly adapted to our home and our other dog, Cody. Needless to say, Chance is now a member of our family - he fits right in.

Cody is my dog. I got him when I was 11 years old. He is now 14. He has chronic pancreatitis (Grandpa fed him too many hot dogs) and he often will become sick due to a table scrap he licked up here or a crumb he nibbled there. We're always on the look out to see if we need to make a trip back to the doggie hospital for him, but so far so good since our last (huge) incident - when we actually found out he had pancreatitis. It's still scary, but not so uncommon, to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of Cody throwing up or see him get sick and take him to the bathroom so he can (yes, he does) throw up into our toilet. He rarely has pain attacks anymore and we don't even have a bottle of his medication around simply because he never needs it these days.

This is a random picture my boyfriend drew of our dogs.

So last night we really weren't expecting what happened with Chance. Adam and I were in bed by around 11pm and didn't get to sleep until around midnight. Cody sleeps in the bed with us and Chance sleeps on his doggie bed on the floor by Adam's side. Cody was sprawled out at the bottom of our bed and it took a while to find a good fit between the three of us up there. I moved Cody up by me so we could move our legs, he walked back down and sat right in the middle. I moved Cody to the middle of me and Adam, he moves back to my side and spreads out. Anyway, it was about midnight when we finally settled in and drifted off. At 2am, Adam and I wake up from a gagging sound and a lot of licking. My immediate thought was that Cody had jumped down from the bed and was throwing up. But it was coming from Chance's side... We looked down at Chance. He was literally eating Adam's shirt. He had it about halfway down his throat, actually. And was making gagging and licking sounds from it. Adam quickly pulled the shirt out of Chance's throat and mouth, but he kept licking. He tried to grab the shirt again to eat it, so we pulled it away from him. We were so weirded out... I have never seen a dog do this before. It was actually quite scary to watch.

After seeing that he couldn't get the shirt, Chance started to chomp away at his bed. Adam went down next to him and tried to stop and soothe him. But Chance kept licking and acting anxious. Adam took him to the door and then started walking him downstairs. Worried, I got out of bed too and followed them. I could hear the licking from all the way upstairs and when I went down, I saw Chance trying to pull up the carpet - like he was trying to rip it up and eat it. It was almost like a cow with grass. We told Chance "no", and he went running under the table where he found Adam's shoes. He then started trying to eat the shoelaces. It was so weird! I thought we needed to take him to the emergency vet hospital. He may have eaten something and we probably needed to get an x-ray to see what was going on. Adam wanted to wait it out since he thought it could be resolved on its own. Adam tried to get Chance to go out back through his doggie door, but he wouldn't go. We thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom or something. He wouldn't drink his water either, but he did eat a treat I gave him. I figured if he was well enough to devour a treat, it couldn't be that bad, right?

This could possibly be one of the stuffing suspects

Adam thought it would be a good idea to take him outside. He had seen something similar to this with his old dog and she ended up needing to eat grass to settle her stomach. So I clipped a leash on Chance (to which he seized the opportunity to try and chomp away my dangling hair off my head) and took him out front. He seemed really excited, with all the attention around him at 2:15 in the morning. He also got to go outside in the middle of the night and Cody had to stay in bed! It was a special treat for him. He wagged his tail, urinated on a bush and a tree and then started sniffing grass. A few seconds later, he was pulling it up and eating it. About a minute after that, he was gagging and then threw up. Out came some of his dog food from dinner and a material that we concluded resembled cotton. We assumed it was from one of his toys that he pulled the stuffing out - he must have swallowed some. After this lovely field trip Chance took us on, we took him back inside the house. Adam grabbed a baggie to put the throw up in, just in case we needed to show a vet later to see what was wrong. We climbed back upstairs to our bedroom and tried to get Chance back to sleep. Cody was awaken by our sudden presence and seemed to believe that it was already morning and time for his breakfast. So now we had our terrier jumping off our bed and ready to be fed and our bull dog filled with energy and not ready to go back to sleep. What a great adventure for pushing 3 in the morning.

After forcing the dogs into their proper night time spots, we finally were able to get back into bed. Just as I was able to ease back into the comfort of our soft bed and the peacefulness of the low background hum of our cool fan and gentle breeze on my hair, I heard the disgusting slap of a tongue again. A sound we knew well by now... Sure enough, Chance was licking again. Adam had to keep his hand stretched over the bed to keep Chance calm. Thankfully, it was enough this time but the occasional disturbance broke the rest of the night up for us. And at 6am, the dogs of course had to use the
bathroom. I don't know how he had the energy, but at 7am when my alarm for work went off, Chance was sitting by my bedside, wagging his tail and waiting for me to get up. I felt like death. And probably looked it too. You know that feeling when you know you haven't had nearly enough sleep? When your face feels overheated and flushed and your throat feels dry and like no amount of water could quench your dehydrated thirst? Where your lips feel chapped and swollen and you feel disgusting even though you've showered and brushed your teeth? And your stomach feels nauseated whether you go hungry or put food in it? That's pretty much how I felt.

I have no clue if this is even close to what it's like to have children, but it sure feels like it right now!

Thank you, Chance. For maybe showing me a taste of what it's like to have children and providing me with such fun packed into one long night. 

P.S. Chance has been fine since this morning and is back to his normal, non weird object eating dog, self. 

I like baking?

I'm venturing into the world of baking - a world I once hated. Last night I tried making Minnie Mouse cupcakes - success! Brought them into work and they were a hit! Made chocolate cupcakes, used strawberry frosting, then decorated with white chocolate chips for the spots and used Oreos for the ears. Yum.

Summer Days Slipping Away

My summer is quickly coming to an end. It always feels too soon! I had high hopes for a summer of wake boarding, swimming pools, scuba diving, beaches, water parks, and lake trips. I always imagine more than I can chew and though I couldn't fit everything into my schedule, I ended up doing quite a bit this summer!

I went on a family trip to Lake Tahoe - first time ever there and it was beautiful. The album is in one of my first posts if you want to check out all the details from that trip.

I put together an extended family picnic for Adam's (my boyfriend's) family and mine. I love planning events and I love picnics, family time, and summertime, so this was a great idea for me. We all gathered in a park with lawn chairs, blankets, coolers, and food. There were babies, dogs, water balloons, baseball, lounging, boba, and frisbee involved. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The babies ate watermelon and played on the blankets with water balloons. The dogs enjoyed the shade and the company of everyone around them. My boyfriend relaxed on a lawn chair and I played frisbee with the cousins and my family. We also tried something I made up called water balloon baseball. It's pretty self explanatory, but basically we had a bucket of water balloons that someone pitches from, and someone hits them with a baseball bat. The water shoots up into the air and then showers down over everyone playing. It was pretty spectacular. We also coordinated a water balloon toss and tried out hitting some real baseballs across the field. Such a perfect day!

Two of my best friends, Katey and Michelle, went with me on a hike in Malibu Creak to a small lake/water hole spot on the trail. We brought our bathing suits and joined the crowd in jumping off the tall rocks into the water. I. Love. Rock. Jumping. So much. The water was perfect. It was a hot day and the water was nice and cool and refreshing. Not freezing, but the perfect temperature for a warm, August hike day.

Adam and I went on another hike at Rocky Peak in Simi Valley with the dogs. It's mostly uphill and it was a hot day. My 14 year old pup, Cody, didn't get very far and Adam had to carry him up the hill and I carried him down. Chance, our city dog from the streets, was not used to the dirt incline and forced his way under a twiggy bush to get some shade. We decided not to attempt the rest of the hike since our dogs clearly weren't ready for this kind of adventure. I'm thinking this might be a hike for just Adam and I for a while. ;)

5ks, 5ks, 5ks. I LOVE themed 5ks. They're a great source of exercise and a great motivator FOR me to exercise. I love the way they make me feel during and afterwards and they help me escape into a place where I can be away from my cell phone for an hour and just enjoy the little things life has to offer. Over the summer, I think I found my favorite 5k yet. The Ridiculous Obstacle Course (R.O.C.). I ran it with my mom and we had a great time avoiding giant bounce balls swinging on a crane as we balanced our way across a beam above a pool of water. We bounced on the world's largest bounce house and got to slide through the finish line on the world's largest inflatable water slide. So much fun! 

I had many other trips and events planned out in my head that I wanted to squeeze in, but they'll have to wait until next year. This summer was a great balance of trips, friends, activities, relaxing, water, and family. I'm thinking a wake boarding and zip lining trip at Big Bear might be in my future for next summer. And maybe I'll be able to be scuba-diving with Michelle by then too (I had too much dental work being done to go under this year). Summer always seems so short, but before we know it, next summer will be creeping up faster than this year's did! ;)