Sutton has landed!

We picked up Sutton on Saturday and he seems to be fitting in just fine. He's doing really well with crate training and housebreaking. And Cooper seems to have realized that he's going to stay and even played with him today!! He went to the vet for his first visit and was a whopping 22.6# at 9 weeks!! Here are a few pictures of our latest addition.....now I get to enjoy some sewing while Paul watches the puppy in the living room - I love Mr. LazyDog!!!

Wednesday Woof!

Cooper checking out Sutton's crate (and hoping he doesn't have to stay in there!!)

Sutton - he's coming home on Saturday - prepare for an onslaught of puppy pictures!!!

 Cooper playing with his kids!

Photos from my super productive day!

Finally had a chance to get some pictures of all my projects from Sunday.



Recycled sweater bag (used a home dec weight fabric for the liner and no batting)

 Cooper's Halloween Martingale Collar - BOO!

3 Fleece blankets - 2 for Puppy Sutton & 1 for me (guess which one is mine!)

 

 

Super productive day....

I got a ton of sewing done....looks like the sewing bug that deserted me a few weeks ago is back. Today is was able to complete 3 fleece blankets, a purse for my mom using the Create & Delegate sweater to purse tutorial, and a Halloween martingale collar for LazyDog! Photos to come - I just got dinner on the stove and the neighbors are coming over for dinner and some board games!

Wednesday Woof! Non-quilty goodness!

If you haven't guessed already, dogs are a huge part of my life. We aren't having 2 legged children, only 4 legged ones, so bear with me here!!  When we got Cooper over 3.5 years ago, who would have figured that I'd be on this wild and crazy canine road! We wanted a ridgeback with a perfect ridge, who ended up being a show dog. So we took Coop to conformation classes and dog shows. Luckily, he got both his Canadian and AKC championships relatively quickly and he's now living the good life (not like he was hurting before, trust me!). We have met tons of dogs and dog people, from Papillons to Great Danes and back again. Once we learned that Coop was a show dog and that people wanted to breed him, we knew we wanted a Cooper puppy - my very own mini-Coop (just not another show dog). So, his first litter ended up being small - two beautiful show pups; which meant no puppy for us....Breeding number 2 had lots of pups (and lots of people on a waiting list), so we decided to not get one from that litter either. The third time must be a charm right, Cooper and Bailey had 8 gorgeous puppies, all with great ridges - 7 boys and 1 girl.

So we kept watch on the litter and how the personalities were developing. We definitely want a puppy with the lazy dog mentality (just like his dad!). So it's been between two pups for a few weeks now. One was a show potential (red boy) and one with a potential dermoid sinus (green boy). We were expecting to take the green boy, but Paul had fallen hard for the red boy. Well after not getting too attached to red boy, we came up with a name and spent half the afternoon on Sunday calling the green boy by his name.

Well, our friends at Kacela had another ridgeback breeder come over to evaluate the puppies again. It seems red boy picked up a bit of a swagger that wouldn't work well in the ring!! Holy crap!! Can this possibly be true!? So we actually are getting to bring home the boy that stole our hearts from the get go...Don't get me wrong, is any puppy a bad one? But this little man with his Buddha belly just won us over and has a temperament very similar to Cooper. Paul and I both decided though that if his swagger goes away, we will let Kacela show him, as he looks good conformation wise from every other aspect (And believe it or not, Paul was for this more than I was!!! I almost fell over when he brought it up!)Cooper is the most laid back intact male we've ever seen, so we don't think there will be any issues if this does happen.

 So, I'm proud to present Kacela Keeping a Mini-Cooper, also known as SUTTON!!!

Fall baking

I was on call yesterday for work, so couldn't venture too far from the house. It was a perfect fall day - crisp breeze, mid-50s, and sunny. What a great day to bake! I made three new recipes - yep, spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen - this is really the only time of year that I seem to break out my baking skills, so might as well pack it in while I can....once spring hits, it's over!

So I made Zucchini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, bananas foster bread, and homemade twix bars....I didn't take a ton of pictures while baking, but grabbed a few here and there....

#1: Zucchini cupcakes - from MarthaStewart.com, I wasn't sure about making cupcake with zucchini and Mr. LazyDog definitely wasn't convinced but figured they were worth a try since I had one lonely zucchini left from my garden....These ended up great! I added a 1/4C ground flax seed and used pecans. Here are the before and after pictures:

Once they were frosted, Mr. LazyDog was sold! I have a feeling these will be headed to his office for his co-workers enjoyment, since I don't work until Wednesday (and hopefully I won't eat them all by the time he gets home!)

#2: Bananas Foster Bread - this ended up being fantastic! It's from the October 2010 issue of Cooking Light. I used dark rum instead of cognac - yummy, super moist - delicious!! This may become a staple in my house - I love bananas foster - even almost set my friend Lori's kitchen on fire making it once (let's just say a little 151 goes a long way!!!) Luckily, they still let me in the house and even back in the kitchen after that!

#3 Homemade Twix Bars - found these on one of the blogs I follow through Google Reader (I'm sorry, I can't remember which one - the recipe is from King Arthur Flour - Thousand Dollar Bars). These were much easier to make than I expected. I used square caramels found in the Halloween candy section for the caramel layer and I used half and half instead of heavy cream, since that was already in the fridge. I used light chocolate candy melts from Wilton for the chocolate layer. I decided to leave them in the pan and cut them into squares once set, instead of cutting into Twix sized bars and dipping individually - less work for me!

Another quick finish...

I finished this today for my friend, Julie, who is a HUGE Wolverines fan. It's the perfect size to swaddle Olivia in. She's not due until December, but it will be perfect for those January bowl games! It has a decorative stitch around the edge and is backed with white cotton flannel. Snuggly goodness :)