Dog Birthday Cake

Wow!  That was a long and unexpected break from blogging.  My girls are going back to school in just over a week and it really hit me how fast summer has been flying by.  So, I've put projects on the back burner and have been trying to spend some fun times with my family before school starts again.

Speaking of fun times, Kayla wanted to make a cake for the dogs.  If you know anything about me, you know that I'm almost as obsessed with my dogs as I am with my kids.  So, I quickly agreed that it sounded like a fun idea!

I helped her find a recipe that didn't sound too disgusting online.  Many of the recipes involved cooking canned dog food.  Can you imagine how awful your house would smell after that?!?!?  We used this one found on e-how that looked almost as appetizing to the humans as it did to the dogs.

Things You'll Need

• 1 cup rice flour - we used regular flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• Large mixing bowls
• 1/2 cup organic peanut butter
• Shredded carrots
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 9-inch round pie tin - we used a cute bone-shaped tin
• Non-stick cooking spray
• Toothpick or uncooked spaghetti
• 1 cup non-fat cream cheese - we used plain Greek yogurt

 1.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

2.  Mix together 1 cup flour and 2 tsp. baking soda in a large mixing bowl.
3.  Pour 1/2 cup organic peanut butter, 1/2 cup shredded carrots and 1/2 cup honey in a separate bowl.
4.  Mix the peanut butter, carrots and honey together well and add 1 egg, 1/4 cup canola oil and 2 tsp. vanilla extract.
5.  Pour the peanut butter and honey mixture into the large bowl that contains the flour and baking soda.
6.  Mix together all of the ingredients until they are well blended.
7.  Cover the inside of a 9-inch round pie tin with a coating of non-sticking cooking oil and pour the mixture inside.
8.  Set the cake onto the center oven rack and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top of the cake has slightly browned. Place a toothpick or an uncooked piece of spaghetti into the center of the cake. Pull it out and if there is batter on the toothpick of spaghetti, the cake is not done.
9.  Allow the cake to cool completely. While the cake is cooling, combine 1 cup non-fat cream cheese (or plain Greek yogurt) and 1/2 cup shredded carrots.
10.  Cover the completely cooled cake with a layer of the cream cheese and carrot frosting.
11.  Remove the cake from the pie tin and serve it to your four-legged guest of honor.

We made the cake to celebrate the anniversary of Tyler's adoption.  Tyler was adopted from Golden Retriever Freedom Rescue two years ago.  He was a stray dog from a shelter in Joplin, Missouri were he was about to be put to sleep.  He is a beautiful purebred Golden Retriever and it amazes me that nobody would want him.  He remains my best "save" to date.  If you want to read more about his story, go here. 

If you are considering getting a dog, I would suggest checking out dog rescue groups.   Almost every breed has its own group.   I was surprised at the huge number of great dogs out there looking for homes.

Ty graciously shared his cake with his "little" sister Emma, the goldendoodle.  Needless to say, the dogs LOVED the cake.

Guest Posting at the Blooming Hydrangea

You can find me hanging out with my friend Ange at the Blooming Hydrangea today.  Stop by and say "hi" if you have a chance.

Do you have anything exciting in store for the weekend?

This crazy beast is getting her first haircut today.  I think we are going to have her shaved.  I will kind of miss her puppy shagginess, but she's already so hot that I know she will enjoy having a nice short coat for the summer.

There is a mountain bike festival going on in my town this weekend.  There are lots of fun events, such as bands and biking demonstrations that I'm sure we will check out.  On Saturday night, we are planning on biking to our favorite pizza joint which has a huge backyard patio.  A friend's band will be playing outside.  We're looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend! 

Oh, except that I have to run 12-13 miles tomorrow in preparation for my half-marathon in two weeks.  At least I'll be going with a good group of friends.  We usually end up talking and laughing most of the way.  So, the run is not too bad.  :)

Source: Uploaded by user via Swoon on Pinterest

February's Project: the Back Hall

Did you think Mary's room makeover was my February project?  It was what I spent the majority of my time on this month, but it wasn't THE project.




 Lisa over at Shine Your Light holds a monthly "before and after" party.  The first Friday of the month, you link up your before pics and the last Friday of the month, your after pics.  I needed some motivation to get started on painting basically every interior wall in my home, so I decided to start simply by painting my back hall as my February project. 

My before post can be found here.  But here's where I started:

Brown walls, dirty old rug, messy bulletin board and a very well-used doggy door.  Ewww!

Here's where we are now.

I painted the walls Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore.  The door got a coat of glossy black paint and I swapped out the rug.  There's still a little cutting to be done at the top of the wall that I didn't quite get too.

Beware.  There are lots of pics of the dogs.  They like to hang out in this area and had to get in just about every picture.

This bulletin board needed some work.

I couldn't submit my "after" post with such an unsightly object.  So, at 8:00 tonight, I decided to makeover the bulletin board.

I covered it with some fabric and added a little nailhead trim.  And, voila!

I'm not sure if I love the bulletin board with the black and white rug.  That's something that will be easy to change.  Especially since the rug was something I had on hand and did not purchase especially for this space.

I ran out of nailheads.  Oops!

See where the hallway curves around to the left?  I got that all painted, but I still have some art ideas for the walls that haven't happened yet.  Hmmmm, maybe for my March project?!?!

Happy weekend friends!

Monogrammed Towels and other news

This fall and winter has been rough on my family.  It seems like we've caught every single bug, germ, virus, bacteria, and infection that has come our way.  Thank goodness none of the illnesses have been serious, but it still makes me sad (and stressed!) to see my family under the weather.

I feel like our house has been infested with germs and I've started a quest to deep clean, sanitize, and bleach everything in sight.  I fear that we've been sharing germs by sharing towels.  To combat this problem, I thought about buying two new towels in different colors for each member of our family.  K would have blue, C would have pink, etc.  However, I have a linen closet bursting with towels and it seemed wasteful to purchase new towels when we already have so many.

Smart husband came to the rescue and suggested that I monogram our names onto towels.  I have an embroidery machine that I rarely use anymore, so this was a great solution.

I let each family member choose two towels out of our supply and a thread color.  That child would then be responsible for their two towels.  I often find towels on the floor and nobody will admit to not hanging them up.  Now, I will be able to pinpoint the culprit and hopefully we will not share germs.

Here's the embroidery machine hard at work.

In hindsight, I probably should have had each child choose two of the SAME color towels.  Oh, well.

In other news, my sweet little gymnast took third place on bars in the state gymnastics meet last weekend.  I'm so proud of her!

This cool owl was roosting in my brother-in-law's tree.  It stayed there most of the day and we enjoyed watching him.

The girls gave the puppy her first bath.

 And it was exhausting!

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy holiday!

Striped Success!

I have been working on painting stripes in my hallway this week.  Here's my inspiration picture:

Source: google.com via Suzanne on Pinterest

Cassie at Primitive and Proper was also inspired by the same picture and this is her dining room:

My hallway before:

And after!

Painting the stripes was much easier than I feared.  I can't stand when lines aren't crisp and the paint bleeds through.  I thought this might be an issue since my walls are so heavily textured.  However, I didn't have any problems.  I used the green Frog Tape on part of the hallway and the blue Scotch Edge Lock on the other part and they worked equally well.  I just made sure to press the tape down and then I scraped down the edges with the edge of a credit card to get a good seal.

 The kiddos enthusiastically painted some canvasses for the hallway.

 Don't they say, "Never work with kids and dogs?"  They never listen and always try to steal the show!

 This is looking from the hallway into the bathroom I just redid.  I used the same color on the stripes as I used in the bathroom.

All that's left to do is paint the trim a nice, crisp white.  I also have to decide if I'm going to add a chair rail or leave the wall as is.  I painted the stripes a little higher on the wall than I initally envisioned, so the added trim might be at a strange height on the wall.

With trim:

Without trim:

What do you think?

The artistes hard at work.

Our neighbor Shanelle came over to help.

Have a fabulous weekend!  We are heading to Denver for a gymnastics meet and my parents from Minnesota will be meeting us there.  Then on Monday, we get our new Goldendoodle puppy, Emma!

Big Weekend!

Wow, this was a huge weekend for our family.  Chloe had her last soccer game of the season.  You couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day.  That's her in the upper right.

I worked all day Saturday and Big K took the girls camping with another dad and his two kids.  When I woke up and saw frost on the ground, I was worried they might have frozen to death.  But, they all had a great time.

While they were gone, I upgraded the boring builder's grade mirror in the girls' bathroom.

BEFORE

AFTER

Come back tomorrow for a little tutorial on that bad boy.

Biggest news of all is that we picked out a new puppy!  Some of you might remember that we lost our sweet Golden Retriever Gracie to cancer back in August.  We've been debating getting a new dog.  As soon as we saw these pups, we were in love.

They are Goldendoodles and they are so cute they don't even look real.  They are only four weeks old, so we won't be able to bring her home until right before Thanksgiving.  The girls have already named the cutie pie "Emma Kipling Keith."  Why?  I don't know.  She lives about 1.5 hours away so we won't get to visit her again until we bring her home.  So excited!

Rest in Peace Sweet Gracie

We had to put our 11-year old Golden Retriever Gracie to sleep this morning.  She was the sweetest dog you could ever have.  We got her 11-years ago at a difficult time in our lives.  We had just moved to Boulder so I could attend law school.  We were living in a tiny temporary apartment while we were waiting for our house to be built and to top it off, Big K was without a job.  To cheer ourselves up and to get out of the apartment, we decided to go window shopping at the mall. 

While we were there, we saw the tiniest Golden puppy in a pet store.  We weren't planning on getting a second dog (we already had Henry, a 1.5 year old Golden), but we knew we had to bring her home with us.  Gracie immediately brightened up our lives. 

She was always such a good dog, but quite spoiled.  We liked to call her Princess Grace.  She liked to be comfortable and we would find her curled up or splayed out on her back sleeping all over the house.  She didn't like to be hot, and one of her favorite spots was with her face resting on the air conditioning vent.  Henry and I would run together and we tried to take Gracie a bunch of times, but she would just stop after a few blocks and would NOT move.  Running was not for her.  But, how she loved the water.  She could paddle around effortlessly for hours.

Even though she never had puppies, she was a mama dog.  She loved all of our babies so much and we joked that she thought they were her pups.  She would always be right next to the babies watching over them.  She was also a flirt, known as the Prancy Princess.  She would prance right up to strangers and beg to be petted.

We loved her so much.  We never thought we would lose two dogs within the course of a year.  Our hearts are broken.  At least we know that Gracie and Henry are together in Heaven and we know that we will all be able to see eachother again one day.  We also still have Tyler, our dog we got when we lost Henry last year.  He is very sad without his Gracie too.  He keeps walking over and sniffing her bed and then looking out the front door.  We will all miss her sweet spirit.

Floors Before and After

While I have been enjoying myself at my parent's house, my house has been getting a little makeover.  I haven't even seen it yet, but sweet Big K has sent some pictures for me to share with you.  When I left last week, the floors looked like this:

The flooring guys were just ripping up my nasty old carpet as I was leaving for the airport.  By the end of that day, the floors looked like this:

I love it!  Please excuse Mr. T posing in all of the pictures.  The big goofball is so in love with my husband that he can't stand to be out of his line of sight at anytime.  He is also trying to look so handsome that he will get a treat.  I think he deserves one, don't you? 

I can't wait to get home, see my doggies, buy a new rug, and arrange all of my furniture on that CLEAN floor.  Speaking of clean, I am thinking about buying a steam mop for all of the wood and tile floors I now have. 

Do you have a steam mop?  Would you recommend a certain brand?