Happy Halloween Everyone!

Behold! Halloween cards! Here's one for those who can't choose between Edward and Jacob... (I made this one for the Shirley's 2 Girls challenge blog's #80 Trick or Treat Challenge) And I love the impending doom in this image:

And this digi stamp nearly killed me with its cuteness. (And worked well for my card made for the Valentines Monthly Star-spangled themed challenge. I couldn't resist checking out a site with that name--I luuuuuuv Valentine's Day!)

And I wasn't alone making stuff for the holiday this weekend. Here's Scott working on his own project. No, it wasn't an airplane made out of sugar and a knife...

It's a Dexter-style slide case! He even made the wooden box, himself. He saw the slide project on Forkable (a very cool site in general. Check it out!)

And just for fun, here's me and Max, my friend Jen K's cat. I love his "What are *you* looking at?!" expression.

Enjoy what's left of this spooky evening. I've got a few more projects to show off, but they'll have to wait till November. That's okay, it's halloween all year in our house!

Vegan Cupcake Thursday...mmmm!

Check it out, Vegan Cupcake Thursday has featured my recipe for Birthday/Gotcha Day Cake for dogs! It's a site I love anyway, but I love it doubly when they feature my Yummy for Dogs Cookbook. :) More exposure equals more donation funds for rescue, since that's what I do with all of the sales of my cook book, and I'd love to have enough money to make all the shelter and rescue animals so wealthy they can each afford to *hire* someone to take care of their every whim until they find a permanent home. Much better than putting these animals down, don't you agree?

So...here's another sample recipe from my book to tempt you (well, your dogs) further...

Carrot Potato Sunflower Biscuits

2 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c corn meal (if your dog is allergic to corn, quick oats may be substituted)

1 small potato

1 lg carrot

1-2 cloves minced garlic

1/2 c sunflower seeds

1 1/4 c water

3 tbsp veg oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a lg bowl combine flour and cornmeal. Use a food processor to shred potato and carrot, then stir in garlic with the shredded mixture. Pour vegetables and seeds into the flour mixture. Stir to combine. Add water and vegetable oil and stir well. If the dough is too dry, add a bit more water, one tsp. at a time. Dough should resemble dense bread dough. Place dough onto a floured surface and knead well, adding flour if your dough is too sticky. Roll out to 1/2" thickness and cut out with cookie cutters of your choice (bone shapes are easy for dogs to grip as they chew, which is why I often use them though I suppose it might seem odd for vegan treats to be shaped like bones. :)) Bake for 50 minutes, checking around 35 just to ensure that they're not cooking too rapidly. Cool and serve.

Rats enjoy this type of treat too. You may want to use itty bitty cookie cutters to keep the serving size appropriate so your ratties don't get *too* squishy!

Happy cooking!

Ribbon Winner, Treasuries, and Wee Puppies

I made my very first Etsy treasuries this week! I was always bemused regarding how one puts these together, and then the other day a button just appeared in front of me. Yay! Now, treasuries are temporary, so these links won't work forever. Click 'em now!

Stuff for you and your pet: Petsy!

Rats and Hamsters and Chinchillas and more: Wee Fuzzies!

Hooray! I'm finally over the Beach Plague! Here I am, pictured outside of Chubby's Tacos (yeah, I hate the name, too, but their tacos rule.) after taking the dogs to Unleashed, the adorable little dog boutique in the same shopping center.

Here's Usagi, enjoying a beverage. Yes, water *is* a beverage. Yeesh. So picky.

Here's Revco, peeing on the trash can outside of Unleashed. He was good enough to pull me outside so he could do this, yet pooped in the middle of the organic dog treat section five minutes later. Naughty puppy!

Now we're travelling back in time. Here is Scott enjoying one of Alex's soooper doooper yummy grilled pizzas. Ever so tasty and brimming with an avalanche of vegan toppings. Hence Scott's enthusiasm.

And here is Alex, the teensy weensy guy who looks kind of like he's waving his arms and cheering. What he's actually doing is flying one of those crazy 2 handled kites. He's extremely good at it. Meanwhile, I can barely handle the single-stringed black triangle looking one with the giant staring sticker eyes leering at you from above. I have to get Scott to do the running around holding it over his head part since that would bang up my spine, so mostly I stand there holding it till it falls down or I get bored and make it fall so I don't have to hold it anymore. Alex's style of kiting is a lot more fun. I'm guessing, though, since I've never actually tried it. But if I were him I wouldn't let me try it either. Broken kites are sad and expensive.

Aaaannnd...here's a wee little royal greyhound. Greyhounds are by far the most popular breed of dog in my Etsy shop. Maybe it's because they're such beautiful dogs, maybe it's because greyhound people are just more devoted than most. What? You're not a greyhound person, and you'd like to contest the statement that greyhound lovers are the most proud of their dogs? Well get on over to my etsy shop. :) Chances are, you can find an homage to your favorite dog type there. (Of course this isn't just a shameless self-promotion! How could you say that?!)

And it's time for a winner! The recipient of 10 yards of cool ribbons handpicked from my stash is...Beth of the second comment on my post. Contact me with your mailing address!

Didn't win this time? Don't worry. I've already got another giveaway in the works. :)

Duh duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh duh nuh nuh nuh...News Update: From the Coast

Okay, the above photos are actually from Myrtle Beach, not Topsail, but it would be awfully strange for me to be scrapbooking photos from the same trip I'm on, anyway. This layout is one of several I have been working on for the "Use Your Stash" class I'm taking. Thus far, it's been pretty effective and encouraging. It's hard to break some of the habits that cause people like me to avoid actually using the cool stuff we pick up to use, then feel intimidated by. Mind you, I still haven't broken into the High Holy Hoarde box, still sitting where it was carried in from the car, unopened this trip. It contains my absolute favorite, often pricey, generally sought after like pirates' treasure then hidden away in said box, items that I adore yet rarely allow myself to actually use. Even when I do use it, I am usually making a gift I really want to wow the recipient with, so I spend hours paralyzed with fear, staring at the object to be altered as if it were an oncoming vehicle. Will I crack this box before heading home? Before the end of the class? Stay tuned.

Now, onto this week's challenges. Unfortunately, I am doing this upload at the last minute, thanks to the irresistable power of The Vacation Nap Fairy. So I'll make this quick. This card is my entry into this week's polka-dot themed challenge at Shirley's 2 Girls. Wish me luck!

And, here's one for the challenge at Mo's Digital Challenge. In case you haven't guessed...special folds is the challenge theme, and I think this one is pretty special.

That's it for this post. I'll be announcing the winner of the ribbon giveaway in the next post, so if you haven't yet entered, now's the time. Good luck! :)

A Winner, an Entry, a Giveaway, and Two Kitties

Toulouse (aka Goosey Goo) decided to give me a hand taking photos of my cards for my etsy site. Check out the nose lick! Cat tongues are so funny. They look like weird little strips of deli ham. He looks a bit like he's thinking about how tasty those guinea pigs on the cards might be. Naughty kitty! Don't eat the pets, please!

I've been working hard on card orders, both for clients and (mostly) for rescue groups who request items for their fund raisers. Ferrets and greyhounds have dominated my workboard, pit bulls are up next, then shelties, then more ferrets, followed by opossums and other wildlife--rescues are quick to find my shop, it seems. :) It's cool to be able to contribute this way, though, since I can't do as much hands-on rescue work due to my physical limitations. It's hard to clean cages, train rescue dogs, or keep up with the administrative needs of a rescue when you're hurting and easily fatigued. Hence: adaptation.

Anyway, this card with the cute Airedale Terrier is one I made just for fun, for a challenge at the Shirley's 2 Girls blog. I'm a fan of her adorable animal stamps, so when I saw that she was looking for Flocked or Feathered cards, a-flocking I did go! It's a bit hard to tell in the photo, but I used black flocking on this little guy's black spots, from tail to that one black ear. Wish me luck!

Continuing on the subject of fun, Saturday was my Stampin' Up party! It's been ages since I've been well enough to have any sort of get together, let alone a party for 12. Teresa, one of my best friends and my Stampin' Up demonstrator, totally made it happen. She was an amazing showman, entertaining the masses with her mad crafting skills, while I hung out with the group upstairs, awaiting their turn in the craft room. She even helped me put my scrap room back together before the party...as you may recall, it was a complete disaster since everything had been pushed to the center of the room so Scott could build cabinets and counters along the walls. I'll post pics in my next blog installment. Scott still has to finish the cabinets at the back of the room and put in the glass fronts in all of the doors, but it's still a kajillion times better than it was and if the amount of time he's spending working in the shed is any indication, he's either going to be done soon, or he's got a second wife living in there.

I forgot to take many pics at the party, but in the one, above, patiently waiting their turns and being adorable are my friends Kitty, Laura, Revco (he's the short one), and Eileen.

If you're looking for a Stampin' Up demo, Teresa is freaking amazing. She hooked me up with loads of free stuff for hostessing and she's a FABULOUS person in general. :) I can't *wait* for the UPS man to come to my door, and not just because he's kinda cute in that little brown uniform.

This little mousie is adorning a project I made for a Fiskateer challenge Angela announced during her tutorial video. Below, you can see the complete project, an envelope for toting around my mail that's in need of answering. My attempt at making the sides expand didn't go so well. I was a couple folds short of making it work, but so it goes. It was a prototype...the next one, hopefully, will actually have expanding capabilities. As for this one, it still does its job and I love that old Pizzazill cardstock I made it out of. Sadly, that line seems to have disappeared so I'm super careful about using up my precious stash. I think we all have something hidden away like that, that we like too much to use.

Relevant to that, I am taking May Flaum's class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, Adventures in Scrapbooking: Use Your Stash. I'm working on homework tonight, which includes picking out a box of stuff you've had on hand for a while and want to use during the class. Among the items are: rub ons galore, a box of ribbons I got free at an Archivers' event, a big tin of buttons in all sorts of shapes, a set of the old Stampin' Up copper Hodgepodge Hardware, and plenty more. Wish me luck!

In celebration of this class theme, I'm going to get some of my ribbon stash moving by sending one lucky reader 10 yards of ribbons from my private stash! These aren't ribbons I don't like or want to get rid of, but gorgeous ribbons I really like that I want to share with someone who is kind enough to read my yapping here.

Here's what you have to do...leave me a comment telling me about something you have in your stash that you've been holding onto for too long, just because you love it too much to use it. Don't forget to include some way for me to reach you, either via a Fiskateer number, an email address, or a link to your blog or whatever. I never received a response from my Martha Stewart winner despite my efforts to reach them, and if I don't hear from them by my next post, I'm going to have to pick someone else to win those supercool stamps.

Speaking of winners, Donna (comment #7), you are the winner of the book giveaway in my previous post! Contact me with your mailing address so I can send it your way!

Whew! Long post! Thanks for reading all the way to the end. :)

Cute Rats, Rescue Cats, and a Craftsy Giveaway!

I began this post last week and somehow got distracted, so I may need to update things a little. Bear with me.

The photo, below is of the gift box I made for Second Chance Pet Adoptions' silent auction. When I got their call for auction items, I knew I wanted to make them something special because they are the rescue that adopted Toulouse to us. Note the many orange kitties representing in this box. Had to give mad props to the ginger cats! :)

Speaking of cats, here's a pic of Weezee, our other kitty. She hates Toulouse, and pretty much any of her fellow felines, but she loves humans. She's the welcoming committee at our house, rushing to the door whenever anyone arrives. She's hard to get a decent picture of because a) black furred animals are more challenging to photograph since their features often disappear in a two dimentional image and b) she is very persnickety about when she will and will not tolerate being photographed.

While I'm showing off my babies, here are my most recent acquisitions, Vince and Howard. Or actually, I should say Howard and Vince, since that's Howard on the left. I adopted them from Carolina Pet Rescue and now that they are neutered, they can be introduced to Wendy. Well...they can as soon as her persistent mites are gone--a leftover from her life as a stray.

Where have I been? San Francisco! This visit we went to Top of the Mark, made a dent in their 100 Martini menu and watched the city disappear.

Here we are! That's Sandy, Carolyn, Darcy and me! Oh yeah, and the fog creeping in behind us.

I've got another giveaway! It's a copy of Crafty Superstar for those of you with Etsy dreams and craft sale intentions. It's not brand spanking new since I read it once, but it's darn close. Besides, it's FREE if you leave a comment and you're picked randomly from all the other commenters.

Some stuff for one of my pen pals and the Mousey Punch Winner.

I'm actually in San Francisco at the moment, but I felt bad about being late with announcing the winner of the Martha Stewart Mouse Border Punch, so I thought I'd better take a moment to make the announcement. And the winner is...

Laura! (Rosegarden) Fiskateer 5939!

Hooray! Please send me your mailing address, Laura, so I can send your punch as soon as I'm home again. :)

I didn't want to post without a photo, so here's a pic of some goodies I'm sending one of my pen pals. I'm a letter writing maniac who loves swapping ATC's, cards, inchies and whatnot, because I love making all of those kinds of little treasures. The thing on the left is a bookmark based on one I saw in an old issue of the Stampin' Up demonstrator magazine my lovely friend Teresa passed on to me because she rules.

I ended up changing the colors, the stamps, the punches, the embellishments, but the basic sketch is the same. It folds over the top of the page you're reading. I'm pleased with how it turned out and might make some more. My favorite part are the little clear buttons lined up down the side. It's neat that the buttons, stamps, and punches all layer on top of each other. The one problem I encountered was deciding which adhesive to use, especially when it came to attaching the clear button. I used a wet glue to attach the punched paper part to the background and a clear mini glue dot to glue the clear button to the punch. If you do it a different way, please leave a comment and let me know about it. I didn't want to use glue dots on both because I was afraid it would be thick and wobbly. I was concerned that clear wet glue would dry with streaks on the clear buttons. Solutions?

The other item pictured is an ATC. I recently picked up this stamp because it was both very inexpected and looked like myself and my cat, Toulouse! Awww! I wanted to use some Flower Soft after poking around the Flower Soft/Stamps of Life blog hop, so I made wee little dandelion puffs. I know dandelion puffs aren't pink, but for the sake of my ATC, let's pretend they are.