A Weekend with a Champion - a story in pictures.

This weekend Penny's parents were out of town and Otto, Daisy and I got to host a blue ribbon winning bitch (see Dog Show). And what fun we had!

 Hi!  I'm Penny, My mom and dad are out of town and I'm a little concerned. Please be extra nice to me!  I'll do my best to look extra cute to help with the process.

I'd say this photo kind of sums of the weekend. Penny was a blur of motion and Otto was a little concerned by what was going on!

The weekend involved lots of events that never happen when the world is just Otto, Daisy and me. Here is an exciting trip to the dog park. It was about 100 degrees.

After the dog park we panted a lot. Well, Penny panted and drooled and panted and drooled. Otto and I wondered how the heck it was possible to pant so much!

Other fun weekend events

Meals were extra exciting as four eyes watched my every move and made sure I was performing properly (I think I see a tongue sticking out of Otto's mouth)

Penny pulled out every last one of Otto's toys. Otto has a full box of toys that he never (EVER) touches. It was nice to have them get some use. Here the green bone and zebra striped squeaky bone get their play debut!

We played!  Saturday morning the dogs were outside and I heard some strange noises. I went out side and found Otto playing!  As soon as he saw me he abruptly stopped. So I went inside and when it started up again I snuck pictures through the window!

We hiked!  We hiked 8.2 miles.

Mornings were extra fun. Everyone decided that they needed to join me on the bed (Penny actually slept with me - Otto doesn't) Penny decided that mornings on the bed needed to involve bone chewing, hmmmm.)

We went through the car wash, Penny wasn't too sure about that.

And finally, you're probably wondering what Daisy thought about all of this. Well, Daisy wasn't really pro Penny. She spent her weekend either sitting on this table (where i put her food). hissing or sleeping in the dirty clothes bin.

At one point she became super brave (or something) and decided she needed to venture out with the dogs. Penny rewarded her with her bravery by asking her to play. It didn't go over very well. (You'll notice that I decided to make sure I captured the event on film rather than making sure Daisy avoided the conflict).

That was the fun. Penny, come back any time!

New Kitchen Toy

So there is a new appliance in my kitchen. A new appliance which I will not name by name, because I don't want every fool with google access to stumble across my blog every time they want information on this particular appliance (see below for name). It's this cool hand held mini blender that is supposed to be great for making sauces, smoothies and the like.

Now, as you might notice in this picture, this appliance comes with an excess number of accessories. In fact, it comes with so many accessories, that multiple times I went to buy it and then talked myself out of it because I did (and do) not want 4 extra plastic cups and 4 extra plastic lids floating around my kitchen. But, very unfortunately, you cannot buy just the blender. You have to buy all the damn accoutrements as well!  Any, I finally bit the bullet (as it were) and bought blender plus extra plastic crap which will now float around in my cupboard for years, never used. (Yes, Goodwill would be a good option).

Anyhow, as usual, I digress. So, how is it you ask?  Well, it's actually pretty damn cool. I wanted it because every time I make some smaller amount of sauce I pull out my food processor then I have to wash a million things, just for a little sauce. This seemed like much less work.

So far I have used it twice.  Yesterday I made some magic mushroom powder.

This really just involved throwing in some dried porcini mushrooms and grinding for a bit. But it made the process super quick and saved lots of washing.

Then today I made some avo-ziki sauce. Avo-ziki sauce is a paleo/greek version of guacamole. Making it looks a bit like this.....

Again, my new little toy was awesome (though I would recommend not filling the cup completely to the top when trying to grind avocados). It's cool, because when the cup and blade are attached you can take them off the blender and shake. I don't know about you. But when I'm trying to blend thick stuff in a blender, I spend a lot of time trying to stick a spoon in and mix things up, so I'm not just blending the stuff in the bottom over and over again. With my new toy, it's easier and less messy to mix.

Anyhow, so far, aside from the excess plastic, I highly recommend this.... And, if you drink smoothies, you might even like the extra plastic accessories!

FLowers

Hello to all my devoted fans. Sorry, I don't seem to have hit upon a blog inspiration lately, but I have taken a couple pictures that I'm quite proud of and I thought I would share them until I am hit with a fit of genius for a legit post. (I am so hampered in my genius mode, that I had to look up how to ever spell genius. No it is not genious!)

Apologies to my instagram friends who had already seen these.

To come clean, this particular flower had a little photo shot help.

Love this one so much I had to like it myself on instagram (that's a lot of love).

And finally, this last picture, my mom picked a couple flowers to put on my sister birthday cake. She didn't end up using these three which at the time were buds. So I stumbled around with what the heck to do with them. I finally stuck them in this tiny mug. They were so thankful, that by today they were opened up and beautiful!

The Bounty of Nature

While we are still reveling in the glory that is my natural deodorant (can I mention that not one but TWO people want to try it out), let's take a minute and revel in some of nature's other bounties.

The biggest egg in the world from the skagit river ranch

Produced two yolks (two of the eggs in the dozen were this size and double yolked)!  Those are some extra productive chickens. The eggs were so big that the carton came rubber banded shut because it wouldn't stay closed otherwise! Why do people buy eggs from the grocery store?

I don't know if the picture fully captures it, but this blueberry bush is amazing. it belongs to a neighbor and every year it produces the most insane number of huge blackberries. Yes, that is one huge bush. I didn't even know the bushes could get so big (all my blueberry bushes die).

I too am producing bounty. This is my garden. With lots of sun, things are growing like crazy this year! (Don't judge the scraggly chard in the front, I think it's been too sunny for it.)

I have been eating kale out of my garden every day for weeks and I can't keep up with it.

And the broccoli just started up! It's extra tasty (tastier than it looks).

And everyone please note, how pretty everything is when photographed on my counter!  Whoop!