Happy 4th Barkday!!!!

The "Barkday Girl"

 Hard to believe our favorite girl is 4 today and we brought her home 3.5 years ago! (It seems so much longer than that! HA!) But, I digress... ;-] So here are a bunch of my favorite photos of our princess...

One Day Old

The pic that made me fall in love... ;-]

Doin' what she does best with her mama!

Funny long-dog. ;-]

Finally, our LOL dog-in-training! heh

Love our Reeser - she really lights up our lives. Can't imagine not having her in our family. Thanks to Diana Mann at Fernbriar and Marla Gardner at CardiRidge for allowing us to bring her home with us that fateful day in November 2007. =]

Moving fun

We have been packing/moving fools this weekend. Got the okay from the bank and we are on our way outta here! Made a couple of trips to the storage unit and did a lot more packing. Hopefully we will be living in the new place by next weekend. As a result, posts will be few and far between in the coming few weeks or so. Please bear with us, we will be back! (And, if you wouldn't mind crossing your fingers for great moving weather for us, I'd be ever-thankful! Iowa is famous for being finicky in spring!) =] 

Without further ado...here are some pics as proof that we must enlist the help of our fur herd to make this move somewhat fun...=]

Cats like views from on high. So, we thought maybe the dogs would like a good view too.

Reese is calm. Walt = not quite sure!

On alert.

She's an old pro. Very patient with us while we get our kicks with the camera. ;-]

Walt sez, "Ha! See, I have a sense of humor too."

Everybody smile for the camera! Wait, where's the Loki?

Ah Ha! He was hiding, so we "helped" him join the fun.

Loki not amused. =|

*pouty face*

They are such good sports, don'tcha think?! 

What a way to end a long day @ work...

With two happy-to-see-me corgis! =]  Happy Saturday Blog-Hop!

they demand that I get down on their level and lavish them with love...

...and I'm not complaining one bit. =]

...Like buttah!

Ryan came across a really...interesting video the other day. It is a guy showing us how to make butter from real cream, and I admit it...I was totally up for trying it out cuz it just sounds so wonderful. I love butter! REAL butter, that is.

Here's the video...see for yourself!

And, after a few days of trying to remind ourselves to set the cream out at a reasonable time so we would be able to work with it 12 hours later, we did it!! WE MADE BUTTER! I dunno why, but I just feel so good about myself knowing that I can do something like that. I love to create, and I strive to do things naturally when possible. Plus, it's just so simple. Simple enough that you can't really make any excuse about being lazy. We used an empty pickle jar. No - the butter did not taste or smell like pickles...but I'm surprised, to be honest, because the lid still had a faint pickle smell in the rim. =]

Here are some pictures of our adventure with butter-making!

Shaking it up!

The results of shaking for 3 minutes

See the butter "globules" and buttermilk are separated now...

straining out the buttermilk and rinsing the butter with cold water

Voila!

Glorious, beautiful, enchanting...butter! ;-]

And of course, the highlight - we melted it onto our freshly steamed veggies for dinner right after it was finished! YUM!!

Now you wanna give it a try, don't ya?! It's worth it...trust me! The texture is so light and fluffy...way better than the stick brick. And, if you rinse the buttermilk off really well with cold water before you store the butter, it keeps quite a while.

~A

Lazy dog days

It's a hard life being Reese and Walt. Have a look-see at the evidence...

Yes, they're on the guest bed and Reese is on guard watch

Walt sez "No flash please."

"Oh fine, I'll just hide my face..."

"Hope she doesn't mind..."

"What? Creeper..."

*such a hard life*

They're not sleeping...just resting their eyes. ;-]