Olive's First Halloween: Progress Report III

I gave up on the plume. Nearly spent more on a boa with the correct tinsel (white with gold, for those wondering) than I did on fabric. It arrived with new trimming sheers for little Ms. Barky McBarkenstein (thank DH for that one, even though she is remarkably quiet for a Sheltie) so I was very excited. Sheers are awesome (tidy paws and ears now, so cute), boa not so much. It's a sad, sad, sad boa. If I were going for a ridiculous May West costume, it might have worked but with it going to be a very small section for the chicken, it would look just weird. Also, it shed everywhere and Squishface (my name) tried eating the pieces*.

The boa is now sitting on my scrap pile until I decide what to do with it. I never put a plume hole in her shako (which is adorable) so it's not a big loss. There's a weird pucker on the top that I need to touch up that I was hoping the plume would hide. Otherwise her costume is done.

 Not her costume, but still cute (pre ear and paw trim)

Made three epaulets (one was sewn with buckram forgetting that that stuff doesn't bend and it when flipped inside out should not be between the front and back). Sewed button holes for the epaulets and the cape. Used fancy gold-plated buttons (Fabric Warehouse 5 packs for $2 sale) to attach everything. Freaked out about the zipper (only had a white invisible, should have gotten a white separable) decided to do a fake lapped zipper and have with a gap at the top and bottom (also didn't have the right length). Freaked out about which type of hooks to use, ended up sewing in two different types before realizing I'm worrying about a dog's costume. Drank a lot of cups of tea (Early Grey, hot- also, Turkey Hill Diet Green Tea). Cooed a lot over Ms. Smooshface (DH's name, again) and how cute her costume was).

Olive (halfheartedly tried to convince DH we needed to remain her Oveta after Col. Oveta Culp Hobby) will likely debut it this Saturday at the Petsmart Howl-o-ween, there are at least two we will also do. So no pictures until then.

Waiting very patiently for DH to finish making her special dinner (between trims)

*Discovered that she will eat anything. Also, discovered she has as sensitive a tummy as her mom. Hello, Saturday morning vet visit and "special" food that requires a scrip. Also, special ear drops for her mild reaction to something that she ate.

Russian Apple-Thing with Salted Caramel Sauce

Pretty much taken verbatim from Smitten Kitchen

The way our old church did things, home groups could rotate hosts for a group meal with everyone contributing. For our home group we had to be slightly conscious of not having too weird of foods. While I love “weird” (aka non-generic-American) foods* some people did not care for them. Well, we were having something, maybe brisket, that begged for something lighter and I thought this looked good. But what’s a cake without some sort of icing?

What I changed:

-          I used the springform pan we had that isn’t quite a spring form but I’m not sure what it is then, it's like a really tall-sided removable bottom tart pan.

-          I added the Caramel Sauce also from Smitten Kitchen

Other Thoughts:

      -     I would mix the apples with the custard, it didn’t sink as much as I would like, or maybe I wasn’t patient enough. I probably wasn't patient enough knowing me. Patience. Not a virtue I'm terribly known for (though I hold I found my Christmas presents by accident, I can wait for that at least)

*My family has Rømmegrøt every Christmas Eve when we get together. I made DH have a bowl his first Christmas with us. I cackled. I’m trying to convince him that fiskeboller with white sauce are delicious (they are, at least that I remember from the last time I had them ... which was probably more than a decade ago) since I've given up on lutefisk and he had a bad experience with geitost last Christmas. He at least agreed to a kransekake at the wedding reception (my dad insisted so there wasn't so much of an option). He does love cardamom bread, at least.

Olive's First Halloween: Progress Report II

Olive's costume needs:

Shako Brim
Shako Emblem (trying to figure out how to do that, may be lazy and just make a star)
Shako Strap (do not trust her to keep it on out of the kindness of her heart)
Shako Top Piece
Chicken Plume (must be a universal thing, my high school band called them chickens, and my college band called them chickens... despite being separated by ~1500 miles)
Epaulets (not sure I'm doing these. Me=Lazy)
Cape Buttons
Zipper (or some sort of secure method, I don't have a separating zipper so that puts me in a sticky place)
New Hem on the Coat (positive I measured correctly but surprise...)

I think that's it... that just seems like so much but it really isn't. I'm on the fence about some of these - do I really want to hem the coat? It's reminiscent of my uniform junior year. I could have been a good 6 mo pregnant and not needed a new uniform. Senior year at least it was near perfect. Like it should since it was built to my measurements (or near enough, whatshisface has no idea where the waist is and put my high hip for my waist measurement so that was a wee bit roomy). Epaulets may look silly since her "shoulder" is so sloped (nevermind that's now how you measure the shoulder on quadrupeds) but I'm wondering if I need to hide the attachment of the cape... I still have a month to figure it out.

Here's how fitting has gone most times...

 

"I'm not so sure about this..."

 "That's the cookie bag!"

 "Yay! Cookie!"                        

Since she forgets she is getting a cookie until the very end (every single time), I feel that it's not a bribe. More a reward. Or compensation. Whatever. She gets a cookie, I question my ability to measure correctly.
I swear I measured her several different times but somehow all of the pattern pieces were too big and I ordered far too much fabric. Now I'm tempted to make a cape for myself, just because I miss mine and we didn't have them with the new uniforms and that made me very sad (just like the news about the changes to Homecoming this year. I want to know who thought that was a good idea. But I digress). I have no idea how to draft an armhole for a dog so I aired on the side of caution and it's huge. Like I could fit my arm through probably (I am not trying, I remember what happened when I tried on an old ballet costume. I think my mom almost laughed herself sick while looking for the seam ripper).

But you can see that Olive's ruff is coming in so very nicely. Three months ago it would have barely puffed up and would have looked very sad. Now it's adorable. I just need to remember to hide her tags for photos. I really want to get her a new ID tag- DH put the wrong zip code on the back (before we moved) and it is heavy for her heavy martingale collar, not the thin safety collar. We switched so her coat wouldn't separate as much- no worries, we still use the martingale for walks (or as she knows it "potty", I'm not sure how she figured that out, wish she knew "walk" instead) so there won't be a pretty-much-Sheltie running loose. If we didn't use a martingale she would have slipped her collar long ago when we were just starting on leash manners,.

Peg people

At some point in the wedding planning I wanted a peg people topper and DH humored me. They were really popular at the time, usually with the people in their ceremony attire. They were especially popular with the hipster crowd (which we are not, unless you count liking a certain off campus coffee shop frequented by the slack line and chaco wearing crowd). When DH and I started deliberately hanging out, it was Halloween and I was mechanic!Kaylee from Firefly/Serenity. However, I thought her pink!Dress was more wedding appropriate and since … well if you saw Serenity, you know.  So I set out to make my own. I posted this DIY on another site a while ago but I’ve edited it a bit.

 

Photo By Epic Photography

Olive's First Halloween: Progress Report I

My hometown's fair kicks off the funnel-cake season for the area (yes, it's a season). We discovered when I was still young enough that they had a children's pet show that had a best dressed class in each division that qualified for BIS, additionally, the 4H region (could have been district) fair also had a pet show that was not limited to 4H projects (thankfully, since I was horseless member of the year for the county the year before and nothing changed since then sadly, but DH has promised me a pony within the next decade. I'm holding him to that). A couple years before my parents took in a Sheltie when his owner moved out of the area. He became my guinea pig for drafting costumes. He was Harry Potter, a pony, and a sheep before I aged out of the division and he got too old to put up with that nonsense.

Until a sewing table is constructed, I use the dining table for all my sewing needs. Yippee...

Avocado Salmon Buttered Toast Salad

Let's kick things off with a recipe- for most cases I will post the link for the recipe for the time being .
This came from: Joy the Baker's Buttered Crouton Salad

DH and I loved this salad. I blame my family’s Norwegian-ness for my love of smoked fish and this salad is perfect. I bet you could use broiled or grilled fish instead but we weren’t allowed to have a grill at the old apartment and I'm holding out until we can have fit a full sized grill soo… smoked it is! I wouldn’t try herring on here though, a little too oily. We used a bag or two of mixed spring greens since I thought they worked well, I suppose you could use regular lettuce (DH wanted butter lettuce, he loves it).

Thoughts:
      -     Watch the toasting, without fail, I burn one side of one batch (or myself)*. Good luck.

Things I changed:

-          Nothing**

I miss the balcony, yes, the railing was wide enough that Olive could slip through if she saw a squirrel, and the neighbors smoked which wafted  over, and I could hear sirens from a busy street and there was terrible traffic outside... but there was a good deal of privacy and a great relatively-quiet walking trail was 30 steps away. Goodness this is longer than a caption should be and I haven't even covered the interior...

* First, I should preface by saying I come from a very accident-prone family. Best way to get DH to cringe is to start trying to figure out "whose turn" it was to go to the ER on my side. Anyway, I have a scar on my  hand thanks to this recipe. Wasn't watching what I was doing and was holding a very hot pan in my non-dominant hand and oops, there's a blister. So pay attention, don't wave hot pans around, and you should be fine.

 

**Not a complete lie but sometimes we buy a longer length of smoked salmon and then have lox and bagels for a week, too. I think that's 10 oz. Pretty sure you're not supposed to have that much fish in a week, but meh. Olive has a fish formula dry food (switching her to a buffalo formula after this bag is finished since we now live near a store that carries higher quality food and her current food changed formulas and I don't like it) and she's fine. Yes, I'm using my dog's nutritional needs as a justification of my own.

Meet Olive

I meant to publish this earlier but we went to the beach and I had homework (I didn't miss that at all this summer, or last semester...) so things got away from me.

Anyway, this is Olive. We adopted her at the end of June and since then she has gotten a number of nicknames: Stinkerface, Stinker, Fluffy One, Fluffy Puppy, etc. Every single one she deserves.

As far as anyone can tell, she's a little over a year old (for listing purposes her birthday will be a year before we took her home). She was picked up as a scruffy, flea-infested stray a little over a month before we got her. The rescue got her from the shelter where she was fostered for about a month while the fleas were killed off and she recovered from her spaying (not only is it state law for rescue dogs to be spayed, she is so far from breed standard that it would be irresponsible to allow her to be bred, even if we had her history.) Once her adult coat comes in, we're going to try to list with AKC's PAL (purebred alternative listing) since she still doesn't look entirely Sheltie, or least a "proper" one. But her coat has come a long way since we adopted her. Our goal next year is to pass the Canine Good Citizen test. CGC's test is a good benchmark of what we need to work on since she was a bit of a pain on a leash (still pulls a little but now doesn't sit down at random points, she needs to walk on a loose leash for the test) and cowered at moving vehicles (a passing bike is a possible movement test).

Provided we can get all that settled, we'll take a stab at a pre-agility class or the herding instinct test (assuming we get her listed with PAL). I'm not sure which I prefer, since they have different relationships between the dog and the handler. While she likes being close and wants to please, I think the independent thinking of herding may be good for her. We'll see how this next year goes.

In the mean time, we'll stick to silly tricks. Keeps everyone happy and keeps her from destroying too many toys- one a week is her limit (yes, really... we blew the toy budget in the first month).