Summer Fish Tragedy Adverted

You may remember on Monday after Molly got skunked I really hoped that it wasn't a sign of the week to come.  I mean, Monday really was a week's worth of excitement packed into 15 seconds of adrenaline rush followed by two days of hydrogen peroxide bath time fun.  So after Molly got skunked on Monday I was hoping for a quiet week.  I had a Pinterest party on Wednesday with some girls from school.  The food was fabulous! I should have taken a picture to post on Facebook to induce some food envy.  It was that amazing.  But I was too busy stuffing my face to slow down to snap some pics.  Thursday I had a computer class at school and Friday a good friend, Sam, came into town so some friends got together for dinner.  I had planned a full week.

Instead it was a full week of animal drama.  After Molly got skunked, she then proceeded to come down sick.  I don't know if getting sprayed by a skunk can make you sick or it was coincidence but she came down with something and was drooping and clingy.  I was happy by Thursday that she was just happy to be in the same room with me all the time and not trying to walk between my legs, sit on my feet and generally cause a hazard wherever I went, not to mention her aroma which until I bought a new bottle of hydrogen peroxide still was a light (being polite) scent-o-skunk.  I recommend making sure you use a fairly new bottle of peroxide when dog washing skunked dogs.  The stuff apparently does follow its expiration date.  Who knew?

But back to what you're here to find out about.  As I was heading out Friday night for a small girl's night out, Dustan was getting ready to take the pups out for a stroll.  Which is all you really can do in this heat.  Before he went he decided he'd better feed our summer fish.  In case you were unaware, this summer we have a 50 gallon (or in other words, very large) fish tank with Gage's (my brother-in-law) 5 fish.  We are watching them while he is off galivanting around the globe leading the carefree life of a recent college graduate.  We fully support this lifestyle, just not financially.  Having the fish has been quite fun.  I've renamed them all for Gage.  They are fun to watch.  I truly enjoy trying to discipline Rainbow Fish when he's bullying the others, it's the kindergarten teacher in me. 

A picture of the fish tank along with its stand to give you an idea of it's size. Underneath and hidden is the full filtration system.  Dustan added the doors so you can't see it. 

As Dustan went to feed the fish he realized that one of the Tres Amigos (the 3 yellow giraffe cichlids)  was missing.  Our summer fish never miss dinner.  As he started looking around, AKA looking at the top to make sure we didn't have a floater he realized there was now Dos Amigos in the fish tank.  He then proceeded to do a full sweep around the perimeter of the very large fish tank with no sightings. It wasn't until he got to the back and to the very complicated filtration system that he found Un Amigo floating tail up in the sucker outer contraption on the back side of the fish tank.  It may be at this point I was a teensie bit disappointed he didn't stop to take a photo but do understand why.  Probably assuming the worst Dustan quickly shut down the entire tank, which is a task as not only do we have a HUGE fish tank we also have an additional ~15 gallon tank under the fish stand that is its own full super filtration system for the larger tank.  Apparently you when you get into fish you get into them big or go home.  Dustan removed said sucker out contraption, revived Un Amigo with timely CPR and put him back into the main tank.  He said it was touch and go there for a little bit.

A picture of behind the fish tank to show how it is set up.  Un Amigo must have gotten into the black filter inside the tank then sucked out through the clear tube into the clear plastic box behind the tank.  Luckily the clear box always has water running through it.

 It's at this point that I would be remiss to not remind you of how hysterical Nemo's dad got any time Nemo would go near the filter in Finding Nemo.  The other fish thought he was over reacting and being paranoid.  We spent quite a bit of time examining the fish tank last night and cannot figure out how Un Amigo ended up where he did.  He had to have gotten sucked down some rather small tubes.  Virtually impossible to believe unless you've seen Finding Nemo.   

All the fish this morning.  Rainbow Fish is to the left and Tres Amigos are reunited.  When a giraffe cichlid suffers trama all of his spots will fade away.  I didn't look that up, I know this from direct observation.

Skunked!

It started off like any good Monday should-with a bit of unwelcome excitement.  I was happily rolled up in covers when the distinct smell came drifting throughout the room.  The smell that all dog owners try to avoid at all costs, because although the remedy is cheap, the work to fix the problem is is hard.  I immediately popped up and realized although S'more had come into the bedroom she was not the problem the whiney, bouncy dog locked in the backyard was, Molly.  It was just that S'more had to sit next to Molly on the ride home and she was a bit miffed at getting the aroma. 

The pups on a skunk free walk.

Let's back up a couple of weeks.  Several weeks ago Dustan took the dogs out to our favorite off leash walking area.  He and S'more came upon and surprised a skunk early one morning.  Luckily, S'more being a worldy dog knew exactly what that white stripe meant and slowly backed away from the skunk and Dustan and her were able to make a clean get away.  I've always said a skunk is as scared of you as you are of it, so if you can move slowly, no one gets hurt.  Then probably a week later walking through the woods the three of them came upon another skunk.  S'more once again used her age to her advantage and didn't make any sudden movements.  Molly on the other hand, who had missed the first encounter, dove head first into the brush to start to chase this new critter.  She obviously has never encountered the striped-colored kind.  Luckily, after yelling and probably freaking out, Dustan's calm returned and he and S'more started running away from the woods (and skunk) and called Molly's name.  Molly does not like to be left out and she quickly came running with them.  She probably thought they were going to go off and do something great and she didn't want to miss out.  Twice Dustan had gotten lucky on their morning walks.  You know what they say about the third time.

Which brings us to this morning.  I was happily dreaming in bed as the pups and Dustan left a little after 6 for their morning constitutional.  It started out like any other walk, dogs happily running around smelling things, Dustan walking behind them and generally it was a happy morning.  Less than 15 minutes into their walk things changed.  They came upon a skunk.  Dustan and S'more were smart and slowly backed away.  Molly, being young, not so wise with age, and I'd say this incident confirmed it, never having had a real skunk encounter made the not so smart choice or as we say in kindergarten, she made a bad choice.  She took off through the brush and brambles chasing as hard as she could that fluffy little ground hovering mammal as fast as she could.  (For effect you should now imagine Dustan yelling.) As she was closing in on the critter, they're not very fast, he apparently made the decision to open up on her.  It was a good direct hit which sent her scurrying back to Dustan and S'more who immediately wanted nothing to do with her.  There was nothing left to do but turn around and head home. 

There aren't too many good ways to be awoken in my opinion.  The smell of skunk has to rank right up there as one of the worst.  Remember I was awoken by the dog who hadn't been hit by the skunk.  The one in the backyard was terrible.  I immediately threw on some old shorts and went to the pantry where I keep my de-skunking kit.  Here's what you'll need: 1 quart Hydrogen Peroxide, 1/4 cup baking soda, and 1 tablespoon Dawn dishwashing soap. It has to be DAWN!  It says right on the bottle, "Dawn helps save wildlife".  I always use liberal amounts of Dawn, way more than the 1 tablespoon, if a little is good, a lot has to be better, right?

I mixed it up in a large bowl and headed outside with husband in tow.  Luckily, Molly likes to be near us so she wasn't completely opposed to the bath as S'more would have been.  At one point she sat down and really seemed to be living up the massage she was getting.  Dustan did the honors the first time through.  There is no need to wet down your dog before you start applying the solution.  Just apply it straight to the coat and concentrate it to the location where your dog was hit.  Or if you're really lucky like us and can't figure out where that was, just apply liberally all over working it into their coat.  Usually it takes two applications to get the majority of the smell out.  After letting Molly dry out for a couple hours this morning I went ahead and did a second application right before lunch.  It wasn't as easy as I had to do it by myself.  It's easier to either have two people or do it in the bathtub (I personally only do this in the winter, with the fan running on high and a strong beverage).  Don't forget to soak the dog collar in this solution as well.  It hold skunk smell incredibly well.

Molly is smelling fairly good right now.  I wouldn't say she smells as good as she did pre-skunk but then again she is a dog. (To be fair to my readers S'more and I are sitting in the TV room and Molly is in the living room, her choice.)  To smell it on her I do have to get close and put my nose up against her, which she thinks is really, really weird that I keep coming up to her and sniffing her.  Humans!  S'more had a great time this morning as well.  She usually gets a little miffed when we spend time with Molly and exclude her.  Not this morning.  She sat in front of the sliding glass door and watched the action and laughed.  I took a picture of her laughing but I had to open the sliding glass door becasue Molly had shaken so much water on it by this time it would have been fuzzy so some of S'more's smirk isn't quite as smirky as it was when we were chasing Molly around the back. 

Molly after her second bath this morning. 

S'more laughing at Molly from the comforts of the house.

Busy Bag-Popcicle Match Game

Last weekend my niece came to visit and I was able to try out my first busy bag idea I made, the magnetic pom-pom activity, on her.  She seemed to like it.  We'll see if it is able to entertain her long term. 
This week I worked on making a color matching game.  It's a simple game of matching felt made popcicles with the same colored popcicle stick.  The original game was made by glue two pieces of felt together, however, I didn't feel that would last very long with a youngster so I decided to sew my mine to make sure they are sturdier. 
I purchased various colors of felt squares and colored popcicles.  I started by making a template of a popcicle.  I then traced the template onto the felt squares.  I doubled up the felt and cut out two popcicles at the same time. 

I then put a popcicle stick on the top of the popcicle and traced it.  By tracing and then sewing around the popcicle stick it will make a pocket for the kid to put the popcicle stick.

I chose to use the zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine.  I started by sewing around the stick I traced. Make sure your stitches stay on the outside of the tracing you did of your popcicle stick, otherwise your stick won't fit into the pocket for the stick when you are done.  I continued to sew around the outside of the popcicle to close the two pieces of felt up. 

I did this for all of the colors of felt I had.  I made six popcicles due to the fact that the set of colored popcicles I bought had 6 colors of popcicle sticks.  If this was a for a little bit older kid you could write the color word on a plain popcicle stick to make it a little bit more challenging.  For a two year old I liked the challenge of matching colors to colors right now.  I could always swap out harder sticks as time goes on.  

To store the game I recycled an old deli meat container I had.  It was the perfect size for holding the pieces for the game. 

I made two sets of these games while I was at it.  I suggest you either make a couple of sets for friends while you do it because changing out the thread on your sweing machine can get tedious or using invisible thread.  I found this to be an easy project to make the whole process took only about 30 minutes from start to finish (for 1 set).  I didn't worry about my sewing being perfect whiche made for the quick project.  

Famous for a Day

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I was going to host a Pinterest Party at my house for a few friends from school.  The ideas was to get together and work on some ideas we'd seen on Pinterest for our classrooms that we normally don't have time to work on due the busy school year.  After I posted about the upcoming party a friend from high school, Holan, contacted me and asked me if I'd be willing to write a guest blog for her website Gadget Girl.  Holan knows all things technology related and was wanting a teacher's perspective on using Pinterest.  I was more than happy to oblige and today my guest blog was posted in 11 newspapers is 4 states!  While I'm basking in my 15 minutes of fame you might like to go over to her website and read my blog entry and find out exactly what we worked on at my party.  Here's the link:
http://www.gadgetgirltips.com/guest-post-pinterest-teacher-party/
For those of you from my hometown who would like to read it in what is the closest thing to our hometown newspaper you can go here:
http://www.leavenworthtimes.com/community/blogs/gadget_girl_tips_blog/x810163832/Guest-Post-Pinterest-Teacher-Party

The funny thing you should know when you read this post is I was told to keep it to 400-600 words.  As most know, I write like I talk, which means I'm a bit wordy.  When I finished I had a 1300 word post that I worked very hard to trim down.  Eventually, I got it cut down to 746 words which was as far as I could go.  What you read on Gadget Girl is that post.  Luckily, Holan is nice and didn't make me try to par it down further.

Busy Bag for Toddlers

I have a niece who is 2 1/2 years old.  She is the smartest kid I know.  And I would know, I teach kindergarten so I see a lot of kids all of the time.  She's like most kids, busy all of the time and activities only keep her attention for short periods of time before she tires and is looking for the next thing.  It's part of being 2 1/2.  Her stamina (a teaching term) for activities is 15 minutes if you're really lucky.  I mean really lucky, unless you're in her swimming pool, swimming pools are NOT included in the stamina calculation. 

My sister-in-law keeps very busy with my niece and 3 month old nephew.  If you've ever had kids I'm sure you're aware that like to have your attention all of the time even when it's not their turn.  I found a couple of neat solutions to keeping your toddler busy while perusing Pinterest one evening.  I pinned the idea onto my Niece/Nephew board with the idea of going back later and looking at my pin.  Boy am I glad I did.  I went to a blog of a mother of several young children who decided to have a busy bag swap.  I was curious as I'd never heard of a busy bag.  Busy bags are small activities that can be performed by your young child independently and (hopefully) keep them busy for 10-15 minutes while you get a bite to eat, feed the baby, grab a quick shower, need to wait in a waiting room, attend church without drawing too much undue attention to yourselves and the list goes on and on.  What this mom did was have all of her friends agree to come to her busy bag swap (she invited 20 friends) and her friends each brought 20 of the same busy bag activities and then the moms all traded their various busy bags so when they left they had 20 different busy bags that could hopefully entertain their children in various times of need.  I wasn't so interested in the swap idea but I was very interested in the different activities they'd made for their busy bags. 

For my first idea I decided to make an easy activity for my niece.  It's an activity board with magnets.  All I needed was some pom-poms, magnets and metal burner covers for the stove. 

I started by gluing large and medium sized pom-poms onto the magnets with hot-glue.  I used a fair amount of glue because I figured kids are hard on things. 

After gluing the pom-poms on I was done!  I put 26 pom-poms on the magnetic burner cover.  A child can manipulate the different pom-poms on the cover to make pictures or get in some fine motor skill practice.  Super easy and took me all of 10 minutes to make.  I actually made two; one for my niece and one for a friend's little boy at school.

Of course the true test of how busy this keeps a kid will be when I give it to my niece.  

Saving Christmas Cards

I love receiving old fashioned paper Christmas cards.  When they come in the mail I like to tape them to my kitchen cabinets to display them like my grandma did when we were kids.  I like them so much that they stay hanging well past when the other Christmas decorations come down.  I know I took them down in March once. 
I took down this year's cards and placed them in our basket where we store all our bills.  Probably not the best place for storage since important things do get put in the basket on a regular basis.  But I couldn't part with them.  Once my Pinterest habit got going into full swing after Christmas I found the cutest things to do with your Christmas cards that would allow me to keep my cards and even display them in the following years.  How cool would it be to be able to look back at Christmas cards from years past to see how friends' kids have grown?  I knew where all my old Christmas cards from 2011 were so it wasn't a hard craft to put together.  To get started you'll need a hole punch, ring and Christmas cards.

I pulled out all the cards from the bill basket, which was a blessing, really.  I then took a hole punch and punched a hole in the top left corner of each card.  On cards that went horizontal I actually punched in the bottom left. 

I bought a metal ring from The Lob and placed all of my cards on the ring.  I highly suggest that you make sure your rings open and close before you purchase, mine didn't and required a little help from the hubby and wire cutters to do this step.  But I'm sure you're much wiser than me. 

After I had all the cards on the ring I decided it was neat looking and served its purpose well but might still be missing something.  So I decided to add a quick label to the front of the cards so as the years past I wont have to rely on my memory in the future.  So I added my label and it was complete.  

The only suggestion I have is if you have your own Christmas card that you sent out that you put it on the ring as well.  I think it would be a nice memory to see your Christmas card from that year as well. 

Chicken Salad-So Southern!

I had a few teacher friends over Monday to work on school projects. Since I was hosting this time I was in charge of the main meal.  I decided to go "southern classic" and have chicken salad sandwiches, very 1950s if you will.  I'd made chicken salad before but it is a thrown together modge-podge of various ingredients, which is very similar to my tuna salad recipe of my childhood. 

Since I was having friends over, that I don't need to impress but didn't want to look inept in front of either I went looking on Pinterest for a good recipe.  I quickly came across a pin on Pinterest of the top 10 chicken salad recipes which took me to the My Recipes website.  After scrolling through several I finally found the recipe of my heart's desire, Honey Chicken Salad.  I read the recipe carefully and found none of the ingredients to be too objectionable (I always consider nuts optional).  To cook my chicken I decided to use my crock pot after discussing with my good friend Jen (visit her cooking blog at : http://www.whatscookingatjenshouse.blogspot.com/) how to cook chicken in this method.  The easy version is to put a bunch of chicken breasts in the crock pot with some water or chicken stock and other seasonings that you like and let it go for the day.  I personally chopped up an onion and put in some black pepper and that was it.

Once the chicken was cooked it was time to shred it.  I do NOT like shredding chicken, two forks a plate and a mound of chicken doesn't bring out the best in me.  That's when I had a stroke of brilliance.  Why couldn't I put it in my Kitchen Aid mixer and let it do the work?  So I decided to give it a shot and boy was I happy!!!  I cut the chicken breasts up into ~1/4 pieces and then put the rest of the chicken salad ingredients in with the chicken.  I turned on the mixer and I've never been happier.  I used the paddle in my Kitchen Aid, the one most people use for mixing cookies, and it when to work shredding that chicken up and mixing all the ingredients at the same time.  I can't remember the number of times I've skipped recipes because they've called for shredded chicken and I refuse to spend the time doing.  Never again will I miss out because a recipe calls for shredded chicken. 

Honey Chicken Salad
4 C cooked chicken, shredded
3 celery ribs, chopped
2/3 C sweetened, dried cranberries
1/2 C mayonnaise
3/4 C Miracle Whip
2 T honey
1/4 t salt
1/2 t pepper

I put all the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid mixer and turned it on and let her rip until it was all a consistent mixture.  I'm from the Midwest and I like Miracle Whip, the actual recipe called for mayo so I used a little.  The recipe also called for pecans but, I don't like nuts, so I didn't use them either.  If you'd like to see what the actual recipe called for before I tweaked it, go here: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/honey-chicken-salad-10000001194629/

My chicken salad on croissants with a salad I made to go with it.

 I served the chicken salad on croissants and it was a big hit with my friends but even more surprisingly Dustan said I could make it for him anytime. 

Summer's Gone to the Dogs

One of the first recipes I made off of Pinterest was for our dogs.  It was a summer "ice cream" recipe. Apparently, lactose is hard for dogs to digest so it is recommended that you don't give your dog real ice cream.  Someone should tell S'more that as she has gone to Dairy Queen with me for as long as I have had her and had her own vanilla ice cream cone.  S'more is my first as a grown up dog and she is 10 years old.  I adopted her when she was two from the shelter here in Manhappiness.  She's been a great dog and a true testament as to why shelter dogs make wonderful pets.  Molly is our 2 1/2 year old also from the same shelter.  We are currently going through our terrible teen years with Molly.  Actually, once Molly realized that we have rules and the rules are going to be consistently enforced every time she has turned into a great dog.  She'd be the first to tell you it is hard to live in the shadow of a great dog like, S'more. 

Molly is on the left in the back and S'more is in the front to the right. 

Once summer hit I wanted to treat our dogs to the refreshing cool of ice cream.  Trying to be a conscience dog owner, left me in a little bit of a quandary.  Then one day as a was perusing Pinterest I came across the recipe for Frosty Paws.  Frosty Paws uses a recipe that calls for using yogurt and apparently yogurt has less lactose than ice cream so it is better for your pup.  (I don't research these claims.)  I immediately decided I was going to make these recipes for our dogs, well, because it sounded like so much fun! 

If you Google Frosty Paws recipe you'll get many different variations on what is essentially the same thing.  I used the following recipe, which combined suggestions from several different recipes:
Frosty Paws
1-32 oz. container Vanilla Yogurt
2 T Peanut Butter
2 T Honey
4 oz. Banana baby food (or 1 banana smashed)
Combine all ingredients until smooth.  Pour into small cups and freeze. 
*If your dog has a weight problem you could use fat free yogurt.  You can substitute in various fruits for the banana for a new flavor.  If you use Dixie cups like I did, be sure to pull the paper off first just in case you have a dog who isn't bothered by a little paper getting in the way of a tasty treat.  Molly is part goat and will eat the paper if I don't pull it off.

 For fun I decided to freeze some of the recipe in the pups Kongs.  Molly's dog trainer, Nadja, from Mutt School here in Manhappiness, recommends freezing different concoctions in Kongs to occupy dogs and stimulate their brains to work for their food.  S'more was all about the frozen Kongs.



S'more working diligently on getting her treat out of her Kong.

 Molly thought it was a lot of work and didn't have the stamina (a teacher term) to stick with it.  So S'more was more than happy to help Molly finish hers. 

Molly exhausted from all that hard work.