There is nothing I love more than making baby cards. And baby cards for surprise baby showers are even better.
My friend at work is having a baby girl in January. So everyone at work got together and fooled her into a surprise baby shower. We paraded it as a department Christmas party. She fell for the whole thing. She had no idea. I love it when a plan comes together.
I have a thing for prams.
I heard the nursery is pink and yellow. I can deliver on that.
The pram was a little plain, so I used my Cuttlebug to emboss little dots onto it. It needed a tiny something extra, and my Hello Baby stamp did the trick.
I kept the ribbon theme on the inside, with a little baby sentiment.
I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.
I am pretty excited for this little girl to be born, I know she's going to be adorable!
I'm even more excited to make her "name" card. I've got some new toys in my scrap room that are perfect for a little girl card. That will just have to wait until she's actually here though. The count down is on!
Since I have to work this weekend we were only able to compete this one Friday night. We only entered Hoopers and Touch N Go, since his weaves have been less than great lately.
We left Coraline at home and took just a few things since we weren't going to be gone for very long. He was pretty fired up all evening, since he got to be an only child for a little while..and we didn't have our usual set up once we got to the trial site.
Hoopers went pretty terribly. The run was going to be difficult anyway. He took off like a bat out of hell and didn't pay attention at all.
We were experimenting with some new filming techniques (read: Jonathan was using his new phone and doesn't know what he's doing) So it accidentally got recorded in double time. Since it was a disaster, and super fast, circus music would be appropriate. So, it won't be featured here.
But I do have our second run.
This is Novice Touch N Go. For those of you not following along, it focuses on the Contact obstacles. It had a couple of difficult spots. Right out of the gate is a discrimination between the tunnel and the A-frame. Luck worked in our favor and he took the tunnel like he was supposed to. After that is a pretty tight little ring of hoops I was afraid I wouldn't have enough time to make it through, but that went well too. The only hiccup we had was he wanted to go back up the back side of the A-frame, but I was able to get him to come back to me and we finished strong! It felt really nice, and it was a great comeback after our Hoopers disaster. If you listen to the audio you can hear Jon's creepy voice saying "yes yes" once he realized we were clear of the difficult parts of the course.
I'm going to toot our horn a little...(it's my show and I can do what I want) The course is the same for all levels (Elite, Open, Novice) and several of the upper level dogs made mistakes costing them their clean runs. In our height class there were 5 dogs..Oliver was the only dog to Qualify. I couldn't be happier! Oh yeah, even despite our hiccup, we came in 12 SECONDS UNDER TIME!! He can be fast if he wants to.
So this was the final trial of the year. I plan to start taking Cora to training in hopes that she'll be ready in 5 months when she's old enough to compete. Our biggest concern is that she'll be a runner-offer. She loves her public.
I have a card on deck..and not many other craft projects planned. I'm hoping to find some time to get my craft on before the year is over. Oh, and we're planning a mini vacation, so there will be photos of that soon.
I made some cards this fall for my Dad, and FIL birthdays.
Man-cards are really difficult, as we've discussed before..no bows, jewels, or ribbon..lame!
I made this one for my Father-in-law.
I've never used this stamp set, but I really like how it turned out.
I made this one for my dad. His birthday is the day before Halloween.
I ran the whole thing through my Cuttlebug to get the texture.
I've got a few more cards to show. I've got a baby card on deck, those are my favorite for sure.
Maybe we'll have a little Christmas Spectacular of my adorable dogs before Christmas gets here.
I'm trying to do my Blogger duty and get some posts up. It's been crazy busy, as usual...and computing just isn't high on the list...playing games and facebook, yes, editing and posting photos..not so much.
My mother had a birthday a few weeks back, so I made her a card..which is about all she'll let you do.
She loves peacocks...so much that she's dedicated an entire new house to them.
And I like shiny...oooh pretty. I used my iRock to set the gems, so they never come off...it's so much easier than trying to glue them.
The inside is pretty simple, you know for a nice birthday greeting.
The holiday season is quickly approaching. Team Rodgers put up the tree this week...with way more help than we needed. We're preparing for the last agility trial of the year. We've taken our Christmas card photos, and they're being printed right now, so look for them in a mail box near you.
Sorry so much for the delay..it seems that my Picasa storage was filled, and I had to purchase more...I didn't realize the internet had a max.
Whatever.
Anyway on with Cora-palooza!!
This was the very first picture of our baby girl! She was about 3 days old, and looks like a little old man. She's come a long way.
She used to be so tiny. She can still fit under this bench..but there's definitely less head room. When we got her she weighed less than 2 pounds.
She was so sweet.
Now she all grown up..and whopping 6.2 pounds
Sometimes she's sweet,
But most of the time she's Cora. Snarky, bossy, and sassy.
We had a little birthday cupcake on her actual birthday which was November 4th.
She passed all of her PetSmart training classes, but we haven't taken the Canine Good Citizen test yet. She wasn't quite old enough yet to pass once we finished the classes. We still work with her, and actually she's showing great agility prospect. We plan to begin taking her to classes in a few weeks. She's a little spitfire and she'll be unstoppable.
She's definitely not what we expected when we took on another Pomeranian, but we love her anyway, and wouldn't change a thing.
The 3rd and final day of the Trial.
We had a couple thing on the line this day, we need just one more leg (read: good, fast, clean, qualifying run) for both our Jumpers, and Tunnelers title.
Unfortunately today was a day of disappointments.
Before we get to the footage..I'd like to tell you a story about how daylight savings doesn't always go as planned. Team Rodgers woke up Sunday feeling refreshed. Half of the Team was in the shower..the other half looked at the clock on her phone. The plan was to leave Casa de Rodgers around 715 to arrive at the trial at 8. When the phone was checked it said 715...so some time math was done, and the nightstand clock was checked, the time was Googled, and ultimately, the "phone guy's" phone managed to set itself back 2 hours!! He thought it was 615, but really it was 715! So what was going to be a peaceful morning, was a mad dash to the trial site. Live and learn. We learned that you should always set a backup alarm..and that Apple products are superior..as they set their own time to the proper time. Yay Apple!
Now the footage.
Novice Jumpers. This was supposed to be our 3rd and final leg for Oliver's Novice Jumpers Title. Well..things don't always go as planned. I had made some plans based on his usual speed. You can see as soon as I release him, I can tell he's going much faster than I anticipated. He unfortunately plows into a jump. It doesn't really slow him down at all, but I was shaken, worried he might be hurt. He took the next pattern faster that I thought, so I ended up on the wrong side headed back near the start line. He kept great speed, and I was mostly happy, but too bad we knocked that bar (which he's never done before). He's totally fine, and it didn't shake him at all.
Novice Regular. I didn't really have high hopes based on his previous performance. We started off good, but of course, the weave poles didn't happen..so it's probably good you can't really see them because of the A-frame. We went on to miss the Tunnel/Dog Walk discrimination. He was supposed to go over the Walk. Turd.
Novice Tunnelers. We needed one more leg for our Novice Tunnelers Title. While this was a good run, it wasn't fast enough, so we didn't get it. We had one pause at the dark blue tunnel, which put us over the time. I was hoping he'd be a little faster, since he'd been favoring tunnels all weekend...but sadly, no.
Novice Tunnelers. This was the last run of the trial, and my last hope for a Tunnelers Title..Well he totally spaced, and walked off. I knew that we'd never finish in time, so we were eliminated. I was pretty proud of his "wrap" out of the dark blue tunnel, but it went south after that. On the outside of the course people were packing up the food and other stuff...distracting him.
Overall, we had 1 successful Jumpers run, giving us 1st place, and a Qualifying run. Other than that..it was either too slow, or serious obstacle faults.
We learned a lot...and we've got a lot of work to do before the next one. Like a lot of work. His weaves had been good, so I'm not really sure what happened. As a matter of fact, today in the yard he sped through the poles like he owned them..turd.
Coraline has moved into the favorite position, and it's only 6 months until she can compete. She actually had a birthday on Sunday, so the next post is going to be a little Cora-palooza for her 1st birthday.
Day 2 of the trail got started very early.. First dog was on the line at 8am. This judge doesn't play...he's prompt for sure. We barely made it in time for me to walk the first course.
Day 2 was mostly a terrible day. He wasn't performing as well as I knew he could. But if I didn't share our failures as well as our successes what kind of blogger would I be? Let's get straight to the footage.
Novice Touch N Go #2. Ok, so really this was an Ok run. We just wasted too much time trying to get in that one hoop the right way. And my camera man had a little blurry problem. Another thing that was tricky for us was the "wrap" after the A-frame, he had to go through what looked like the last hoop, and turn completely around and keep going on the course.
Novice Weavers #2. This run was pretty much terrible. It took several times to get the first set of weaves, but I was so happy when he finally did. But it was short lived. After giving up on the second set, Oliver decided he was done, and ran off course. We didn't complete it, so we were eliminated.
Novice Regular #1. This was sort of a disaster as well. We started off strong, but he wasn't supposed to take the A-frame. He looks pretty proud of himself as he pauses at the top. He was supposed to take the tunnel underneath it. The weaves didn't go well either. At the end when he was supposed to take the A-frame, he went all the way around and took the other side of the tunnel. Crazy beast.
This run symbolizes the dog I compete with. This is Classic Oliver. He was wonderful from start to finish. One tiny visit to the bar setter in the chair that looked like Daddy..but he came right back to it. Fast in the final straight away. I couldn't be happier. This earned us 1st place and more importantly, a Q. It was the second leg toward his Jumpers Title.
The whole day was pretty rough. I was disappointed for sure. I'm not sure we would have come back if he hadn't pulled through in the last run.
Oh man!
Team Rodgers is out on the agility circuit again.
We're playing in a 3 day weekend trail put on by U2 Kan Du Agility in Lawrence.
Today was Day 1, Friday night. This group is one of the few that puts on events on Friday nights.
Too bad for us, this Friday we did not reign victorious.
You know I've got some footage.
Novice Hoopers. Our first event of the trial. He was a bit slow, but overall a clean run. We were a bit over time, so NQ for us. Darn. We were hoping to get the Q which would be our second leg towards our title. Next time.
Novice Touch N Go. I knew we were screwed from the start. The second obstacle was a Tunnel/A-frame discrimination...where you are supposed to climb the frame...well Oliver decided he didn't want to do that. The rest of the run was ok, and he had no trouble taking the A-frame the second time around. And of course, we took plenty of time to sniff the dirt.
Novice Weaves. This was a disaster from the beginning. Oliver mostly refused to weave properly all night. He wasn't getting it in the practice arena..and he certainly wasn't getting it in the ring. He kept approaching from the wrong side. We half completed 2 of the sets, giving us many fault points, and giving us a NQ. We've had a hell of a time with Weavers, even though at home, he does fine. We'll keep working.
It was a full night. The pomeranians are sleepy. We're going to hit the sack early and hit it hard again on Saturday.
I'll give a total breakdown of this weekend's winnings after the trial is over.
Happy Friday
Man! I am really terrible at this whole blog thing.
To be honest, I haven't had much time to craft, or anything else for that matter. Team Rodgers is up to their eyeballs in weekend activities. Lately dog stuff has consumed a fair amount of time..next week is the big Agility Trial..so be on the look out for that.
On the home front, we've gotten new kitchen counter tops..and we couldn't be happier! I'll post some before and after shots of that. We're also knee deep in refinishing our hardwood floors...I can't give a final report yet...day 1 didn't go so well..but there will be more on that as well.
I'm backlogged in cards. I have been making a few.
Today is a helping of birthday cake, er, card.
I made this one for my friend at work.
She's getting older, like really old, so I thought I'd bring back the color combos from her youth. Well I used my youth as an example. I loved bright pink and blue and such when I was about 13 I think. Who am I kidding, I still love this combo!
All the paper is Stampin Up, because that's how I roll.
Hopefully all that cake..er cards will hold you over until I can get something else up here. I've got a birthday card from Jon's birthday too..so we've got the potential to have a few posts this week...
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend..looks like Fall is finally here for real in KC.
Team Rodgers has a pretty exciting weekend.
On Saturday we packed up all our agility stuff and took it to Uncle Matt's house to practice. He's got a bigger backyard than we do, and we wanted to practice some of the new commands we've been learning. Well it ended up being a bit warmer that we anticipated, and Oliver was having none of it.
That night we went to the Midwest Balloon Fest out at the Great Mall of the Great Plains.
It was definitely something to see..if you didn't make it out this year, I suggest you go next year for sure.
I love hot air balloons. I've always wanted to go up in one. Hint hint husband.
There were about a trillion people there, which surprised me, since I've never even heard of this thing before.
They had tethered balloon rides for $5, and it seemed like everyone was in line for it. It was sort of lame, they only went up about 15 feet or so.
The festival took up one whole side of the mall. They had military stuff, a rock wall, and helicopter rides.
As the sun began to set, they started filling up the shapes balloons.
It's Nemo!
Actually this balloon's name is Wally..and most of our photos have him in them.
This dragon was huge compared to the other balloons.
We got the watch them inflate this balloon. You'd be surprised how quickly they fill them.
Fire!!
They filled the Farmers balloon so quickly it was swaying a little before they got it under control, it kept bumping Wally.
Jon and Wally.
Thumbs up for fire!
Once they got them all filled they started some music and the MC talked a little about the balloon pilots. He told them all when and what type of burn they would be doing. The audience got to participate in the count downs to the all burns or twinkle burns.
That is some big fire.
It's a all burn!
It was really neat as it got darker, you could see the entire balloon glow.
We watched them deflate Wally. He was one of the bigger balloons, so it took some time. It take a whole team of volunteers to get him folded up and put away.
Me, Jon, and Wally. Pretend the photo isn't grainy. It was taken with the front camera on my phone..cut it some slack.
We had a good time. It's definitely worth a trip if you've never been.
Everyone was so exhausted from our big day Saturday, we all slept until almost noon on Sunday. It was wonderful!
I had a request to make a birthday card for a little guy who is having a Lego birthday.
So, I made a Lego card. It was going to be easy when I started..turned out to be a mathematical nightmare. I guess we all need a little fraction to decimal practice every now and then.
I used my Cricut to cut out the letters for his name, and a teeny tiny stamp for the Happy Birthday.
I also used the Cricut for the 9..he's going to be nine. Cool right?
I hope he likes it..he's 9, I'm sure he will :-)
Team Rodgers is gearing up for a little excitement this weekend, we're planning to go to the Midwest Balloon Fest..weather permitting.
We all slept much better than we did Friday night. 2 crates is better than 1 crate.
We can get right to the footage!
We started the day off with Tunnelers. I figured it was good, so he wasn't tired...turns out..it was good! We managed to get the Q! I never think it happen for him!
We just need 1 more Q in Tunnelers to get our Novice title.
Apparently I almost stepped on him..but if you watch..when he comes out of the orange tunnel, I was there at the same time..my running foot just startled him. But he kept on going! Going for the WIN!
I was ready for another shot at Regulars...too bad. You can see our home base was right by the start line. Oliver was focusing on his Dad from the get go. I thought we were OK, since he had a pretty good start..but as we came back around to take the weave poles, he stops to look for Jon. We had a series of unfortunate events at the end of the course..when he took the purple tunnel, he was suppose to take the dog walk. I brought him back around to try again..well we decided to tunnel a second time. Fine. So my plan was to just finish with the last hoop..Well Oliver had other plans. He went half way up the dog walk, backwards. The judge laughed. Wonderful.
I was excited to try Weavers again..since last time he ran off like a retard. We had a pretty good run. He had a little pause in the middle, I think someone barked or something. We had a bit of trouble heading into the 3rd set of poles...it was my fault. I was over too far..we're really lucky I didn't take the poles out myself. We would have had the Q if it wasn't for the pause, and the wrong placement on my part. I'm mostly just glad he's weaving in competition.
Jumpers was the last event of the trial. We had a great run. It felt good. The only hiccup was coming out the the tunnel into the serpentine pattern. I was a little close to the jump and he paused just a bit. Turns out, just a bit was the final nail in the coffin. We were 0.06 over time! I couldn't believe it. I'm a little disappointed. But we're still really new at this, and honestly we did pretty good considering where we are so far.
Now for the break down.
Novice Regular #1--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Jumpers #1--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Tunnelers #1--Q! (purple ribbon), 2nd place (red ribbon)
Novice Touch N Go--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Tunnelers #2--Q!!, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Regular #2--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Weavers--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)
Novice Jumpers #2--NQ, 1st place (blue ribbon)
All in all it wasn't too bad. We got 1 Q each day, and I'm happy with that. We're on the lookout for more trials to attend. We're for sure going to the U2 Kan Du trial in November. We've got a lot of work to do before then.
Bring it on!
Oliver is really lucky to have such a great Agility Dad! We wouldn't have made it through the weekend without Jon..he's the best Agility Dad!
What a trip!
This was our first whole weekend trip, and the most events we've entered at a time.
We drove to Springfield Missouri on Friday afternoon. It's about a 3 hour drive.
We stayed in a hotel, another first!
Oliver and Cora love hotels!
Cora REALLY loves hotels.
Oh, what's this? Let me tell you...THIS is the 70 dollar crate we had to buy Saturday afternoon because Cora is a turd. We only brought one crate for them to share at night. Friday night, about 1:30AM Coraline had a freaking meltdown. We think Oliver rolled on her and she flipped her freaking biscuit...snarling, snapping and the whole 9 yards. So Oliver had to sleep in the bed. Which he's never done one night in his life. I think he was happy, being in the bed is sort of a treat for him...but he was restless..moving around and keeping both of us up.
So nobody slept well Friday night. We didn't want to risk a repeat performance from our favorite tiny tot...so a second crate it is!
Team Rodgers home base for the weekend. The sheets are to help cut down on the barking. We were in the walkway..so I think it helped. We eventually had to put another sheet on the backside by the window..Cora couldn't stand the other dogs having fun.
Our first ribbon of the trial. Our first Regulars run..not too shabby for a first attempt!
On to the footage!!
First time running regulars. Not too shabby. Regulars includes all of the possible obstacles. I was most worried about the weaves, but we got them with only a tad of a problem. But instead NQ because we made a mistake, he took a hoop backwards because he passed it the first time. It would have been great except for that, we were way under time!
The still of this video is Jon's favorite..it's a pretty funny pose I suppose. Our jumpers run was ok, we got off when I was too close to that 2nd jump out of the tunnel, and we had a few other problems as well. He passed that jump in the back of the course, and spaced out and just stared at me...so needless to say, we were over time..
This Tunnelers run was wonderful! If you remember our last 2 attempts, Oliver isn't in any sort of hurry. Well when it's all tunnels, that's the name of the game, speed and control. This was a TOUGH course, and I just wanted to get through it. Well we flowed through this bad boy like pros! We got our first Tunnelers Q, which was a huge surprise! I was so happy!
If you notice, my hair is down in a pony tail instead of a bun...it's because I lost my hair tie on the course for Jumpers I think...agility is hard.
Touch N Go...this was a series of disasters. I had high hopes because we had done so well last time we entered this. (only 1.71 seconds over course time) This was the meanest course I've seen yet. We were going good in the beginning, I was able to call him off going up that A-frame when he wasn't supposed to. After the pink tunnel, we were supposed to take the hoop at the end, which he did..but then we were supposed to turn completely around and go up the dog walk...which he did not. He though we were done..you can see him looking at me...like, where's my treat mom? When I finally get him turned around that little turn takes the tunnel again by mistake. We finish with the dog walk and last hoop, but we had the mistake fault, as well as time faults because he thought we were done when we weren't.
So that was Saturday. I'll put Sunday's events in another post. And look for the ribbon break down there as well.
Back to work today, man I'm exhausted. But we had a great time.
So, a friend of mine had a very pretty baby girl 2 weeks ago. The gender was a surprise and they kept their name ideas under wraps as well...making card production difficult.
It was worth it in the end.
I love baby cards..and it's been a while since I've done a baby girl card. It means I can use ribbon, and shiny things!
Her name is Julia, which is adorable. I tried to make the card match the pictures I've seen of her nursery.
I love owls, and this one from one of my Cricut cartridges was perfect!
I left the inside blank, you know, for my nice message.
I've got a few other things I'm working on..so stay tuned.
Team Rodgers is gearing up for the Agility event of the summer..well not really, it's just the longest trial we've been to, and we're entering more events than we ever have. We're hoping Oliver will weave himself to victory, bringing much honor to his family...the footage shall be interesting anyway.
I've been papercrafting since the middle of 2008. It all started with home made wedding invitations. I'm married to my wonderful husband Jonathan. We have 5 adorable fur-babies...and that's more than anyone could possibly need, plus 3 actual babies who we're pretty fond of.
If you want something made, or want to buy anything that's not specified for someone already, please feel free to contact me, because I always appreciate a positive cash flow.
